Madame Grès: Sphinx of Fashion - Hardcover

Patricia Mears

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300136927 ISBN 13: 9780300136920

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2008

Synopsis

While the classically inspired Grecian” gown designed by Madame Alix Grès is widely recognized and admired, little else of the brilliant couturier’s life or work has received close attention. This book, by far the most detailed study yet published on this influential fashion designer, carefully analyzes Madame Grès’ innovative construction techniques and connects her designs to the art styles and movements that inspired and informed her aesthetic.

 

Gorgeously illustrated with images of fabulous clothes designed by Madame Grès, the book focuses on her long career (spanning the early 1930s to the late 1980s) and refutes the previous understanding that her work was static and unchanging. Rather, her designs consistently changed and evolved, even as a thread of continuity connected them. The volume discusses how sculpture and the construction of non-western clothing inspired Grès’s fashion, and examines numerous couture versions of her saris, ponchos, serapes, caftans, three-dimensional sculptural pieces, and Grecian gowns. In addition, the book constructs a timeline of her career and discusses her secretive private life, including the circumstances of her death, inexplicably concealed by her daughter for over a year.

About this title

About the Author:

Patricia Mears is deputy director, The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology. She is coauthor of Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness (Yale).

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2008
• ISBN 10: 0300136927
• ISBN 13: 9780300136920
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184