Askmen.com Presents the Style Bible: The 11 Rules for Building a Complete and Timeless Wardrobe

Walter T. Foster

Fashion Illustration 1920-1950: Techniques and Examples

Comprehensive and user-friendly, this volume combines four vintage instructional manuals by Walter T. Foster, the world-famous art teacher and publisher. In addition to explaining the principles of figure drawing, it provides a handy retrospective of fashions for men, women, and children from the first half of the twentieth century. This authentic guide to vintage styles features a splendid range of apparel, from ladies' lingerie and evening gowns to men's business suits and children's play clothes. Artists at every level of experience will benefit from tips on portraying figures in motion and at rest, along with advice on accurate renditions of clothing folds and patterns. Step-by-step drawings with helpful comments explain a variety of techniques, including pencil, pen, wash, and opaque.

Manolo Blahnik Drawings

Illuminating introductions by Anna Wintour and Michael Roberts explore why Manolo Blahnik's shoes inspire such passion, and these are complemented throughout the book by the words of admirers including Suzie Menkes, Donatella Versace, and David Hockney. Michael Roberts also contributes a photographic essay showing Blahnik at work in his studio, making sketches, preparing the wooden lasts, and supervising the production of his shoes at his factories in Italy. A final "scrapbook" section includes Manolo Blahnik's own photographs of family, friends, and inspirational places.

Djurdja Bartlett

Fashioneast: The Spectre That Haunted Socialism

A richly illustrated, comprehensive study of fashion under socialism, from state-sponsored prototypes to unofficial imitations of Paris fashion.The idea of fashion under socialism conjures up images of babushka headscarves and black market blue jeans. And yet, as Djurdja Bartlett shows in this groundbreaking book, the socialist East had an intimate relationship with fashion. Official antagonism--which cast fashion as frivolous and anti-revolutionary--eventually gave way to grudging acceptance and creeping consumerism. Bartlett outlines three phases in socialist fashion, and illustrates them with abundant images from magazines of the period: postrevolutionary utopian dress, official state-sanctioned socialist fashion, and samizdat-style everyday fashion. Utopian dress, ranging from the geometric abstraction of the constructivists under Bolshevism in the Soviet Union to the no-frills desexualized uniform of a factory worker in Czechoslovakia, reflected the revolutionary urge for a clean break with the past. The highly centralized socialist fashion system, part of Stalinist industrialization, offered official prototypes of high fashion that were never available in stores--mythical ...