The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family


Richard Avedon - 2007
    The subject of the first essay was John F. Kennedy and his young family, who sat for formal black-and-white portraits just three weeks prior to Kennedy's presidential inauguration. Six images appeared in the magazine's February 1961 issue.That same day, Avedon created more informal color portraits of Kennedy and his family at the Kennedy compound in Palm Beach. One of these images ran as the cover of LOOK magazine's February 28 issue, with photographs by Avedon inside. Just before the magazine hit the newsstands and was delivered to over 6.5 million people, a set of photographs, comprised mostly of the LOOK images, was released by the White House and appeared in newspapers across the country.During his lifetime, Richard Avedon donated more than two hundred images to the Smithsonian Institution, including all of the photographs of the Kennedy family sitting for Harper's Bazaar. Smithsonian curator Shannon Thomas Perich has culled more than seventy-five images from that donation for The Kennedys: Portrait of a Family, making these stunning photographs available for view for the first time. Perich's introductory essay—accompanied by a wealth of archival photographs of both Avedon and the Kennedy family—provides historical background on the two sittings within a political and cultural context and critically examines the work of one of the finest photographers of the twentieth century. A foreword by Robert Dallek, distinguished historian and author of the bet-selling An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy, 1917-1963, provides authoritative and compelling insight to one of the most fascinating presidents in American history.

The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine


Rozsika Parker - 1984
    In this fascinating study, Rozsika Parker traces a hidden history--the shifting notions of femininity and female social roles--by unraveling the history of embroidery from medieval times until today.

The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth


Laurel Thatcher Ulrich - 2001
    Under the singular and brilliant lens that Ulrich brings to this study, ordinary household goods--Indian baskets, spinning wheels, a chimneypiece, a cupboard, a niddy-noddy, bed coverings, silk embroidery, a pocketbook, a linen tablecloth, a coverlet and a rose blanket, and an unfinished stocking--provide the key to a transformed understanding of cultural encounter, frontier war, Revolutionary politics, international commerce, and early industrialization in America. We discover how ideas about cloth and clothing affected relations between English settlers and their Algonkian neighbors. We see how an English production system based on a clear division of labor—men doing the weaving and women the spinning--broke down in the colonial setting, becoming first marginalized, then feminized, then politicized, and how the new system both prepared the way for and was sustained by machine-powered spinning.Pulling these divergent threads together into a rich and revealing tapestry of --the age of homespun,--Ulrich demonstrates how ordinary objects reveal larger economic and social structures, and, in particular, how early Americans and their descendants made, used, sold, and saved textiles in order to assert identities, shape relationships, and create history.

Alexander McQueen: Blood Beneath the Skin


Andrew Wilson - 2015
    McQueen had risen from humble beginnings as the son of an East London taxi driver to scale the heights of fame, fortune, and glamour. He designed clothes for the world's most beautiful women and royalty, most famously the Duchess of Cambridge, who wore a McQueen dress on her wedding day. He created a multimillion-dollar luxury brand that became a favorite with celebrities including Kate Moss and Naomi Campbell.But behind the confident facade and bad-boy image, lay a sensitive soul who struggled to survive in the ruthless world of fashion. As the pressures of work intensified, McQueen became increasingly dependent on the drugs that contributed to his tragic end. Meanwhile, in his private life, his failure to find lasting love in a string of boyfriends only added to his despair. And then there were the dark secrets that haunted his sleep.A modern-day fairy tale infused with the darkness of a Greek tragedy, 'Alexander McQueen' tells the complete sensational story, and includes never-before-seen photos. Those closest to the designer, his family, friends, and lovers have spoken for the first time about the man they knew, a fragmented individual, a lost boy who battled to gain entry into a world that ultimately destroyed him.'There's blood beneath every layer of skin', McQueen once said. Andrew Wilson's biography, filled with groundbreaking material, dispels myths, corrects inaccuracies, and offers new insights into McQueen's private life and the source of his creative genius.

