Andrew Bolton

Arguably the most influential, imaginative, and provocative designer of his generation, Alexander McQueen both challenged and expanded fashion conventions to express ideas about race, class, sexuality, religion, and the environment. Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty examines the full breadth of the designer’s career, from the start of his fledgling label to the triumphs of his own world-renowned London house. It features his most iconic and radical designs, revealing how McQueen adapted and combined the fundamentals of Savile Row tailoring, the specialized techniques of haute couture, and technological innovation to achieve his distinctive aesthetic. It also focuses on the highly sophisticated narrative structures underpinning his collections and extravagant runway presentations, with their echoes of avant-garde installation and performance art.Published to coincide with an exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art organized by The Costume Institute, this stunning book includes a preface by Andrew Bolton; an introduction by Susannah Frankel; an interview by Tim Blanks with Sarah Burton, creative director of the house of Alexander McQueen; illuminating quotes from the designer himself; provocative and captivating new photography by renowned photographer Sølve Sundsbø; and a lenticular cover by Gary James McQueen.Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty celebrates the astounding creativity and originality of a designer who relentlessly questioned and confronted the requisites of fashion.

A revelatory look at the influential and enigmatic designer behind Comme des GarçonsThe great pantheon of fashion designers produces only a handful of creators who are masters of their métier. Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons is one of them. Widely recognized among her contemporaries as the most important and influential designer of the past forty years, she has, since her Paris debut in 1981, defined and transformed the aesthetics of our time. This lavishly illustrated publication examines Kawakubo’s fascination with interstitiality, or the space between boundaries. Existing within and between dualities—whether self/other, object/subject, art/fashion—Kawakubo’s work challenges the rigid divisions that have come to define received notions of identity and fashionability, inviting us to rethink fashion as a site of constant creation, re-creation, and, ultimately, hybridity. Featuring brilliant new photography, and thought-provoking texts by Andrew Bolton, this book expresses the conceptual and challenging aesthetic of this visionary designer. An insightful interview and illustrated chronology of Kawakubo’s career provide additional context.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(05/04/17–09/04/17)

What is "camp"? Drawing from Susan Sontag’s seminal essay, this striking volume explores its meaning and its expression in fashion from its origins to today“[An] amazing catalogue. . . . Extraordinary.”—Christiane Amanpour, CNNAlthough an elusive concept, “camp” can be found in most forms of artistic expression, revealing itself through an aesthetic of deliberate stylization. Fashion is one of the most overt and enduring conduits of the camp aesthetic. As a site for the playful dynamics between high art and popular culture, fashion both embraces and expresses such camp modes of enactment as irony, humor, parody, pastiche, artifice, theatricality, and exaggeration. Drawing from Susan Sontag’s seminal essay “Notes on Camp,” the book explores how fashion designers have used their métier as a vehicle to engage with the camp aesthetic in compelling, humorous, and sometimes incongruous ways. As a sartorial manifestation of the camp sensibility, this thought-provoking publication contributes new theoretical and conceptual insights into the camp canon through texts and images. Stunning new photography by Johnny Dufort highlights works by such fashion designers as Virgil Abloh, Thom Browne, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, John Galliano, Jean Paul Gaultier, Marc Jacobs, Karl Lagerfeld, Alessandro Michele, Franco Moschino, Miuccia Prada, Richard Quinn, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Jeremy Scott, Anna Sui, Gianni Versace, and Vivienne Westwood.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(05/06/19–09/23/19)

Since its origins in the 1970s, punk has had an explosive influence on fashion. With its eclectic mixing of stylistic references, punk effectively introduced the postmodern concept of bricolage to the elevated precincts of haute couture and directional ready-to-wear. As a style, punk is about chaos, anarchy, and rebellion. Drawing on provocative sexual and political imagery, punks made fashion overtly hostile and threatening. This aesthetic of violence – even of cruelty – was intrinsic to the clothes themselves, which were often customized with rips, tears, and slashes, as well as studs, spikes, zippers, D-Rings, safety pins, and razor blades, among other things.This extraordinary publication examines the impact of punk’s aesthetic of brutality on high fashion, focusing on its do-it-yourself, rip-it-to-shreds ethos, the antithesis of couture’s made-to-measure exactitude. Indeed, punk’s democracy stands in opposition to fashion’s autocracy. Yet, as this book reveals, even haute couture has readily appropriated the visual and symbolic language of punk, replacing beads with studs, paillettes with safety pins, and feathers with razor blades in an attempt to capture the style’s rebellious energy. Focusing on high fashion’s embrace of punk’s aesthetic vocabulary, this book reveals how designers have looked to the quintessential anti-establishment style to originate new ideals of beauty and fashionability.

