1 comments about The 4 Dreams of Miss X (Agent Provocateur S.).

1. I just purchased the 4 Dreams of Miss X about 4 hours ago, sight unseen as it was wrapped in plastic at a local Barnes and Nobles. I am an amateur photographer and had high hopes upon seeing Moss on the cover. I have never written a review and certainly never written a scathing one before but this book warrants it.
   The book is primarily made up of shots of Kate Moss taken on what appears to be nighttime mode on a cam recorder (yes silver eyes and the like; and these shots seem to have been further marred by a rough hand in Photoshop). The DVD again shot in black and white nighttime mode contains Kate Moss rambling incoherently on a bed and walking through an ancient home.
   The whole production is just dreadful. The photography, the "acting", the concept...everything just dreadful. The photographer had great material to work with and he not only fell flat on his face but dug a hole and drug an A-list model in with him. If you are wondering what rock bottom is for a photographer or a model, this book is it.
   I'll be returning this tomorrow for a full refund and I will very politely ask that they not sale this book to anyone else.
   -KevintheVerbose

2 comments about Designing Clothes: Culture and Organization of the Fashion Industry.

1. DESIGNING CLOTHES: CULTURE AND ORGANIZATION OF THE FASHION INDUSTRY is a top pick for college-level collections strong in fashion history and design. It considers how fashion operates in society and how it works in an organizational context, considering how fashion firms operate, how they market more than just clothing, and how they actually sell bigger concepts than the latest style choices. Not only art collections but business libraries as well will find it an important survey of how the presentation of fashion is influenced by social change. From fashion industry trends and leadership to the efforts of the fashion designer, DESIGNING CLOTHES is an excellent, in-depth survey.



2. a really good book that looks at how fashion designers became celebrities and a look at what it is like to work as a designer, whether it is an assistant designer or a top designer like tommy hilfiger. this book gives a good review of theory on fashion from both the meaning it has to people who buy and wear fashion to the role of fashion in everyday life, and it talks about fashion firms, their leaders, the culture in the firms and how fashion has become a global industry. i learned a lot about the ways that fashion influences individuals and how it works as a business, and I didn't know much before on this topic. it is well written for the college grad or above level.

4 comments about The Language of Clothes.

1. Well written, well argued history, not text book like at all, but like a long New Yorker article. A pleasure to read. It's not about silly petty fads but great social movements that underlie trends and revolutions. I think more photo illustrations would help.



2. The best pick-up line is to tell a woman how her clothes communicate aspects of her personality. Women love to talk about what the colors, patterns, and styles of their clothes mean. "The Language of Clothes" is all you need to do this -- although I also recommend "Big Hair: A Journey into the Transformation of Self," by Grant McCracken, to discuss what women's hair means. "The Language of Clothes" consists of chapters about how clothes express youth or age, a time or era, certain places, social status, etc. The best chapters are about how clothes communicate gender and sexual messages. This book is also one of the best birthday presents to give to a woman. (I shouldn't be sexist -- the book also discusses men's clothes.) The book has *lots* of clothes, and lots of photos. It's long and carefully researched. It makes you think. Women happily spend hours paging through it.
   --
   Review by Thomas David Kehoe...



3. Novelist Lurie here turns her attention to the history and social interpretation of clothing, linking politics, sexuality and social issues such as class to the evolution of clothing design and style. From Victorian to modern times, The Language of Clothes takes a sweeping look at the history of clothing's evolution and trends, making for an excellent guide.



4. I can't wait to go out and buy this book, which I read in hardcover from the library. It is very well researched and illustrated and discusses clothes and fashions from long ago up till today. And not just fashions and how they change, but what they MEAN. For example, did you know....in olden times, not just elegant clothing, but cloth itself was and admired and expensive commodity. The more cloth making up one's clothing meant that person was wealthy. Paintings of the period featured draperies in the background to indicate a person's wealth, and even today designer clothing uses more cloth and is cut fuller, carrying on the tradition. Anyone interested in not only fashion and clothing but symbols and history should read this book, it is just fascinating and delicious.

