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Saturday 8 January 2011

Books Galore

Normally at Christmas I will get one main present, generally something electronic i.e. 2009 I got an ipod touch, 2007 I got my laptop. But last year there wasn't really anything major that I wanted, so I mentioned to mum that I wanted to build up a sort of mini library of fashion and art books in order to learn more about the historical side of fashion and use them as references. In the end they bought me six, which is definitely more than I had expected! Shopping for Vintage is a great book; the first half gives you some info about style through the decades and the designers associated with them, accompanied by some beautiful illustrations, and the second half is basically a directory of loads of vintage stores and fairs throughout the UK, Europe and the US. In other words, if you're going anywhere at all then you can look in this book and you're likely to find a list of all the vintage places in the area. Super useful!

Vogue Fashion is another one which is really interesting, this one goes into more detail about the fashion from each decade since 1900 so it's really useful to get some background info.

Alexander McQueen- Genuis of a Generation is full of beautiful images from his collections, though not of every garment (shame!). There are also little bits explaining his inspirations for each collection, and a bit at the beginning about his life and his relationship with Isabella Blow. Definitely one of my favourite books- I've spent hours just looking at the pictures already.

Vivienne Westwood has the most beautiful cover out of all the books, not just because of the awesome colourful photo but because it's so smooth and shiny- just everything about it is appealing! The content it quite similar to the Alexander McQueen book in that it's full of photos of her collections and inspirations, and is equally interesting.

British Textiles isn't about fashion as such, but is full of photos of various different fabrics from a collection at the V&A (I think). Lots of pretty prints and patterns, and though I haven't looked through it properly yet it definitely looks like it'll be a great reference book!

Morris by himself is another which I haven't looked through properly yet, but this one is less of a picture book and there's more writing actually explaining the patterns, his life, and his inspirations.
The Alexander McQueen book is full of beautiful photos from his collections, and this is definitely amongst my favourites- I would love to get married wearing this dress, headpiece and all! I stumbled across a photo of Mary- Kate Olsen (I think?) wearing this dress with dark lipstick in a really old magazine the other day, but I think it looks better in the book because she was quite hunched over and sort of looked more old and vampire-y (not in a hot way) than it did elegant.

On another note, do you think the dark background of my blog is a bit too.....dark?! I don't mind it too much but I was thinking that it might look more appealing if I changed it to a white background and did some sort of illustration to use as a new header. What do you guys think?

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