Like Baudelaire's gentleman stroller, Myles travels the city--wandering on garbage-strewn New York streets in the heat of summer, drifting though the antiseptic malls of La Jolla, and riding in the van with Sister Spit--seeing it with a poet's eye for detail and with the consciousness that writing about art and culture has always been a social gesture. Culled by the poet from twenty years of art writing, the essays in The Importance of Being Iceland make a lush document of her--and our--lives in these contemporary crowds. Framed by Myles's account of her travels in Iceland, these essays posit inbetweenness as the most vital position from which to perceive culture as a whole, and a fluidity in national identity as the best model for writing and thinking about art and culture. The essays include fresh takes on Thoreau's Cape Cod walk, working class speech, James Schulyer and Bjork, queer Russia and Robert Smithson; how-tos on writing an avant-garde poem and driving a battered Japanese car that resembles a menopausal body; and opinions on such widely ranging subjects as filmmaker Sadie Benning, actor Daniel Day-Lewis, Ted Berrigan's Sonnets, and flossing.

    These letters, written to the great fashion designer after his death, relieve the carefree days when they were discovering fame and building their renewed art collection, as well as the bitter ones that followed, filled with drugs and depression. This homage to their passionate, sometimes tempestuous life together is a last and intimate farewell to a towering figure of 20th century fashion.

    The camera will never be invented that could capture or encompass all that he actually sees, Truman Capote once said of Cecil Beaton. Though known for his portraits, Beaton was as incisive a writer as he was a photographer. First published in 1954, The Glass of Fashion is a classic an invaluable primer on the history and highlights of fashion from a man who was a chronicler of taste, and an intimate compendium of the people who inspired his legendary eye. Across eighteen chapters, complemented by more than 150 of his own line drawings, Beaton writes with great wit about the influence of luminaries such as Chanel, Balenciaga, and Dior, as well as relatively unknown muses like his Aunt Jessie, who gave him his first glimpse of the grown-up world of fashion. Out of print for decades but recognized and sought after as a touchstone text, The Glass of Fashion will be irresistible to a new generation of fashion enthusiasts and a seminal book in any Beaton library. It is both a treasury and a treasure."

    The book provides step-by-step drawing instructions to help kids become pony portrait masters. Then they can decorate their creations with stickers, stencils, and more! Packed with fun facts about the ponies and their world, this book is a must-have for any My Little Pony fan.

    Join Garfield, Odie, and Jon in a series of all-new adventures from legendary Garfield and Friends show writer Mark Evanier, ongoing Garfield contributors Scott Nickel and Antonio Alfaro, and New York Times best-selling cartoonist Judd Winick (Hilo).

    The photographs, drawings and texts published here are part of a collection of 3,600 tattoos accumulated over a lifetime by prison attendant Danzig Baldayev. Tattoos were his entrance into a secret world, a world in which he acted as an ethnographer, recording the rituals of a closed society. The icons and tribal languages he documented are artful, distasteful, sexually explicit and sometimes just simply strange, reflecting as they do the lives and mores of convicts. Skulls, swastikas, harems of naked women, a smiling Al Capone, assorted demons, medieval knights in armor, daggers sheathed in blood, benign images of Christ, mosques and minarets, sweet-faced mothers and their babies, armies of tanks, and a horned Lenin--these are the signs with which this hidden world of people mark and identify themselves.

    Featuring handwritten text paired with sweet illustrations and a tactile cover with foil-stamped and debossed details, this giftable volume sheds new light on the woman behind some of the last century's most iconic designs—from her impoverished childhood in an orphanage to her dreams of becoming a singer and her tumultuous love affairs with Europe's elite. Brimming with excerpts from Chanel's own letters and diaries, these pages reveal the passion and vision of one of the most celebrated fashion designers of all time.

    Who better than Robin Givhan to tell this captivating story?" - Diane von FurstenbergOn November 28, 1973, the world's social elite gathered at the Palace of Versailles for an international fashion show. By the time the curtain came down on the evening's spectacle, history had been made and the industry had been forever transformed. This is that story.Conceived as a fund-raiser for the restoration of King Louis XIV's palace, in the late fall of 1973, five top American designers faced off against five top French designers in an over-the-top runway extravaganza. An audience filled with celebrities and international jet-setters, including Princess Grace of Monaco, the Duchess of Windsor, Paloma Picasso, and Andy Warhol, were treated to an opulent performance featuring Liza Minnelli, Josephine Baker, and Rudolph Nureyev. What they saw would forever alter the history of fashion.The Americans at the Battle of Versailles- Oscar de la Renta, Bill Blass, Anne Klein, Halston, and Stephen Burrows - showed their work against the five French designers considered the best in the world - Yves Saint Laurent, Hubert de Givenchy, Pierre Cardin, Emanuel Ungaro, and Marc Bohan of Christian Dior. Plagued by in-fighting, outsized egos, shoestring budgets, and innumerable technical difficulties, the American contingent had little chance of meeting the European's exquisite and refined standards. But against all odds, the American energy and the domination by the fearless models (ten of whom, in a groundbreaking move, were African American) sent the audience reeling. By the end of the evening, the Americans had officially taken their place on the world's stage, prompting a major shift in the way race, gender, sexuality, and economics would be treated in fashion for decades to come. As the curtain came down on The Battle of Versailles, American fashion was born; no longer would the world look to Europe to determine the stylistic trends of the day, from here forward, American sensibility and taste would command the world's attention.Pulitzer-Prize winning fashion journalist Robin Givhan offers a lively and meticulously well-researched account of this unique event. The Battle of Versailles is a sharp, engaging cultural history; this intimate examination of a single moment shows us how the world of fashion as we know it came to be.