No comments about Indigo.

2 comments about Civil War Fashions Coloring Book (History of Fashion).

1. Tom Tierney does a fabulous job with the drawings in this book, the dresses and uniformes have a lot of detail. This is probably my favorite coloring book (and I have a lot!) There is not one "bad" picture in this whole book, they are all a joy to color.



2. Tom Tierney does a WONDERFUL job of illustating the civil war Fashions in this book. Colored Pencils are a must for this book to fill in all the small details of the costumes. I instantly loved this book and hope to buy more of his historical books!

2 comments about Dressing Renaissance Florence: Families, Fortunes, and Fine Clothing (The Johns Hopkins University Studies in Historical and Political Science).

1. It's surprising to note that professor Carole Collier Frick's DRESSING RENAISSANCE FLORENCE: FAMILIES, FORTUNES AND FINE CLOTHING is the first in-depth study of the Renaissance fashion industry. Here are insights into the social and political meaning of clothing in Florence, with black and white photos throughout displaying changing styles and fashion innovations, visual impressions and how family fortunes were invested in wardrobes. A fascinating college-level study, recommended for any collection strong in fashion or Renaissance history.
   
   Diane C. Donovan
   California Bookwatch



2. I'm extremely impressed. I think this book would make an outstanding addition to any Renaissance-lover's, or garbaholic's, bookshelf.

   It is not about how to make Italian-persona clothing. Instead, it focuses on how Florentines of the Renaissance used clothing to make social statements. Along the way, it examines some things that garbmakers would like hearing about (one table lists various color combinations found in gowns and linings), but mostly, it's about the sociology of fashion.

   Chapters:

   * Craftspeople and tailors (including how clothes-making guilds were organized and the role women played in these guilds)
   * Tailoring Family Honor (how Florentines viewed honor and how they thought honor was expressed through clothing)
   * Family Fortunes in Clothes (how much they spent, and a bit about the secondhand clothes market)
   * The making of wedding gowns (you'll love learning how many opinions went into one and how totally political it all was)
   * Trousseaux for Marriage and Convent (how they differed, and lists of what went into each)

   And stuff about sumptuary law, information about layers of clothing, types of dyes (and an examination of mourning clothes), types of fabric, and clothes as depicted in art -- and how art might have distorted how people really wore clothes. Embroidery is also covered.

   Needless to say, the painter Ghirlandaio features pretty prominently here. There are also b/w repros of portraits, unfortunately not super well detailed, but there are a few here I haven't seen before. There are also appendices that are very useful -- lists of currency and measures, categories of clothiers, yardage required for various garments, glossaries of what yardage terms meant, and a HUGE bibliography and glossary of terms.

   It isn't a physically large book, clocking in at around 300pp, but it's very rich in detail, and the writing is pleasant to read. I'd definitely recommend this book to anybody wanting to immerse in the period -- and DEFINITELY for any Renaissance costumers out there. It might not be a bad idea to have some basic grounding in the period before reading this, but it's written well enough that if any is required, it isn't much.

No comments about Cartier: Innovation through the 20th Century.

5 comments about The Mummies of Urumchi.

1. I bought this book & read it soon after it was printed. I thought it was a great book at the time and I still get it out & read from it occasionally. I was thoroughly captivated by Barber's writing and the subject matter.



2. I enjoyed reading this book but did skip over some of the details of the textiles once I got the point. My textile-mad friend who is a spinner and knitter was more interested in this aspect. I enjoyed seeing how the scientists deduced the origin of these mummies, not just from textiles but from historical documents, the records in ancient cities in the area and carbon dating, paths of migration - they certainly have to know a lot in order to develop the understanding of these ancient people. For me, it is interesting that the ancestors of the Scots were also the ancestors of these mummies.



3. I bought this book because I heard an interview with charming Elizabeth Barber about mummies in China. By the time the book was finished she had covered -- almost effortlessly -- a world where weather, textiles, religion, migration, agriculture, geography, mysticism, and so many other fields somehow come together.

