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Pierre Balmain

Pierre Balmain ranks with the greatest couturiers of the mid-twentieth century. He created dresses for royalty, stage and screen stars with customers including Marlene Dietrich, Katherine Hepburn, Sophia Loren, Gertrude Stein and the Duchess of Windsor. More recently, his vintage gowns have been worn by Penelope Cruz and Angelina Jolie.

During his early career Balmain worked alongside Christian Dior for the couturier Lucien Lelong. The two became great friends, planning to set up a business together, but eventually went their separate ways – and in 1945 Balmain opened his own salon. In his autobiography Balmain recalls his single-minded journey to success, from life as the son of a rural draper to renowned designer.

First published in 1964, this book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

V&A Publishing

V&A Fashion Perspectives

My Years and Seasons: The Autobiography of Pierre Balmain

Ernestine Carter

Readers of The Sunday Times knew that the fashion journalist Ernestine Carter could spot a winner from a mile away, whether at a Paris couturier or a boutique on London’s King’s Road. Apocryphally, whatever she praised on Sunday was sold out by Monday lunchtime.
In her entertaining and informative autobiography, Carter recalls her illustrious career as Fashion Editor at Harper’s Bazaar during the 50s, describing her attendance at haute couture shows throughout Europe, including the exhilaration of seeing Dior’s ‘New Look’ for the first time. Her insightful commentary on designers and fashion continued into the 60s as women’s editor, and later associate editor at The Sunday Times, where she backed a rising generation of British designers including Mary Quant and Jean Muir.

First published in 1974, this book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

With Tongue in Chic: The Autobiography of Ernestine Carter, Fashion Journalist and Associate Editor of The Sunday Times

Aage Thaarup

Aage Thaarup left his job in a Copenhagen department store in his teens to conquer the world. By the late 1930s, he had a shop in London and was milliner to the British royal family. Revealed to the world by Cecil Beaton, his famous customers included Walllis Simpson, Margot Fonteyn and Marlene Dietrich - but the pinnacle of his career came with the creation of the tricorn hat worn by the Queen annually between 1953 and 1986 at the Trooping of the Colour ceremony. Declared insolvent at least twice, Thaarup's obituary in The Times noted that 'He was not hardened by fame or fortune. He wore a cheerful disposition and a bow-tie always at a ten-to-four angle.'

Originally published in 1956, this book is now part of the V&A
Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in
consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives
series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion.
Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the
scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and
Vogue in the golden age of couture.

Heads and Tales: The Autobiography of Aage Thaarup, Milliner to the Royal Family

Janey Ironside

Derided by the traditional fashion establishment for declaring Mick Jagger 'stylish', Janey Ironside's career in the fashion industry was inseparable from her identity. As Professor of Fashion Design at the Royal College of Art from 1956 to 1968 she played a role in the sixties revolution that turned Britain's rag trade into a high-turnover mass-market industry targeting a new generation of cash-rich youth. Working behind the scenes, she trained a cohort of bright young designers including Ossie Clark, Bill Gibb, Zandra Rhodes, Sally Tuffin and Marion Foale.

Originally published in 1973, this book is now part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the
scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

Janey: The Autobiography of Janey Ironside, Professor of Fashion Design at the Royal College of Art: An Autobiography by Janey Ironside

Jean Shrimpton

‘My only purpose is to write the kind of book that I would have liked to have read when I started.’
Jean Shrimpton, 1964

Icon of the sixties and one of the first supermodels, Jean Shrimpton rose to fame alongside photographer David Bailey. Together they revolutionized fashion photography with a new gritty street style. Perceptive, personal and disarming, The Truth About Modelling covers the early years of Shrimpton’s life and career including her transformation at Lucie Clayton’s modelling school from a naive country-loving teenager into a Vogue and Harper's Bazaar cover girl. She describes the frenetic life of a model in the 1960s and making a success of working with renowned photographers such as John French, Norman Parkinson, Terence Donovan, Brian Duffy and of course Bailey. Offering a fascinating insight into both sides of the camera, she includes her own interviews with the photographers and tips from many of her model contemporaries, including Celia Hammond and Tania Mallet. Timeless in its wisdom, this lively autobiographical guide to the art and business of modelling will inspire anyone setting out on the same path today.

First published in 1964, this book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

The Truth About Modelling

Edna Woolman Chase

Ilka Chase

Vogue was a newly formed weekly society magazine when Edna Woolman Chase arrived on its staff in 1895 at the young age of 18. Alongside its second owner, Condé Nast, she went on to remodel it into the institution we know today. Just a few days before he died, Condé wrote to Edna to express his deepest gratitude for her role in the creation of Vogue: ‘… without you I could never have built Vogue. We have built this great property together.’

Chase started work in the circulation office and the magazine quickly became her life, as it would be until her death in 1957: ‘I absorbed Vogue and Vogue absorbed me’. By the late 1920s she was the editor-in-chief of all Vogue editions and controlled virtually every aspect of the magazine. For a good part of the twentieth century she was undoubtedly the arbiter of fashion and good taste.

Many stellar names spent the early years of their careers under the Chase umbrella, including the photographers Edward Steichen and Irving Penn and the writer Dorothy Parker and much of what is today taken for granted in fashion reporting and magazine editing was pioneered by Chase. 

Through her inventiveness and enduring practicality, Chase helped steer both the magazine and the American fashion industry through the very difficult years of two world wars: during the First World War she conceptualized and organized the first ever American fashion show. On retiring as editor-in-chief in 1952, aged 75, she became chairman of the editorial board and began work on her autobiography, Always in Vogue, which she co-wrote with her actress daughter Ilka Chase and which originally published in 1954.

