'The perfect printed tool for Prada fans everywhere' Wallpaper* Founded as a luxury leather goods house in 1913 in Milan, Prada entered the field of fashion when Miuccia Prada took the helm of the family company in 1979. After initially focusing exclusively on accessories, she presented the house's first fashion collection in 1988. She would soon transform Prada into one of the world's most influential luxury brands with a deeply personal, sophisticated and subtly subversive approach. This definitive publication opens with a concise history of the house, followed by a brief biographical profile of Miuccia Prada, before exploring the collections themselves, organized chronologically. Each collection is introduced by a short text unveiling its influences and highlights, and illustrated with carefully curated catwalk images that showcase hundreds of spectacular clothes, details, accessories, beauty looks and set designs - and, of course, the top fashion models who wore them on the runway, from Naomi Campbell and Gisele to Kate Moss and Kaia Gerber. A rich reference section, including an extensive index, concludes the book.

Knitted textiles and apparel represent approximately one third of the global textile market. This book provides an updated reference to Knitting technology, with specific focus on the developments in knitted fabric production and textile applications. The first set of chapters begin with a brief review of the fundamental principles of knitting, including the types and suitability of yarns for knitting as well as the properties achieved through knitted fabrics. The second part of the book examines the major advances in knitting, such as intelligent yarn delivery systems in weft knitting, knitted fabric composites and advances in circular knitting. The concluding section of the book presents a selection of case studies where advanced knitted products are used. Topics range from knitted structures for moisture management to weft knitted structures for sound absorption. With its distinguished editor and array of international contributors, Advances in knitting technology is an important text for designers, engineers and technicians involved in the manufacture and use of knitted textiles and garments. It will also be relevant for academics and students.

Activated Carbon Fiber and Textiles provides systematic coverage of the fundamentals, properties, and current and emerging applications of carbon fiber textiles in a single volume, providing industry professionals and academics working in the field with a broader understanding of these materials. Part I discusses carbon fiber principles and production, including precursors and pyrolysis, carbon fiber spinning, and carbonization and activation. Part II provides more detailed analysis of the key properties of carbon fiber textiles, including their thermal, acoustic, electrical, adsorption, and mechanical behaviors. The final section covers applications of carbon fiber such as filtration, energy protection, and energy and gas storage.

Pointed Leaf Press is proud to announce a monograph on English interior designer Sue Timney. To say that Timney's work is eclectic is as obvious as calling the sky blue: eclecticism is her signature. Perhaps it is her peripatetic childhood that has given her a global vision. Born in Libya, her father's military career took her to Germany and Newcastle, England and she cites influences and interests as diverse as the Japanese filmmaker Kurosawa, the beatniks, and African tribal art. In addition to 25 years worth of captivating photographs and some never before published drawings, textile designs, and personal artworks, 'Making Marks' is a journey through a fascinating life - from a career launched in Japan, to the opening of the first Timney Fowler shop in London's hip Portobello area, and her successful career as an interior designer. An exhibition at the Fashion & Textile Museum in London is planned for November 2010.

This unique ethnographic investigation examines the role that fashion plays in the production of the contemporary Indian luxury aesthetic. Tracking luxury Indian fashion from its production in village craft workshops via upmarket design studios to fashion soirees, Kuldova investigates the Indian luxury fashion market's dependence on the production of thousands of artisans all over India, revealing a complex system of hierarchies and exploitation. In recent years, contemporary Indian design has dismissed the influence of the West and has focused on the opulent heritage luxury of the maharajas, Gulf monarchies and the Mughal Empire. Luxury Indian Fashion argues that the desire for a luxury aesthetic has become a significant force in the attempt to define contemporary Indian society. From the cultivation of erotic capital in businesswomen's dress to a discussion of masculinity and muscular neo-royals to staged designer funerals, Luxury Indian Fashion analyzes the production, consumption and aesthetics of luxury and power in India. Luxury Indian Fashion is essential reading for students of fashion history and theory, anthropology and visual culture.

