Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition.Pages in good condition. Plates bright and vivid. Hardcover. English. See images for condition.

About the book >.>.> Paradox abounds in the life of Charles James the couturier’s couturier-from today’s perspective one of the most influential clothing designers of the twentieth century. Though recognized with every major American fashion award he pro- moted the notion of his genius with the fervor of an embattled outcast. Despite a ceaseless struggle to achieve the financial rewards he thought were his due he squan- dered a large portion of his personal wealth (and the fortunes of family and friends) on futile attempts to develop a mass-market outlet. Hav- ing lived high he died in 1978 down-and-out-a nearly forgot- ten seventy-two-year-old who suc- cumbed to bronchial pneumonia in a run-down studio in New York’s Chelsea Hotel. Yet these paradoxes fade into insignificance when one turns from James’s troubled life to his artistic production. Here in the first pub- lication ever to examine a couturier’s work from a disciplined artistic view- point is the long-overdue review of the James oeuvre. In the anthology of recollections that begins The Genius of Charles James such luminous names of fash- ion and society as Elizabeth Arden Balenciaga Galanos and Diana Vreeland pay tribute to the couturier whom Christian Dior counted among the world’s three greatest designers. (MP)