Charlotte Sinclair Livres

Dior continued to send shockwaves with his later shows, significantly altering the fashion landscape during the ten years of his career as a couturier. This book recounts Dior's search for the perfect line and how his unique vision of women's ideal silhouette developed. More than any designer before him, Dior embraced the dual aspects of creativity and commerce, becoming the first couturier to license his products in 1949. He became one of the most famous designers of the twentieth century, and his name still fronts one of the most successful haute couture fashion houses. As portrayed in the pages of Vogue by photographers such as Horst and Irving Penn and artists like Christian Berard, the book offers a unique insight into Dior's contribution to design, his dramatic impact on the landscape of 40s and 50s fashion and his personal legacy.

Gianni Versace created a fashion house that defined late twentieth-century glamour, invented the supermodel, and sanctioned in the public consciousness a supremely self-assured feminine sexuality. His debut line in 1978 was instantly successful; in the Eighties, his extravagant designs and his vision of powerful women defined the era, and culminated in the Nineties with the supermodel phenomenon - his designs worn by those glamazons who featured on every Vogue cover. The book reveals how the more brazen elements of his design - the jewelled embroidery, the bondage straps, the safety-pin gowns - were predicated on supremely skilled tailoring, deft use of materials, and innovative techniques. Alongside are Vogue's eye-witness accounts of the Versace lifestyle - the palazzos and parties, the art, the celebrity friends. Vogue on Gianni Versace is a celebration of a designer and a house that, in only 19 years, came to dominate the catwalk and the red carpet.