Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury
Before Chanel, Dior, or Saint Laurent, there was Paul Poiret. Born in Paris in 1879, he was the most audacious couturier of the prewar era. While his outré styles were worn by some of the most famous celebrities in Europe and America, they were, in fact, the most fleeting facet of his work. In Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury, Mary explores how Poiret’s genius was to place fashion at the center of a network of style, culture, and commerce. He founded groundbreaking perfume and interior design businesses, sponsored musical performances, amassed a modernist art collection, and threw fantastical—and newsworthy—balls. Poiret’s businesses faded by the end of the 1920s, but as this book reveals, his unifying vision set the model for the luxury industry as we know it.
Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury arrives just as the Musée des Arts décoratifs in Paris has mounted the first major exhibition dedicated to the designer in the French capital since the 1970s. Mary’s essay “Poiret in America” is featured in the exhibition catalogue.
Ballets Russes Style
From its debut performance in Paris in 1909 to the death of it s impresario, Sergei Diaghilev, in 1929, the Ballets Russes was an unrivaled sensation in Europe and the U.S. Long linked to modernist art and music, the troupe also had a forceful impact on dress and interior design. Ballets Russes Style explores the many facets of the ensemble’s influence on fashion—from streetwear to haute couture—which endures to this day.
Classic Chic
Music and fashion: the deep connection between these two expressive worlds is firmly entrenched. Yet, before this study, little attention had focused on the association of sound and style in the early twentieth century—a period of remarkable and often parallel developments in both high fashion and the arts, including music. Lavishly illustrated with fashion plates and photographs, Classic Chic explores the relationship between music and fashion, elegantly charting the importance of these arts to the rise of transatlantic modernism.