Anglomania, the craze for all things English, gripped Europe during the mid-to-late 18th century. As perceived by Anglophiles such as Voltaire and Montesquieu, England was a land of reason, freedom, and tolerance, a place where the Enlightenment found its greatest expression. What began as an intellectual phenomenon, however, became and has remained a matter of style. Through the lens of fashion, AngloMania examines aspects of English culture, such as class, sport, royalty, pageantry, eccentricity, the gentleman, and the country garden, which have fuelled the European and American imagination.This beautiful book presents historical costumes juxtaposed with late 20th- and early 21st-century fashions by Hussein Chalayan, John Galliano, Stephen Jones, Shaun Leane, Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, and Vivienne Westwood. As with the hugely successful exhibition “Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the 18th Century” at the Metropolitan Museum, the clothing is styled as a series of thematic vignettes in the Museum’s English Period Rooms. This book comprises photographs of the installations along with text written by Andrew Bolton.From AngloMania, we learn that Englishness is a romantic construct based on fictive and imaginary narratives. In terms of fashion, these narratives emerge as ones that are satirical, nostalgic, theatrical, and like the English weather, at once indomitable and unpredictable.

From Wonder Woman’s satin stars and golden bracelets to Batman’s brooding cape and mask, the style of superheroes’ dress has influenced both street wear and high fashion. This richly illustrated book explores how radical couture, avant-garde sportswear, and state-of-the-art military garments—as seen through the lens of the superhero—can be metaphors for sex, power, and politics. Beginning with the origins of the superhero costume, this volume looks at how designers have been influenced by iconographic components such as the cape, mask, boots, and unitard. Costumes, such as those worn by Batman and Catwoman, are examined as reflections of sexual and physical prowess, while others, most notably those of Superman and Captain America, are analyzed as political propaganda. Superheroes also explores superpowers and their manifestations––literal, symbolic, or metaphorical: Flash’s speed, Iron Man’s invulnerability, Hulk’s strength, and Spiderman’s agility are presented in their fantastical evocations. Featured designers include Pierre Cardin, John Galliano, Azzedine Alaia, Giorgio Armani, Hussein Chalayan, Alexander McQueen, Nicolas Ghesquiere, Jean Paul Gaultier, Comme des Garçons, and Walter van Beirendonck.

Anna Suis trendsetting rock-and-roll looks have made her one of this decade's top five fashion icons (Time). Here, in the first book to cover the entire scope of Sui's twenty-year career, fans get rare access to the designer's creative process. This richly visual retrospective celebrates her influence, from her first show that snared the support of supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, and Kate Moss to the role she's played in making the babydoll dress one of fashion's most iconic silhouettes. With more than 400 photographs from legendary photographers, this exquisite tomewith a shimmering foil-stamped coveris essential for all fashionistas.

A stunning look at the paradoxical relationship between the artisanal and the technological in fashionThe complex and often ambiguous relationship between the hand crafted and the machine made is examined in this intriguing look at the ever-changing world of fashion and taste. Manus x Machina traces styles of dress from one-of-a-kind works and haute couture created by highly skilled artisans, through the introduction of industrial manufacturing, to extraordinary recent technological advancements applied to high fashion, such as 3D printing, laser cutting, and computer-generated weaving and patterns. The oppositional relationship between the machine, as representative of democracy and mass production, and the hand, as the hallmark of elitism, is explored in its many facets in this fascinating book. Paradoxically, technology in fashion has both advanced artistic creation and obscured the sense of the designer’s expert hand. Similarly, handmade garments have come to represent either a nostalgia for lost craftsmanship or, in haute couture, a cult of personality and affluence. Interviews with renowned and cutting-edge designers such as Sarah Burton, Karl Lagerfeld, and Miuccia Prada discuss how technology can blur the line between haute couture and prêt-à-porter, and ultimately question the relevance of the distinction between hand and machine. A tour de force in art book production, Manus x Machina incorporates two volumes into its innovative package. The main volume of the book includes a smaller hand-sewn booklet, which features the printed interviews, tucked into the back jacket flap. The outer cover of the main volume is made of three-ply plastic layers with high-frequency weld and die-cut flaps. The paperback cover is die cut (modelled on the punch cards used in the first automated weaving looms), and the main volume includes 5 different paper stocks and silver foil stamping, and is printed with both high-density and ultraviolet inks. The book also features new photography of extraordinary pieces, including intricate 19th-century floral designs by William Morris, handcrafted haute couture of designers such as Christian Dior and Alexander McQueen, and the specatuclar 3D creations of Iris van Herpen. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition The Metropolitan Museum of Art(05/05/16-08/14/16)