   These events happen in exotic, unfamiliar and inaccessible places but they are surprisingly relevant to our own lives. So many of the side lessons -- like a bad weather year in east Asia could cause a wave of invasions as far as Moscow, and did for millenia -- have helped to make the conflict-prone post-9/11 days a bit more understandable, sadly.

   It's hard to believe that her short lessons about things like dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) and paleolinguistics (word origins and the people who used them) could turn into almost every day concepts, but it's true! Imagine -- we can what the weather was in the Swedish summer of 863 B.C.E. because of tree trunks from around the world! It's a mark of mastery to take a subject so large and present it clearly, and Ms. Barber has done so.




4. When most people think of mummies, they think of ancient Egypt, or maybe South America. In truth, mummification can occur whenever the conditions are right, and the arid Tarim River basin in Western China has revealed a large number of mummified bodies, thousands of years old.

   What sets these mummies out from others is their probable ethinicity. The author displays with great lucidity the thesis that these people were not Asian at all, but rather were closely related to the Celts.

   She does this by covering a wide range of available evidence, such as funeral practices, cloth, and language, as well as looking at the geography of the region and exptraploating as to how it may have affected the patterns of settlement three thousand years ago or more. At the end, I was convinced by her arguments, and in the process gained a better appreciation of the Celts, whom I had assumed I understood reasonably well. This is only possible because of the author's breadth of knowledge and research, well presented in a sparsely worded style.

   This book is a great combination of popular science and academic sholarship. I like it the more as the author has the intellectual honesty to admit the points on which her thesis may be lacking in evidence. This does much to inspire confidence in the work as a whole.

   Having just finished reading Tournament of Shadows, I prefer this book for its coverage of the Tarim River basin by far.




5. A rather good look at a very interesting mystery of pre-historic European migrations. Central to this has been the discovery of mummies some three to four-thousand years old who posses what is termed a "Caucasian" appearance, both biologically and culturally. Elizabeth Barber is an expert on ancient textiles and the first part of this book, involved in a description of mummies' textiles (from observations made on a visit there) is in her element and makes what could have been a dreadfully tedious description quite lively. It ends up being the best discussion in the book. In fact I give this book an additional star over other scholarly books of this sort - rather bland usually - for causing me to read with deep interest page after page about what is really an analysis of textile stitching. After describing the better-preserved mummies and analyzing their goods and textile weaves and patterns, she then approaches the whole question of their origins and especially in whether one can link this culture to the theoretical proto Indo-European language-speakers. At this point there is an interesting but rather plainly-written collection of a good deal of information provided by explorers into the region, and comparisons to other cultures such as the Celts, and some linguistic analysis. Although it kept my interest, the jumping between time, place and peoples could sometimes be confusing. And I kept having to search through the maps to remember where we were in relation to where, as these parts of Asia are not very familiar to us. It lacks at the end a good tie-up of loose ends or a summary, that seems required after such a lengthy heaping of theories.

No comments about Computer Aided Design Using Gerber Technolgy.

2 comments about Fashion Illustrator: Drawing and Presentation for the Fashion Designer (Abrams Studio).

1. I found it to be unimpressive and uninspiring. I didnt learn anything. Dont waste your time. In place of this I would recommend fashion design drawing course : principles, practice, and techniques : the ultimate guide for the aspiring fashion artist / Caroline Tatham, Julian Seaman, or Stylishly drawn : contemporary fashion illustration / Laird Borrelli.
   
   If you would like to learn how to draw fashion apparel on models I recommend
   either:
   
   Draw Fashion Models! (Discover Drawing Series) (Paperback)
   by Lee Hammond
   
   or
   
   Fashion Sketchbook (Spiral-bound)
   by Bina Abling
   
   Hope this helps some. I am still looking for a book to show me how to bring my illustrations to life via Adobe Illustrator.



2. This book tries to be about everything but it`s about nothing. Each part of the book is 5 pages long and only the part about illustrators is 50% of the book. Each illustrator answers same 8 questions and there is 1 of his drawing attached. Boring. For me waste of money.