No comments about Accessories (Twentieth-Century Developments in Fashion and Costume).

No comments about Basics Fashion Design: Construction (Basics Fashion Design).

No comments about Dessous.

No comments about Costume in Context: The 1960's and 1970's (Costume in Context Series).

1 comments about People.

1. I love Roxanne Lowit's photographs and last night, around dinner, we had a debate about which one of the photos in "People" we would most like hanging on our walls. Every one had a different favorite. Lowit says that when she used to hang out with Andy Warhol he turned to her one evening and said, Roxanne, you taught me something valuable about photography. She was surprised and asked him what she could possibly have taught Warhol? Impishly he pointed to her two cameras. Always have one black and white, and one color camera he replied. That's what she had taught him.
   
   The photos in PEOPLE reflect this ambidextrousness. Some, the more classical Richard Avedon sort of photos, are severe, glamorous, almost austere, like nuns, in their devotion to the image. I think I wound up like the color photos more however, which show a different side to her genius, the Fellini side, the side that believes and partakes in magic ritual. Lowit's best work participates in a Bakhtinian carnival existence, constantly flirting with disaster, always ominously present when the great wheels of existence begin to cantilever sideways. Take a look at her somber portrait of a wasted Norman Mailer--the sage gone mad.
   
   For the record if she were to appear in San Francisco like a fairy godmother and grant me one request, that I could own a print of any of the photos in PEOPLE, I would still be torn. I want the double-page layout of the original Spice Girls from the 1990s. On the other hand there's a wonderful, scarlet tinged double portrait of a youngish Liza Minnelli together with a rough, aged Audrey Hepburn that is just beautiful. Give me one of those two, Miss Lowit!

1 comments about Mode Drawing: Nude/Female (Mode Drawing Series, No 1).

1. this is one of those books to have around when you need to make a figure illustration in a pose you just can't make your wooden doll go into. There are probably 1000 poses in this book, some small, some big, but all useful. There aren't alot of instructions, but unless you have a friend who is willing to get naked and pose for you on no notice, this book is indispensable.

No comments about Why Do Architects Wear Black?.

1 comments about Medieval Fabrications: Dress, Textiles, Clothwork, and Other Cultural Imaginings (The New Middle Ages).

1. I should probably give this book a '5' because it IS good for what it is. But it put me to sleep before the end of the first chapter.... This is a textbook suitable for an upper-level university class in medieval studies. This is not for the casual reader! If you are interested in esoteric theories, new interpretations of medieval literature through an emphasis on dress studies, and a bit of heavy jargon--this is the book for you.
   
   [This book was recommended to me by Amazon.com because of other titles that I own in the area of historic textiles and dress. I'm afraid that this recommendation just highlights the drawbacks of an automated rating system.]

No comments about The Study of Dress History.

No comments about The Book of Scarves.