    An ambitious marketing operation, it could not afford to take chances on haute couture; its fashions were geared as closely as possible to the prevailing tastes of the American people. For this historically accurate sampling of authentic 1930s fashion, Stella Blum, former Curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, selected for reproduction 133 representative pages from rare Sears catalogs of the period (fall and spring catalog for each year from 1930 to 1939). Hundreds of illustrations record what men, women, and children were actually wearing in the 1930s when, as a copyline from the Fall 1930 catalog proclaimed: "Thrift is the spirit of the day. Reckless spending is a thing of the past."You'll see here how simpler women's fashion designs — of more traditional, affordable material — recaptured the feminine form with a more natural waistline and lower hemlines than seen in the twenties. For evening wear, longer dresses replaced flamboyant beaded short gowns while cloche hats, another twenties trademark, were replaced by berets, pillboxes, and turbans. The seriousness of the accessories and dresses endorsed by such Hollywood legends as Loretta Young, Claudette Colbert, and Fay Wray.For historians of costume, nostalgia buffs and casual browsers, these pages afford a rare picture of how the average American really dressed during the thirties. It is an essential resource for study of the clothing of an important era which designers cannot afford to be without.

      filled with how-tos, personal essays, anecdotes, recipes, and a liberal dash of style, all in good taste will transform you into the hostess everyone wants an invitation from. the book covers the essential lost arts—how to shuck an oyster, curate a vibrant guest list, guide a dinner-table discussion—right alongside modern conundrums such as Instagram etiquette at dinner. whether you entertain a little or a lot, or just love being the person everyone wants to sit next to at dinner, all in good taste is the modern classic you’ll treasure for years.

    Her unique geometric style uses fruit and dough cut and woven into stunning shapes to highlight color and texture. With an elegant symmetry that matches their knockout flavor, her dazzlingly intricate and inventive designs look difficult to produce, but can be achieved with little more than a knife, ruler, and some patience.In Pieometry, Lauren reveals her secrets, sharing stories about her designs and the inspiration behind them. Warm and funny, she recounts the spectacular piesasters that led to some of her best creations, and breaks down her most beautiful designs, describing how to make naturally-colored dough, intricate weaves, and striking cut-out patterns. Pieometry provides clear, step-by-step instructions, accompanied by helpful photographs, which any patient baker can follow to build these pies from bottom crust to top in their own kitchens. Lauren makes it easy to mix and match doughs, fruits, fillings, and designs, and each recipe includes suggestions for alternative ingredients. Best of all, the beautiful finished pie and tart photos are just as much of a treat to look at as the pies are to eat. But even if you make a mistake here and there, her flavors save the day!When it comes to flavor, Pieometry offers a balance of sweet and savory pies that are a feast for the senses, including:Of a Shingle Mind: Honey ricotta tart with an herbed pastry shell and beetsBerried Treasure: Lavender blackberry cream with a shortbread crust and berriesWave of Wonders: Cardamom coffee cream with a shortbread crust and pearOnce in a Tile: Pumpkin black sesame pie with a black sesame crustC and Easy: Butternut bacon macaroni and cheese pie with a whole wheat cheddar chive crustSquiggle Room: Grilled cinnamon pineapple pie with a basic butter crustWhether you want to impress at the holidays or just spruce up a family meal, Pieometry is your guide to transforming a rustic traditional dessert into a modern masterpiece.

    and cultural icon.The late Kathy Acker's legend and writings are wrapped in mythologies, many of them created by her. Twenty years after her untimely death at age 50, Acker's legend has faded, but her writing has become clearer.A few years ago, the writer Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick, found that her own experiences were becoming more and more like Kathy's. She began writing about Acker 'through the distance, but with this incredible frisson of feeling that often I could write "I" instead of "she."'This is 'literary friction': The first fully authorised biography of the avant-garde writer Kathy Acker, by the woman who arrived on the scene straight after her, who shared some of her boyfriends and friends, and her artistic ambitionsUsing exhaustive archival research and ongoing conversations with mutual colleagues and friends, Kraus traces the woman behind the notorious novels, and places her at the centre of a kaleidoscopic artistic world.

    76 duotones.

    This full color coffee table book is styled as a diary of the fictional Victorian-era explorer, Captain Herbert Jobson, as he catalogs the wonders of the world for Queen Victoria. Award-winning LEGO builder and special effects master Guy Himber combines brick-built marvels with a swashbuckling narrative, fascinating historical trivia, and authentic Steampunk-styled detailing to bring this fantastical story to life.

    They pack as much raw material in their brains as possible and then use that to build their own unique designs. The Anatomy of Design is what, in the butcher business, they call a "side of beef." The authors selected fifty examples of graphic design that will be dissected, piece by piece, tissue by tissue, revealing an array of influences and inspirations. These are not necessarily the most well-known or celebrated objects of graphic design, though many contain the genetic codes of some canonical works. Instead, these represent contemporary artifacts that are well conceived, finely crafted, and filled with hidden treasures. Some are overtly complex and their influences are somewhat easy to see with the naked eye. Others are so simple that it is hard to believe there is a storehouse of inspiration hidden underneath.The selections include all kinds of design work including posters, book and record covers, packages, catalog covers, and more. Each exhibit is selected based on its ubiquity, thematic import, and aesthetic significance, and every page is a means to show how great work is derived from various inspirational and physical sources, some well-known, some unknown. Each design is presented on a gate-fold showing the featured design and and other works that share the key influences with extended captions explaining the whys and wherefores.