For centuries, China’s export arts—jade, silks, porcelains, and, more recently, cinema—have fueled Western fantasies of an exotic East and served as enduring sources of inspiration for fashion. This stunning publication explores the influence of Chinese aesthetics on designers, including Giorgio Armani, Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Karl Lagerfeld, Ralph Lauren, Alexander McQueen, and Yves Saint Laurent. Drawing upon Chinese decorative arts, cinema, and costume—notably imperial court robes, the close-fitting cheongsam, and the unisex Mao suit—their designs are fantastical pastiches of anachronistic motifs. As in the game of “telephone”—which the British call “Chinese whispers”—the process of cultural translation transforms the source material into ingeniously original fashions that are products solely of the designers’ imaginations. In a similar way, contemporary Chinese film directors render fanciful, highly stylized evocations of various epochs in China’s history—demonstrating that China’s imagery is equally seductive to artists in the East and further inspiring today’s designers. Juxtaposing modern fashions and film stills with their forebears in fine and decorative arts and historical dress, Chinese Whispers reveals the rich and ongoing creative dialogue between East and West, past and present.

What do Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Prince Charles, and Boy George have in common? These and other sharply dressed, sexually secure, 21st-century men are incorporating skirts into their wardrobes. In this provocative, one-of-a-kind book, Andrew Bolton traces the warrior origins of kilts and sarongs and reveals how, far from feminizing men, skirts actually reinforce their virility. Some 150 photographs illustrate this colorful salute to the growing numbers of the few, if proud, men in skirts.

A brilliant exploration of fashion’s complex engagement with the great art and artifacts of Catholic faith and practiceSince antiquity, religious beliefs and practices have inspired many of the masterworks of art. These works of art have, in turn, fueled the imagination of fashion designers in the 20th and 21st centuries, yielding some of the most innovative creations in costume history. Connecting significant religious art and artifacts to their sartorial expressions, Heavenly Fashion and the Catholic Imagination provides a critical analysis of fashion’s engagement with notions of the divine. Exploring fashion’s complex and often controversial relationship with Catholicism, Heavenly Bodies probes what dress reveals about the state of religion and spirituality within contemporary culture, and how it may manifest—or subvert—Catholic values and ideology. Art objects, such as devotional paintings and altarpieces from The Met’s collection, are presented alongside fashions from designers including Cristóbal Balenciaga, Callot Soeurs, Domenico Dolce and Stefano Gabbana, John Galliano, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Madame Grès, Christian Lacroix, Karl Lagerfeld, Jeanne Lanvin, Claire McCardell, Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler, Elsa Schiaparelli, and Gianni Versace. The volume also presents a selection of ecclesiastical vestments and accessories from the Vatican collection, many of which have not been published before. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition The Metropolitan Museum of Art(05/10/18–10/07/18)

Since prehistoric times, furs and feathers have been used not only for warmth and protection but also for display and adornment. Offering lively insights into the decorative possibilities of pelts and plumes, WILD: Fashion Untamed examines fur’s ability to announce the wealth and status of the wearer by looking at the clothing of Renaissance aristocrats as well as that of contemporary Hip-Hop performers such as P. Diddy and Missy Elliott.WILD also examines how pelts and plumes have come to define ideals of femininity by quoting the physical and sexual characteristics of birds and beasts. Examples include an unprecedented array of designs by Azzedine Alaïa, Roberto Cavalli, Dolce and Gabbana, John Galliano for Christian Dior, Jean Paul Gaultier, Alexander McQueen, Thierry Mugler, and Yohji Yamamoto. The book also features fantastical feathered costumes of Las Vegas showgirls and coquettish “birds of paradise” creations by milliners Stephen Jones and Philip Treacy.Lavishly illustrated and entertainingly written, WILD reveals how faunal apparel, whether in the form of pelts, plumes, prints, or animal symbolism, has represented and will continue to represent one of man’s more primal instincts.

