Celebrating Dior’s floral inspirations in fashion and perfume, this unique volume features a portfolio of rose portraits by acclaimed fashion photographer Nick Knight.

For Christian Dior, perfume was “a door opening into a hidden world.” His first, Miss Dior, inspired by the lush gardens of his childhood home in Normandy, forged an inextricable link between his fashion and fragrance creations. Other scents were inspired by evenings in southern France, lit with fireflies and scented with jasmine. The rose bowers of his family home in Granville; his old mill country house; and the Château de la Colle Noire near Grasse ― where jasmine, tuberose, and May roses reign supreme and are still cultivated ― inspired Dior’s most memorable creations.

Flowers were also at the heart of Dior’s fashion, from the women-flowers that inspired the late 1940s New Look to the swishing, blossom-like ball gowns embroidered with lavish floral motifs. They have inspired all of the designers who followed him at the House of Dior, from Yves St Laurent to John Galliano, and Raf Simons to Maria Grazia Chiuri.

This extraordinary volume blooms with color and inspiration, and includes rose portraits by Nick Knight, previously unpublished archival documents, exquisite details of embroidery and fabrics, perfumes, fashion sketches, and sublime fashion photographs.

About the Authors:

Acclaimed novelist, fashion writer, and biographer Justine Picardie is the former editor in chief of Harper’s Bazaar and Town & Country.
Naomi Sachs, a therapeutic landscape designer, has published and presented internationally on the positive role of nature in human health and well-being.
Alain Stella has written numerous books, including Historic Houses of Paris (Flammarion, 2010/2019) and Jacques Garcia: Twenty Years of Passion, Château du Champ de Bataille (Flammarion, 2013).
Influential, visionary photographer Nick Knight is known for his numerous contributions to Vogue and his fashion advertising campaigns.

A beautifully photographed insider s look at the highly influential personal style and wardrobe of Isabella Blow, one of fashion s most courageous, outrageous, and imaginative muses. Isabella Blow was said to have been a one-off of her own creation in a world of copycats.

She had a gift for spotting fashion genius - her discoveries included Alexander McQueen, Hussein Chalayan, and Sophie Dahl, all of whom became instantaneously iconic. Her eye put her at the center of the high fashion scene, yet Isabella s pedigree, intoxicating energy, wicked sense of humor, boundaries-pushing aesthetics, and her willingness to wear the outrageous made her into a fashion icon.

This elaborate volume published with Somerset House and in association with the Isabella Blow Foundation and Central Saint Martins to accompany the fall 2013 exhibition is an exhaustive survey of Isabella s personal collection.

With over 100 gorgeous full-colour and black-and-white photographs shot exclusively for this publication by Nick Knight, this volume is the first to catalogue her own famous wardrobe that includes thousands of pieces by the most important contemporary designers, including McQueen, Philip Treacy, and Manolo Blahnik.

The impact of Isabella s influence can be seen within this captivating and inspiring volume, an essential addition to libraries of the fashionable, cultured, and eclectic.

About the Author:

Alistair O’Neill is a faculty member and a Senior Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins. Nick Knight is one of the world’s most prestigious fashion photographers and has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally. Caroline Evans is a professor at Central Saint Martins. Alexander Fury is an editor at Love magazine. Shonagh Marshall is an assistant curator at Somerset House, London.

Nick Knight, born in London in 1958, ranks among the international elite of the young generation of master photographers. Very early on, the fashion, commercial advertising and portrait photographer created an oeuvre of trailblazing aesthetic standards, a benchmark in virtually all sectors of applied and free photography. His clients are leading fashion designers, such as Yohji Yamamoto, Christian Dior, Jil Sander, Yves Saint Laurent, Jean Paul Gaultier, and international magazines. This book was first published in 1994 as a review of fifteen years of artistic activity. The getup itself was outstandingly aesthetic: bound in artificial blue velvet suede, designed by the English designer Peter Saville and printed with the Novaspace technique, which imparts to the photographs in Nicknight an unusual optical luster.

More than 400 pictures of Nick Knight’s creative output of the past decade: his campaigns for Dior, Louis Vuitton, and Levi Strauss, his collaboration with Björk, Peter Saville, Massive Attack, Hussein Chalayan, and many others present Nick Knight’s inexhaustible inventiveness in combining shock and beauty, form and color, elegance and wit into a vision of what fashion photography of the future might look like.