'The go-to for all things Vuitton' Tatler Founded as a luxury leather goods house in 1854, Louis Vuitton was for many decades one of the world's leading trunk and accessories makers. It was after launching its first fashion collections in 1998, however, that the house reached unprecedented global fame, and pioneered high-profile collaborations with artists such as Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami and Stephen Sprouse. Louis Vuitton Catwalk is a complete and unrivalled overview of the world's top fashion house. The book opens with a concise history of the house, followed by brief biographical profiles of Marc Jacobs, the first creative director 1998-2014, and Nicolas Ghesquiere, who helms the brand today, before exploring the collections themselves, organized chronologically. Each collection is introduced by a short text unveiling its influences and highlights, and illustrated with carefully curated catwalk images. Showcasing hundreds of spectacular clothes, details, accessories, beauty looks and set designs - and, of course, the top fashion models who wore them on the runway, from Naomi Campbell and Gisele to Kate Moss and Cara Delevingne. A rich reference section, including an extensive index, concludes the book.

Across the eighteenth century in Britain, readers, writers, and theater-goers were fascinated by women who dressed in men's clothing from actresses on stage who showed their shapely legs to advantage in men's breeches to stories of valiant female soldiers and ruthless female pirates. Spanning genres from plays, novels, and poetry to pamphlets and broadsides, the cross-dressing woman came to signal more than female independence or unconventional behaviors; she also came to signal an investment in female same-sex intimacies and sapphic desires. Sapphic Crossings reveals how various British texts from the period associate female cross-dressing with the exciting possibility of intimate, embodied same-sex relationships. Ula Lukszo Klein reconsiders the role of lesbian desires and their structuring through cross-gender embodiments as crucial not only to the history of sexuality but to the rise of modern concepts of gender, sexuality, and desire. She prompts readers to rethink the roots of lesbianism and transgender identities today and introduces new ways of thinking about embodied sexuality in the past.

Technology has been an essential factor in the production of dress and the cultures of fashion throughout human history. Structured chronologically from prehistory to the present day, this is the first broad study of the complex relationship between dress and technology. Over the course of human history, dress-making and fashion technology has changed beyond recognition: from needles and human hands in the ancient world to complex 20th-century textile production machines, it has now come to include the technologies that influence dress styles and the fashion industry, while fashion itself may drive aspects of technology. In the last century, new technologies such as the electronic media and high-tech manufacturing have helped not just to produce but to define fashion: the creation of automobiles prompted a decline in long skirts for women while the beginnings of space travel caused people to radically rethink the function of dress. In many ways, technology has itself created avant garde and contemporary fashions. Through an impressive range of international case studies, the book challenges the perception that fashion is unique to western dress and outlines the many ways in which dress and technology intersect. Dress, Fashion and Technology is ideal reading for students and scholars of fashion studies, textile history, anthropology and cultural studies.

Throughout history certain forms and styles of dress have been deemed appropriate - or more significantly, inappropriate - for people as they age. Older women in particular have long been subject to social pressure to tone down, to adopt self-effacing, covered-up styles. But increasingly there are signs of change, as older women aspire to younger, more mainstream, styles, and retailers realize the potential of the 'grey market'. Fashion and Age is the first study to systematically explore the links between clothing and age, drawing on fashion theory and cultural gerontology to examine the changing ways in which age is imagined, experienced and understood in modern culture through the medium of dress. Clothes lie between the body and its social expression, and the book explores the significance of embodiment in dress and in the cultural constitution of age. Drawing on the views of older women, journalists and fashion editors, and clothing designers and retailers, it aims to widen the agenda of fashion studies to encompass the everyday dress of the majority, shifting the debate about age away from its current preoccupation with dependency, towards a fuller account of the lived experience of age. Fashion and Age will be of great interest to students of fashion, material culture, sociology, sociology of age, history of dress and to clothing designers.

Numerous tastemakers exist in and between fashion production and consumption, from designers and stylists to trend forecasters, buyers, and journalists. How and why are each of these players bound up in the creation and dispersion of trends? In what ways are consumers' relations to trends constructed by these individuals and organizations? This book explores the social significance of trends in the global fashion industry through interviews with these 'fashion intermediaries', offering new insights into their influential roles in the setting and shaping of trends. The Trendmakers contains exclusive interviews with financial analysts, creative directors from high street stores like H&M to designer brands such as Erdem, trend forecasters at WGSN, buyers from Harvey Nichols, and major fashion names like The Telegraph fashion critic Hilary Alexander. In contrast to existing research, Lantz offers an international understanding of the trend landscape, engaging with industry professionals from fashion capitals like London, Paris, and New York, as well as BRIC countries and the new, emerging fashion nations. The fashion media may have declared that 'trends are dead' in the light of digital dissemination, but Lantz argues that trends still not only serve as a significant organizing principle for the fashion industry as a whole but also as a source for legitimacy. Engaging with classic fashion thinkers like Veblen, Simmel, and Bourdieu, as well as contemporary scholars like Entwistle and Steele, this book considers trends from an economic and cultural perspective to add to our knowledge of the complexities of the business of fashion.