The Supermodern Wardrobe is inspired by the city in transit, exposed to the elements and to the gaze of the passerby. To explore this phenomenon the book focuses on the work of designers such as CP Company, Maharishi, Samsonite, Simon Thorogood, Kosuke Tsumura, Vexed Generation, and the artist Lucy Orta. All use fashion as a means of addressing the problems and possibilities of the urban environment. Their clothes are designed for supermodern spaces like airports, motorways, railways - and the street.

This vibrant publication brings to life four centuries of extraordinary garments and accessories inspired by the natural world Sleeping Beauties: Reawakening Fashion explores clothing’s complex relationship with the body through the senses, offering new ways for understanding and experiencing a garment’s inherent artistry. Engaging texts by scholars, scientists, and conservators reveal the history behind over 200 works of fashion while also addressing their fragility and ephemerality.Exceptional new photography by Nick Knight of creations by international couturiers and design houses―including Cristòbal Balenciaga, Thom Browne, Collina Strada, Christian Dior, Gucci, Charles James, LOEWE, Madame Grès, Thebe Magugu, Maison Margiela, Alexander McQueen, Issey Miyake, Paul Poiret, Yves Saint Laurent, Elsa Schiaparelli, Bea Szenfeld, Philip Treacy, Iris van Herpen, Louis Vuitton, and Charles Frederick Worth―further deepens our appreciation for each object’s sensorial integrity.

“The Met’s latest tome expertly narrates the journey that earned Lagerfeld his seat at the hallowed throne of modern high fashion.”— V Magazine Unparalleled in its luxurious presentation, this publication celebrates the virtuoso artistry of Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019). Designed to evoke an elegant parchment-and-cloth artist’s portfolio, it boasts a pageant of stunning fashion photography alongside Lagerfeld’s original sketches, offering a behind-the-scenes window into his process as well as his sartorial brilliance. Silver inks and select gold pages punctuate the book’s stylish packaging and recall the designer’s signature accessories. An illustrated timeline, unfurling from the back of the volume, chronicles the designer’s long and illustrious career. Lagerfeld produced over 10,000 pieces of clothing across his extraordinary 65 years as a powerhouse fashion designer, from his time at Chloé and Fendi in the 1960s and 1970s to his celebrated leadership in the 1980s and beyond at Chanel and with his own label. His voracious curiosity and boundless imagination yielded beautiful, evocative garments, more than 200 of which are showcased here. These are accompanied by personal reflections from Lagerfeld’s premières d’ateliers—the seamstresses behind his extraordinary creations—as well as by Anna Wintour, Patrick Hourcade, Amanda Harlech, and Tadao Ando. A lavish work of art in its own right, this book is also an essential resource on Lagerfeld and how his designs transformed the entire fashion industry.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Traces fashions from 1870 to the present along a conceptual, disruptive, and nontraditional timeline of fashion history​About Fashion and Duration traces the evolution of fashion, from 1870 to the present, through a linear timeline of iconic garments, each paired with an alternate design that jumps forward or backward in time. These unexpected pairings, which relate to one another through shape, motif, material, pattern, technique, or decoration, create a disruptive fashion chronology that conflates notions of past, present, and future.Virginia Woolf serves as “ghost narrator,” and excerpts from her novels reflect on the passage of time with each subsequent pairing. A new short story by Michael Cunningham, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Hours , recounts a day in the life of a woman over a time span of 150 years through her changing fashions. Scholar Theodore Martin analyzes theoretical responses to the nature of time, underscoring that time is not simply a sequence of historical events. Fashion photographer Nicholas Alan Cope captures 120 fashions with sublime black-and-white photography. This stunning book reveals fashion’s paradoxical connection to linear notions of time.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(October 29, 2020–February 7, 2021)

The vision of Zion, the Peaceable Kingdom, was at the heart of the 19th Century movement that gave birth to Community of Christ. Unfortunately, in attempts to build Zionic communities on the American frontier, church members repeatedly came into conflict with their neighbors, leading ultimately to the murder of the church's founder and the scattering of the movement. Learning from these initial failures, the Reorganized church to "Peace" as its motto as members sought harmonious coexistence with former adversaries. As Community of Christ's journey continues into the 21st Century, the church is committed to Christ's mission of peace for the world.

