An exploration of how the rose — the most ravishingly beautiful and symbolic of flowers—has inspired fashion over hundreds of years?

The Rose in Fashion: Ravishing is a fascinating exploration of how the rose has inspired the way we look, dress, feel, and fantasize. It foregrounds innovative, refined, and challenging fashion design from elite 18th-century woven silks to the latest gender-neutral catwalk trends and Alexander McQueen rose dresses. Drawing upon fashion clothing, everyday dress, millinery, fine jewellery, perfume, and artificial and fresh roses, multiple expert contributors make reference to love, beauty, sex, sin, gendered identities, rites of passage, transgression, degradation, and death. This sumptuously illustrated book also includes a contribution and stunning images of roses by visionary photographer Nick Knight. Wild yet cultivated, savage yet delicate, this flower has remained an enduring symbol perhaps due to its versatility and the dichotomies it represents.

About the Author:

Amy de la Haye is professor of dress history and curatorship at London College of Fashion and joint director of the University of the Arts Centre for Fashion Curation.

A concise account of the history of fashion and costume from prehistoric times through to today.

From the momentus invention of the needle some 40,000 years ago to the development of blue denim, from Neolithic weavers to the biggest names in the fashion industry today – this classic guide covers the landmarks of costume history, the forms and materials used through the ages, the underlying motives of fashion and the ways in which clothes have been used to protect, to express identity, and to attract or to influence others. This sixth edition features a new foreword and concluding chapter by Amy de la Haye. The book is brought right up to date with a discussion about the major political shifts within the fashion industry, highlighting how it has responded to issues surrounding racism and sexism; LGBTQI rights; mental health awareness; body and age diversity and global sustainability.

Contents List:

Foreword • 1. How it all began • 2. Greeks and Romans • 3. Early Europe • 4. The Renaissance and the sixteenth century • 5. The seventeenth century • 6. The eighteenth century • 7. From 1800 to 1850 • 8. From 1850 to 1900 • 9. From 1900 to 1939 • 10. Rationed fashion to pluralistic style • 11. At the turn of the millennium • 12. Fashion since 2010

About the Authors:

James Laver, the 20th century’s leading authority in Britain on the history of costume and fashion, was Keeper of the Department of Prints and Drawings and of Paintings at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from 1938 until 1959. Amy de la Haye is Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Dress History & Curatorship at London College of Fashion. She was formerly Curator of Twentieth-Century Dress at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Andrew Tucker is a fashion journalist and author of The London Fashion Book; Dries Van Noten; and Fashion: A Crash Course.

A new edition of this hugely successful international survey covering all aspects of fashion, organized around crucial shifts in style and major world events

From the turn-of-the-century S-bend silhouette to celebrity couture of the new millennium and the evolution of streetwear, this comprehensive survey explores significant developments in fashion from 1900 to the present day. Fashion historians Amy de la Haye and Valerie Mendes focus on key movements and innovations in style, and explore trends through the work of some of the world’s most original and influential designers and couturiers. Chapters are organized around crucial shifts in tastes and major world events, and exciting advances in fashion are placed within their socioeconomic, political and cultural contexts.

International in scope with colour illustrations throughout, this edition includes updated text as well as a new chapter that discusses some of the defining features of fashion in our time: the industry’s proactive embrace of age, gender and race diversity, and its ongoing efforts to combat labour exploitation and encourage global sustainability.

Contents List:

Preface
1. 1900–1913: Undulations and Exotica
2. 1914–1929: La Garçonne and the New Simplicity
3. 1930–1938: Recession and Escapism
4. 1939–1945: Rationed Fashion and Home-Made Style
5. 1946–1956: Femininity and Conformity
6. 1957–1967: Affluence and the Teenage Challenge
7. 1968–1975: Eclecticism and Ecology
8. 1976–1988: Sedition and Consumerism
9. 1989–1999: Fashion Goes Global
10. 2000–2010: Planet Fashion
11. Fashion 2010–2020
Bibliography

About the Authors:

Valerie Mendes, formerly Head of the Textiles and Dress Department at the Victoria and Albert Museum, is a freelance fashion and textiles historian and consultant. She began her career at Manchester University's Whitworth Art Gallery, and has curated numerous exhibitions and published widely. Professor Amy de la Haye is Rootstein Hopkins Chair of Dress History and Fashion Curatorship at London College of Fashion. She was formerly Curator of Twentieth-Century Dress at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. Her many publications include The Cutting Edge: British Fashion 1947–1997; The A–Z of Style; Chanel: Couture & Industry; and, with Judith Clark, Exhibiting Fashion.

For over a century, the name of Chanel has been synonymous with feminine elegance, modernity and innovation in fashion.

This lavishly illustrated book, newly expanded and updated, examines the creative output of Gabrielle 'Coco' Chanel (1883-1971) over the course of her long career and documents the creation and meteoric rise of the Chanel fashion empire and the products that bear its exclusive label - haute couture, ready-to-wear, accessories, jewellery and perfumes.

A final chapter looks at the House after Chanel: the vision of creative director Karl Lagerfeld who from 1983 until his death in 2019 ensured that the brand retained its position at the forefront of fashion's vanguard; and the reinterpreting of Chanel fashion signatures by his successor, Virginie Viard, today.

About the Author:

Amy de la Haye is a curator, writer, dress historian and fashion critic.

An exploration of the role of the handbag in the history of culture, fashion, and material production

The history of the handbag - its design, how it has been made, used, and worn - reveals something essential about women's lives lived over the last 500 years. Perhaps the most universal item of fashionable adornment, it can also be elusive, an object of desire, secrecy and even fear. Handbags explores these rich histories and multiple meanings.

This book features specially commissioned photographs of an extraordinary, newly formed collection of fashionable handbags that dates from the 16th century to the present day. It has been acquired to exhibit in the first museum devoted to the handbag, in Seoul, South Korea. The project is a commission undertaken by experimental exhibition-maker Judith Clark, whose innovative practices are revealed in Handbags.

Essays by leading fashion historians and an acclaimed psychoanalyst investigate the history of gesture, the psychoanalysis of bags, and the museum's state-of-the-art mannequins and archive cabinets. In order to preserve the words that describe the unique qualities of each bag, a glossary of handbags has been compiled.

Published in association with the Simone Handbag Museum, Seoul

About the Author:

Judith Clark is professor of fashion and museology at the London College of Fashion.

For almost a century, the name of Chanel has been inextricably linked to elegance, modernity and fashion innovation. It was Chanel who single-handedly made striped jerseys and loose trousers chic, costume jewellery desirable, the little black dress the height of sophistication, and tweed suits a staple of every stylish woman's wardrobe.

In this beautifully illustrated book, dress historian Amy de la Haye celebrates Gabrielle Coco Chanel as the couturier who changed the way stylish women everywhere dress, then and now. She examines the creative output of this most famous of fashion houses, from its infancy in the 1920s to the present day as it continues to prosper under the direction of Karl Lagerfeld.

About the Author:

Amy de la Haye is a curator, writer, dress historian and fashion critic.

Amy de la Haye brings together the secrets of style from the worlds greatest fashion designers, their famous clients and others from the world of fashion in this delightful illustrated dictionary. Preserving the wisdom of fashions big names, from Chanel on perfume, to Dior on elegance and Schiaparelli on hats, this charming compendium is illustrated with newly commissioned line drawings of accessories and clothing from the V&As celebrated fashion collection by Emma Farrarons. A to Z of Style, a handy guide full of timeless advice, is the perfect gift for anyone with a sense of style or fun.