Dress became a testing ground for masculine ideals in Renaissance Italy. With the establishment of the ducal regime in Florence in 1530, there was increasing debate about how to be a nobleman. Was fashionable clothing a sign of magnificence or a source of mockery? Was the graceful courtier virile or effeminate? How could a man dress for court without bankrupting himself? This book explores the whole story of clothing, from the tailor's workshop to spectacular court festivities, to show how the male nobility in one of Italy's main textile production centers used their appearances to project social, sexual, and professional identities. Sixteenth-century male fashion is often associated with swagger and ostentation but this book shows that Florentine clothing reflected manhood at a much deeper level, communicating a very Italian spectrum of male virtues and vices, from honor, courage, and restraint to luxury and excess. Situating dress at the heart of identity formation, Currie traces these codes through an array of sources, including unpublished archival records, surviving garments, portraiture, poetry, and personal correspondence between the Medici and their courtiers. Addressing important themes such as gender, politics, and consumption, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence sheds fresh light on the sartorial culture of the Florentine court and Italy as a whole.

- What is an Apollo knot? - Who wore a Welch wig? - When were Zouave jackets the height of fashion? This new edition of The Dictionary of Fashion History further updates the landmark work of C. Willett Cunnington, Phillis Cunnington and Charles Beard. Featuring over 60 new and revised entries on diverse topics such as the Onesie, Brothel Creepers and the Birkin Bag, this edition is even more comprehensive and brings this costume historian's bible fully up to date. With many more images to accompany the text and illustrate key fashions - including cartoons, prints and lavish color photographs of surviving garments - this version of the dictionary brings dazzling and unusual garments to life for researchers, students, costume designers and everyone interested in the subject. Clear, concise, and meticulous in detail, this essential reference work answers countless questions relating to the history of dress and adornment and will continue to be the definitive guide for many years to come.

A Savile Row suite is universally understood to be the best one can buy. There is no other street in the world that has come such a byword for excellence. One tailor - Henry Poole - is responsible for this. Carefully researched and beautifully illustrated this book chronicles the evolution of Savile Row and the emergence of Henry Poole as the premier tailor with a fascinating list of clients. Throughout the world 'a Savile Row suit' is universally understood to be the very best one can possibly buy. There can be few other streets in the world that have become such a byword for excellence. One tailor more than any other is responsible for this international reputation - Henry Poole and Company. Yet how did this prominence come about? Henry Poole - The Making of a Legend is more than just the story of a company's rise to prominence. Carefully researched from the company's extensive archives, amongst many other sources, this book will fascinate the reader on a number of levels. It chronicles the evolution of Savile Row as well as encompassing a social record of Britain's international emergence. At the same time it documents how fashions have changed and progressed. The pages of Henry Poole - The Making of a Legend reflect almost two centuries of the ebb and flow of corporate survival with financial successes followed by perilous trading and near bankruptcy. Behind the discreet glamour of the bespoke tailoring trade there were dark sides; the the Row - There's no such thing as bad publicity - Goodbye to Everett Street - Royal Court and the Racecourse - Into the Row - The Life of a Gentleman - Happiness, Pride and Disater - The Burial of the Dead - Wampum and War Paint - The End of Civilisation - Poole has spoken - 1939 to 1955 - 1956 to 1970 - Return to the Row - 1986 to Present

Fashion in India is distinctly unique, in its aesthetics, systems, designers and influences. Indian Fashion is the first study of its kind to examine the social, political, global and local elements that give shape to this multifaceted center. Spanning India's long historical contribution to global fashion to the emergence of today's vibrant local fashion scene, Sandhu provides a comprehensive overview of the Indian fashion world. From elite high-end to street style of the masses, the book explores the complex realities of Indian dress through key issues such as identity, class, youth and media. This ground-breaking book does not simply apply western fashion theory to an Indian context, but allows for a holistic understanding of how fashion is created, worn, displayed and viewed in India. By also considering India's sartorial impact on the west, Sandhu provides a model for studying non-western fashion in general. Accessibly written, Indian Fashion will be a fantastic resource for students of fashion, cultural studies and anthropology.