Articulating eight decades of American style through the emotive language of clothing—from celebrated designers that established the modern legacy of sportswear to emerging creatives shaping the future of fashion in the United States “The design of the exhibition and the catalog is straightforward and compartmentalized, allowing the clothes to speak for themselves and contain their own narratives.”—Laird Borrelli-Persson, Vogue.com This new presentation of American fashion features a revised vocabulary that emphasizes its expressive qualities. Stunning new photography showcases over 100 garments from the 1940s to the present that offer a timely new perspective on the diverse and multifaceted nature of American fashion. The catalogue features works that display qualities such as belonging, comfort, desire, exuberance, fellowship, joy, nostalgia, optimism, reverence, spontaneity, strength, and sweetness by designers, from the pioneers who established the nation’s style to the up-and-coming creatives shaping its future. In A Lexicon of Fashion includes designs by Gilbert Adrian, Geoffrey Beene, Thom Browne, Bonnie Cashin, Willy Chavarria, Telfar Clemens, Dauphinette (Olivia Cheng), Oscar de la Renta (Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim), Denim Tears (Tremaine Emory), Perry Ellis, Tom Ford, Rudi Gernreich, Halston, Elizabeth Hawes, Carolina Herrera, Conner Ives, Charles James, Donna Karan, KidSuper (Colm Dillane), Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, Ralph Lauren, LRS (Raul Solís), Vera Maxwell, Claire McCardell, Norman Norell, Heron Preston, Pyer Moss (Kerby Jean-Raymond), Christopher John Rogers, Collina Strada (Hillary Taymour), Diane von Furstenberg, Vera Wang, and many more. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press Exhibition The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(September 18, 2021–September 5, 2022)

During his time as a student at London’s Central Saint Martins, Gibraltar-born British fashion designer John Galliano worked as a dresser at the National Theatre, learning the art of costume and the power of illusion. As a regular in London nightclubs, Galliano met a coterie of artists and colorful personalities, forging strong ties with kindred spirits who would play a decisive role in his career – among which Stephen Jones, who would become Dior’s milliner.Following the success of his own brand (founded in 1984,) he was appointed Creative Director of ready-to-wear and haute couture at Givenchy in 1995, before joining Dior in 1996 as Artistic Director of the women’s collections. There, he distinguished himself with his extravagant shows that combined eclectic historical and cultural inspirations – a global kaleidoscope of references and unbridled inventiveness, imbued with romanticism and history. The designer’s sensitivity for haute couture know-how and innate sense of the spectacular has garnered him a reputation as a master of the silhouette.John Galliano has truly reinvented the art – and the very role – of haute couture, redefining its tropes into a new type of contemporary fashion that combines the influences of his travels – whether real or born of his imagination – and the bountiful heritage of Christian Dior. This book highlights the exceptional silhouettes he created for Dior collection after collection from 1996 to 2011, through his most emblematic models, as photographed by Laziz Hamani, alongside shots by Steven Meisel, Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn and Paolo Roversi. This singular odyssey is the fifth volume in a new series of books paying tribute to the House’s Artistic Directors.

Presenting outstanding costumes and insightful texts about one of the greatest private collections of 20th-century fashionThis handsome volume explores the modern discipline of fashion collecting, presenting remarkable works from one of the greatest private collection of 20th-century costume. This group of clothing and accessories, assembled over several decades by Sandy Schreier, includes many rare and historically significant pieces that define key moments in fashion. Her collection features not only iconic garments by established designers but also looks by pioneering couturiers rarely represented in museum collections. Outstanding works, by designers that include Gilbert Adrian, Cristóbal Balenciaga, Boué Soeurs, Gabrielle Chanel, Christian Dior, Mariano Fortuny, Karl Lagerfeld, Paul Poiret, and Valentina, are illustrated with new photography by fashion photographer Nicholas Cope. An informative introduction traces the progress of her collecting from its roots in Detroit to the present day. The book also includes descriptions of over 80 works, including garments, accessories, and rare designer drawings, in addition to a lively interview with Schreier by Andrew Bolton that reveals her collecting philosophy.Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University PressExhibition The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York(November 26, 2019–May 17, 2020)