Venice


Jan Morris - 1960
    . . Both melancholy and gay and worldly, I think of it now as among the best books on Venice; indeed as the best modern book about a city that I have ever read.' Geoffrey Grigson'One of the most diverse and diverting books ever written about Venice . . . A taut and personal report, wholly absorbing, quickened by vivid prose and astringent humour.' Sunday Times'For those of whom Venice is a memory, a treat in store, or even a dream, the broad canvas of this book covering a thousand years in the life of one of the most complex, original, and active communities the world has ever seen, is a work of lasting interest.' Guardian

Dress Code: The Naked Truth About Fashion


Mari Grinde Arntzen - 2014
    In this book, Mari Grinde Arntzen asks how and why this is—how can fashion simultaneously attract us to its glamour and repel us with its superficiality and how being called “fashionable” can be at once a compliment and an insult. Arntzen guides us through the major figures and brands of today’s fashion industry, showing how they shape us and in turn why we love to be shaped by them. She examines both everyday, affordable “fast fashion” brands, as well as the luxury market, to show how fashion commands a powerful influence on every socioeconomic level of our society. Stepping into our closets with us, she thinks about what happens when we get dressed: why fashion can make us feel powerful, beautiful, and original at the same time that it forces us into conformity. Stripping off the layers of the world’s fifth largest industry, garment by garment, she holds fashion up as a phenomenon, business, and art, exploring the questions it forces us to ask about the body, image, celebrity, and self-obsession. Ultimately, Arntzen asks the most direct question: what is fashion? How has it taken such a powerful hold on the world, forever propelling us toward its concepts of beauty?

On the Map: A Mind-Expanding Exploration of the Way the World Looks


Simon Garfield - 2012
    Now Garfield takes on a subject even dearer to our fanatical human hearts: maps.Imagine a world without maps. How would we travel? Could we own land? What would men and women argue about in cars? Scientists have even suggested that mapping—not language—is what elevated our prehistoric ancestors from ape-dom. Follow the history of maps from the early explorers’ maps and the awe-inspiring medieval Mappa Mundi to Google Maps and the satellite renderings on our smartphones, Garfield explores the unique way that maps relate and realign our history—and reflect the best and worst of what makes us human.Featuring a foreword by Dava Sobel and packed with fascinating tales of cartographic intrigue, outsize personalities, and amusing “pocket maps” on an array of subjects from how to fold a map to the strangest maps on the Internet, On the Map is a rich historical tapestry infused with Garfield’s signature narrative flair. Map-obsessives and everyone who loved Just My Type will be lining up to join Garfield on his audacious journey through time and around the globe.

The Craft of Bookbinding


Manly Miles Banister - 1994
    Book sewing of all types (antique, flexible, lockstitch, whipstitch), plus how to make endpapers, attach headbands, case in, cover with cloth and other materials, add titling and decoration, much else. Updated list of suppliers. 254 illustrations and photographs.

We Are the Romani People: Volume 28


Ian Hancock - 2002
    The author, who is himself a Romani, speaks directly to the gadze (non-Gypsy) reader about his people, their history since leaving India one thousand years ago and their rejection and exclusion from society in the countries where they settled, their health, food, culture and society.

In Vogue: An Illustrated History of the World's Most Famous Fashion Magazine


Norberto Angeletti - 2006
    The complete compendium is illustrated with hundreds of covers and archival interiors of past Vogue editions, featuring the work of some of the twentieth century's most respected artists, cover illustrators, and photographers—from Edward Steichen, Toni Frissell, and Erwin Blumenfeld to Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, David Bailey, Helmut Newton, Annie Leibovitz, Mario Testino, Steven Klein, Bruce Webber, and Herb Ritts. In 1909, an entrepreneurial New Yorker named Condé Nast took charge of a struggling society journal and transformed it into the most glamorous fashion magazine of the twentieth century. In Vogue traces the history, development and influence of this media colossus—from its beginning as a social gazette in the late nineteenth century, to the exploration of modern fashion photography and new visuals in the mid-twentieth century, to its status as the top style magazine today. The book explains the makings of the magazine—from runways, to editorial meetings, to the pages of Vogue.The thoroughly researched story incorporates first-person accounts, interviews with editors and photographers, and excerpts from stories written in the magazine by many world-renowned writers, including Truman Capote, Aldous Huxley, Richard Burton, Federico Fellini, and Marcello Mastroianni. Unparalleled in its scope and exceptionally illustrated, In Vogue is sure to be among the most important publications on the subjects of culture, art, fashion, photography, and media.

