Patrick Remy – författare

The late 1960s saw some of the most dynamic periods in French fashion. And the union between Bourdin and Jourdan captured the spirit of the moment unlike any other creative partnership of the era. Jourdan, a polymath who occupied the office of both couturier and shoe designer, tapped Bourdin, a true surrealist among the fashion photographers of the age, and engaged in a creative dialogue through to Jourdan s passing in 1976. Celebrated here are over 150 images, many never before published, full of the modernity and fetishism that made Jourdan s designs so sought after, and Bourdin s mise-en-scenes so provocative. To draw attention to the sweep of a woman s feet and the gentle swell of her calves, the shod feet and lower leg of a mannequin are disembodied and transported to a variety of contexts, the central figures in compositions that are at once erotic, humorous, and often unsettling. Provocative, fabulist, dramatic, and full of intense color and saturation theirs was as complete a collaboration as has ever been achieved in the history of postwar fashion. This book presents that work in its entirety for the very first time and provides insight into a true meeting of the minds between designer and photographer.

With a legacy spanning over 170 years, Louis Vuitton’s handbags remain the most successful line of fashion accessories in history. This photographic tribute features City Bags of the last thirty years, which became immeasurably popular under designers Marc Jacobs, Nicolas Ghesquière, Kim Jones, Virgil Abloh, and Pharrell, setting style trends and sales records for the last 30 years.At the heart of Louis Vuitton are its City Bags, a range of handbags that date back to the turn of the twentieth century. Featuring the trademark monograms of the house, these bags have formally diversified into a dizzying array of handbags for every conceivable function demanded by the modern woman (and man). Profoundly influential, City Bags are now known to millions by their descriptive names (Keepall, Papillon, Alma, Locket, Noé, Speedy) and are still evolving into more fantastical forms.Louis Vuitton’s ready-to-wear collections, debuting in 1997 under Marc Jacobs, have become the principal creative engine for this proliferation of bag types. Now in its third decade, and hand in hand with a highly visible program of artistic patronage that saw Stephen Sprouse, Takashi Murakami, Yayoi Kusama, Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, and many others collaborate on the design of handbags, the images taken of these objects—by some of the most important fashion photographers working today—have become icons in their own right. With the handbags often front and center, the editorial photography collected here is drawn from some of the most important magazines and periodicals (and quite a few campaigns). Taken by industry giants such as Juergen Teller, Annie Leibovitz, Mert Alas and Marcus Pigott, Steven Meisel, Kourtney Roy, Collier Schorr, Jean Larivière, and many others, this curated archive of images testifies to the unique, persuasive power of the photographic image and its continuing role in the storytelling (and mythmaking) of Louis Vuitton.Like Rizzoli’s very successful Louis Vuitton City Bags: A Natural History, the book also serves as an indispensable “field guide” to all the iconic bags of the brand.

Since her first photographs in the late ’70s, Bettina Rheims has defied the predictable. From her series on Pigalle strippers (1980) to her cycle on the life of Jesus in I.N.R.I. (1998), from Chanel commercials to Gender Studies (2011), her work has shaken up traditional codes of representation and pushed restlessly at the breaking point between two great human preoccupations: beauty and imperfection.This Rheims retrospective showcases more than 300 photographs from 35 years of daring, often defiant photography. Personally selected and assembled by Rheims, the collection brings together renowned series such as Chambre close, Héroïnes, and Rose, c’est Paris. Spanning commercial work and artistic series, the retrospective impresses with each turn of the page, as much for the strength of each image as for the thrilling variety of Rheims’s subjects and aesthetics. With equal attention to anonymous subjects cast in the street as to global celebrities including Kate Moss, Madonna, Monica Bellucci, Claudia Schiffer, and Naomi Campbell, the book showcases Rheims’s particular interest in female fragility and strength, and of the magic encounter between model and artist which disrupts codes of so-called eroticism to build up a new image system for womanhood.