This book contains reflections from two groups of scholars who trace their beginnings to the early Saints who built the Kirtland Temple. These scholars come from the two largest branches of the Restoration movement, Community of Christ and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, who have often found themselves on the opposite sides of many issues. This book is filled with honest, frank conversations between people of the two faiths but also collegiality and friendship. Centered on twelve themes, this dialogue is about bringing together informed scholars from the two churches working together, with goodwill, to accurately understand each other.

Living the Sermon on the Mount in difficult times is part of what it means to follow Jesus, the Peaceful One. Jesus not only taught it, he lived it. This introduction, for all kinds of Christians, examines the revolutionary content of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount in the context of the brutal Roman empire. Then it surveys stories of those who struggled to faithfully live this Scripture in the messiness of their own difficult times. What does this history look like from perspective of the cross? Violence served Roman, European and American empires well, but crucified their victims. This text seeks to feminize and decolonize the debate as to whether the Sermon on the Mount is relevant today, then ask how relevant the just war tradition and Christian realism are for addressing the big human security questions of the twenty-first climate change, poverty, mass migration, racism, populism, and nuclear weapons. Learning from the past, can we begin to develop a new, robust Christian realism, that takes seriously the Sermon on the Mount and finds in it a way of salvation for our own difficult, poly-crisis times? This book can be read individually and also as a group study.

During his time as a student at London’s Central Saint Martins, Gibraltar-born British fashion designer John Galliano worked as a dresser at the National Theatre, learning the art of costume and the power of illusion. As a regular in London nightclubs, Galliano met a coterie of artists and colorful personalities, forging strong ties with kindred spirits who would play a decisive role in his career – among which Stephen Jones, who would become Dior’s milliner.Following the success of his own brand (founded in 1984,) he was appointed Creative Director of ready-to-wear and haute couture at Givenchy in 1995, before joining Dior in 1996 as Artistic Director of the women’s collections. There, he distinguished himself with his extravagant shows that combined eclectic historical and cultural inspirations – a global kaleidoscope of references and unbridled inventiveness, imbued with romanticism and history. The designer’s sensitivity for haute couture know-how and innate sense of the spectacular has garnered him a reputation as a master of the silhouette.John Galliano has truly reinvented the art – and the very role – of haute couture, redefining its tropes into a new type of contemporary fashion that combines the influences of his travels – whether real or born of his imagination – and the bountiful heritage of Christian Dior. This book highlights the exceptional silhouettes he created for Dior collection after collection from 1996 to 2011, through his most emblematic models, as photographed by Laziz Hamani, alongside shots by Steven Meisel, Annie Leibovitz, Irving Penn and Paolo Roversi. This singular odyssey is the fifth volume in a new series of books paying tribute to the House’s Artistic Directors.

As the album of Through the Looking Glass, this book selects nearly 200 beautiful pictures of the famous photographer Platon taken for the exhibits and enables readers to see the interaction between Chinese culture and cutting symbols and western fashion elements and imaginations in fashion. Also, the book includes the excellent articles written by Wong Kar-wai, the art director of the show and Andrew Bolton, the show planner, from fashion, art, film and other perspectives, as well as the interview with John Galliano, a famous designer whose multiple works are exhibited.

This intriguing book will examine how the ideal of the American Woman evolved from “Old World” ideas of elegance into a specifically American sensibility. At the same time, it will explore the impact of the image of the American Woman on haute couture, revealing how the "slender American Diana" displaced the "rounded French Venus" as the prevailing archetype of beauty to emerge as the enduring symbol of style and glamour in the 20th century. This unique publication includes archetypes of American femininity from the Gilded Age to the Golden Age of Hollywood that include “The Grand Dame," "The Heiress,” “The Gibson Girl,” “The Bohemian,” “The Suffragist," "The Patriot,” “The Flapper,” and “The Screen Siren,” illustrated with costumes from the Brooklyn Museum collection designed by Worth, Poiret, Patou, Chanel, Lanvin, Schiaparelli, James, Valentina, and others.