99 Ways to Cut, Sew, Trim, and Tie Your T-Shirt into Something Special


Faith Blakeney - 2006
    The pattern techniques are simple, and the supplies you’ll need are easy to find: T-shirts, scissors, sewing needle, and thread. The difficulty of each project is rated from 1 to 4, and none take more than 30 minutes to create. You’ll never look plain wearing a T-shirt and jeans again.

Print Liberation: The Screen Printing Primer


Jamie Dillon - 2008
    Even if you're starting out in a scary basement or in the tiny bathroom in your cramped apartment with a $40 budget, Print Liberation will show you everything you need to know to get started. And if you're already in a rented studio with a few bucks to spend, this book can help you turn screen printing into your personal art or business.Seriously, this is a completely comprehensive how-to guide. You'll start by learning the history of the craft accompanied by graphic illustrations. Then, step-by-step photographs walk you through the ins and outs of all the main screen-printing techniques, including printing on dimensional surfaces, such as walls and goats (although the latter is not recommended). You'll even find advice about how to turn screen printing into a money-making venture, either by selling your work through galleries or by offering your services locally to make posters, T-shirts and anything else people might need.You can do it. Your imagination is your only limitation.

The Workbench Guide to Jewelry Techniques


Anastasia Young - 2010
    Offering detailed explanations and step-by-step photography to demonstrate procedures, this handbook includes a complete reference section featuring tool shapes, an index of gems, a glossary, standard sizes and measurements, conversion tables, and an extensive list of resources. Additionally, the manual offers a directory of tools and materials—including a key to identifying tools for a “beginner’s kit”—a historical introduction to jewelry, and suggestions for photographing and promoting completed pieces. Remarkable cutting-edge pieces by jewelry makers and designers from around the world are used to illustrate the various processes involved in creating exceptional jewelry. Covering everything from traditional metalsmithing skills and using alternative materials, such as plastics and resin, to discussing issues involved with outsourcing work to specialist external suppliers, this is an indispensable and essential resource for both students and professionals.

The Corset: A Cultural History


Valerie Steele - 2001
    Although regarded as an essential element of fashionable dress from the Renaissance into the twentieth century, the corset was also frequently condemned as an instrument of torture and the cause of ill health. Why did women continue to don steel and whalebone corsets for four hundred years? And why did they finally stop? This lavishly illustrated book offers fascinating and often surprising answers to these questions. Valerie Steele, one of the world’s most respected fashion historians, explores the cultural history of the corset, demolishing myths about this notorious garment and revealing new information and perspectives on its changing significance over the centuries. Whereas most historians have framed the history of the corset in terms of oppression vs. liberation and fashion vs. health and comfort, Steele contends that women’s experiences of corsetry varied considerably and cannot be fully understood within these narrow frames.Drawing on extensive research in textual, visual, and materials sources, the author disproves the beliefs that the corset was dangerously unhealthy and was designed primarily for the oppression of women. Women persisted in wearing corsets—despite powerful male authorities trying to dissuade them—because corsetry had positive connotations of social status, self-discipline, youth, and beauty. In the twentieth century the garment itself fell out of fashion but, Steele points out, it has become internalized as women replace the boned corset with diet, exercise, and plastic surgery. The book concludes with insightful analyses of such recent developments as the reconception of the corset as a symbol of rebellion and female sexual empowerment, the revival of the corset in contemporary high fashion, and its transformation from an item of underwear to outerwear.

The Rough Guide to Italy


Martin Dunford - 1993
    From the capitoline museums in Rome and the stylish shops of Milan to eating Pizza in Naples and watching the spectacular Palio race in Siena, this guide captures all of Italy's highlights in a full colour introduction. The top hotels, bars and restaurants are all uncovered in the detailed listings section with the new 'Author's Pick' feature highlighting the very best options. The guide also takes a detailed look at Italy's history, art and groundbreaking film industry and comes complete with maps and plans for every area.The Rough Guide to Italy is like having a local friend plan your trip!