This book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

Always in Vogue: The autobiography of Edna Woolman Chase, editor of Vogue from 1914-1952

Norman Hartnell

Sir Norman Hartnell (1901–1979) dominated London couture during the inter-war years, gaining international fame as dressmaker to the British royal family. Silver and Gold, first published in 1955, tells how he formed his couture house, his appointment as dressmaker to the royal family in 1935, and the most momentous commissions of his career: Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown in 1947, and her magnificent Coronation dress six years later. Best known for romantic eveningwear, he also established a successful ready-to-wear line, dressing a loyal clientele of high society and film stars, cementing London’s position as an innovative fashion centre. Silver and Gold describes an extraordinary life, with elegance and panache.

Originally published in 1955, this book is now part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

Silver and Gold: The Autobiography of Norman Hartnell

Max Boy

First published a year after World War II ended, this fictional text was written for a generation of women starved by war rationing of both clothing and makeup. Speculation on the true identity of the author takes in Norman Hartnell and Edward Molyneaux.

Written in the format of a fashion show, the fantastical narrative describes a stream of mannequins as they step onto the catwalk, each bedecked in robes made from yards of silk, velvet and brocade, in a myriad of colours. The reader is invited to sit back on an apple-green taffeta settee, in a beautiful Salon with its roses and crystal pendants, and enjoy the show. The intention is pure pleasure, and the dresses are ‘designed for the occasion’.

Modes and Mannequins

Hardy Amies

‘Deerstalker: Sherlock Holmes wore one. You need not.’ ‘Turnups: You can’t have any.’ These are just two of the hugely entertaining entries in Hardy Amies’s very firm guide to men’s dress. His perfectly honed eye guides the reader safely through style decisions on everything from blazers and brogues to skiing and sandals. Originally published in 1964 and illustrated with delightful period photographs and drawings, it provides a fascinating window into the etiquette of men’s dress in the 1960s.

This book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

ABC of Men's Fashion

Ethyle Campbell

The working life of a women in retail in the 1930s was tough, but not beyond the no-nonsense Ethyle Campbell. First published in 1938 and quite unlike any other book about the rag trade in the ʼ30s, this semi-autobiographical account of Campbell’s time as a fashion buyer for a London department store rings with her slangy informative banter as she plies her trade, often hilariously, between the shop floor, the couture houses of Paris and factories of New York. 

The realities of the retail trade are interspersed with extraordinary vignettes, including a shoplifter with capacious bloomers stuffed with pilfered undies, and wealthy but unwashed society elite sporting filthy corsets and smelling so much that staff refused to serve them. Fed up with customers returning worn frocks as unsuitable and never forgetting that the customer is always the enemy, a determined Campbell splashes water over the dress of one notorious culprit in the wash room at the Savoy.

This book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

Can I Help You, Madam? The Autobiography of fashion buyer, Ethyle Campbell

Carmel Snow

Carmel Snow (1887 – 1961), the notorious publishing rival of Vogue editor Edna Woolman Chase, left Vogue in 1932 to become fashion editor, then editor of Harper's Bazaar. This vibrant memoir recalls the glamour and all-consuming work of her passionately conducted career. Determined and opinionated, Snow had a brilliant eye for new talent: she hired Diana Vreeland and Richard Avedon, commissioned editorial from Truman Capote, and applauded Balenciaga’s first collection in a silent ‘hate filled room’. Fashion photography was transformed by her in the moment she appointed photojournalist Martin Munkacsi’s outdoor motion shoot on a windswept beach. A women of buoyant and unlimited energy, she rarely slept (except in the arms of her partner on the dance floor) or ate, but seldom missed a three-martini lunch. She died just four years after her retirement at the age of 70.

First published in 1962, this book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

The World of Carmel Snow: Editor-in-chief of Harper's Bazaar

Bettina Ballard

Bettina Ballard, Paris-based correspondent and later Fashion Editor for US Vogue, was at the centre of the fashion world from the 1930s to the ’50s and an intimate of Coco Chanel, Cristóbal Balenciaga and Elsa Schiaparelli. With journalistic flair, she captures the spirit of pre-war Paris, the working methods of the fashion greats and the transformation of the post-war fashion industry with the arrival of Dior.

In My Fashion: The Autobiography of Bettina Ballard, Fashion Editor of Vogue

Ginette Spanier

Ginette Spanier discovered her talent for ‘selling very expensive things to very rich people’ at Fortnum and Mason in the 1930s. This uninhibited and amusing account takes her from hiding in occupied France to the world of haute couture, as Directrice of the House of Balmain from 1947 to 1976 and friend to stars of stage and screen including Laurence Olivier, Marlene Dietrich and Vivien Leigh.

First published in 1959, this book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

It Isn't All Mink: The Autobiography of Ginette Spanier, Directrice of the House of Balmain

Jean Dawnay (Princess George Galitzine)

Jean Dawnay, or 'Caroline' as she was known, was a house model for Dior during the years 1949–50. In her transformation from 'frumpy' post-war English model to polished Dior mannequin she became one of the original supermodels.

Her autobiography describes her rise from airline steward to the top of the modelling world in the late 1940s and ’50s. Photographed by greats such as John French and Cecil Beaton and working with Balmain, Carven, Lanvin, Pucci and Christian Dior, this is a wry and charming tale which provides a unique behind-the-scenes perspective on the golden age of couture.

First published in 1956, this book is part of the V&A Fashion Perspectives Series. Selected by V&A publishing in consultation with our world-leading fashion curators, the Fashion Perspectives series offers an access all areas pass to the glamorous world of fashion. Models, magazine editors and the designers themselves take readers behind the scenes at the likes of Balenciaga, Balmain, Chanel, Dior, Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue in the golden age of couture.

V&A Fashion Perspectives - La serie de libros

V&A Fashion Perspectives - La serie de libros

V&A Fashion Perspectives libros en orden

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