Fashion statements

Some new designs for your coffee table

They land in stores like extremely well-heeled, 300-pound gorillas in the weeks leading up to the holidays. They8217;re the season8217;s style books, ready to sit unopened on coffee tables around the globe. This year, the offerings include the aspirational Poolside With Slim Aarons, the practical Harper8217;s Bazaar Great Style, and the too-weird-to-categorise Liberace: Your Personal Fashion Consultant.

This being a year of designer anniversaries8212;Dior8217;s 60th, Ralph Lauren8217;s 40th and Valentino8217;s 45th8212;there is a rash of designer titles, each one weightier than the next. Christian Dior by Farid Chenoune might be the first book to look at the legacy of the French fashion house from its origins to the present under the genius of John Galliano. If you had any doubt that Galliano is a worthy successor, the close-up photographs prove that his garments are every bit as technically complex as Dior8217;s.

Valentino by Matt Tyrnauer and others might be the year8217;s most expensive fashion book8212;4,000 for the art edition, which includes signed and numbered sketches by the Italian designer. The regular edition is 1,000.

But Ralph Lauren is the heaviest at nearly 15 pounds. This one deals with the construct of image. There is very little text most of it written by Lauren himself, but plenty of snapshots of the designer and his family at their homes8212;the same idyllic scenes that inspired the brand8217;s Bruce Weber ad campaigns.

American Fashion by Charlie Scheips is a good primer for anyone interested in a larger history of fashion on 7th Avenue, and a reminder of the role the Great Depression and World War II played in kick-starting the industry here by forcing designers to rely less on direction from Paris.

Dressed: A Century of Hollywood Costume Design by costume designer Deborah Nadoolman Landis is a fitting tribute to her profession. There are hundreds of sketches and photographs, some unpublished, each with a first-person anecdote from someone associated with the production.

My favourite is from Lucinda Ballard, costume designer for the 1951 film A Streetcar Named Desire, who said she was inspired to design Stanley Kowalski8217;s skintight T-shirt when she saw Con-Edison ditch diggers in New York City. Where the Hollywood studios and their wardrobe departments were the image makers of yesterday, fashion stylists are the image makers of today.

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Stylist: The Interpreters of Fashion by Sarah Mower introduces us to the unsung aesthetes who are sounding boards for designers, styling the magazine shoots, advertisements and fashion shows that have defined fashion over the past few decades. Interestingly, this book does not include celebrity stylists a la Rachel Zoe. You too will long for the days before Zoe and her ilk ruled the red carpet after looking at Frank Trapper8217;s Red Carpet: 20 Years of Fame and Fashion.

Examining his snapshots from 1987 to the present, one realises how much more interesting Hollywood fashion was when celebrities had to dress themselves. Cher, Mr. T, Sigourney Weaver and Kirk Cameron look fabulously awful in the 1980s. Then around 1992, everything starts to go down, er, uphill. Courtney Love cleaned up, the European design houses started to pay for red-carpet play and everyone looks just plain fabulous. What a drag.
-Booth MooreLAT-WP