An alluring, opulent showcase of hundreds of beautiful historic clothing items and accessories“High Style is filled with fashion inspiration and information. . . . Nearly every page…includes a captivating photo of one of the collection’s lavish garments or accessories.”—Threads   Published for the first time in paperback, this lavishly illustrated volume originally appeared in 2010 to celebrate the transfer of the Brooklyn Museum’s historic costume collection to The Metropolitan Museum of Art. This comprehensive survey highlights more than 200 works selected from this internationally renowned collection, which comprises nearly 25,000 extraordinary women’s and men’s garments and accessories from the 18th through the 20th century. Among the featured works are sumptuous 19th-century gowns from the House of Worth, exquisite dresses by the great 20th-century French couturiers, iconic Surrealist-based designs of Elsa Schiaparelli, sportswear classics from pioneer American female designers, and the incomparable draped and tailored creations of Charles James, along with exceptional shoes and accessories. 

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Kente is not only the best known of all African textiles, it is also one of the most admired of all fabrics worldwide. Originating among the Asante peoples of Ghana and the Ewe peoples of Ghana and Togo, this brilliantly colored and intricately patterned strip-woven cloth was traditionally associated with royalty. Over time, however, it has come to be worn and used in many different contexts. In Wrapped in Pride, seven distinguished scholars present an exhaustive examination of the history of kente from its earliest use in Ghana to its present-day impact in the African Diaspora. Doran H. Ross is the former director of the UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural History.

This wonderfully illustrated volume presents over 50 textiles and garments from the Textile Museum of Canada's collection of 19th and 20th century artifacts made in Japan for both everyday and occasional use. Luxurious silk and gold fabrics produced in Kyoto s professional weaving workshops are juxtaposed with domestic indigo-dyed cotton, plant-fibre cloth, and silk kimonos crafted in an astonishing spectrum of time-honored techniques - weaving, dyeing, hand painting, gold foil application and embroidery - that exemplify venerable social and cultural values. The authors discuss the highly refined skills and materials by which textiles have been constructed and decorated over centuries, and on how diligence and ingenuity have shaped their timeless beauty. The persistence of traditions seen in such rigorously executed textiles has come to embody the heart of Japanese aesthetics. Every material, color and technique has a story to tell. The publication also features the contemporary work of Hiroko Karuno and Keiko Shintani, two Japanese-Canadians whose consummate craftsmanship and philosophies are profoundly connected to the evolution of Japanese textile traditions of spinning, dyeing ... [Read More]

This is the first publication on a remarkable collection of sixty-six outstanding Pueblo and Navajo textiles donated to the Peabody Museum in the 1980s by William Claflin, Jr., a prominent Boston businessman, avocational anthropologist, and patron of Southwestern archaeology. Claflin bequeathed to the museum not only these beautiful textiles, but also his detailed accounts of their collection histories--a rare record of the individuals who had owned or traded these weavings before they found a home in his private museum. Textile scholar Laurie Webster tells the stories of the weavings as they left their native Southwest and traveled eastward, passing through the hands of such owners and traders as a Ute Indian chief, a New England schoolteacher, a renowned artist, and various military officers and Indian agents. Her concise overview of Navajo and Pueblo weaving traditions is enhanced by the reflections of noted artist and Navajo textile expert Tony Berlant in his foreword to the text.

In this beautifully illustrated book, textile expert Elena Phipps examines the ancient Peruvian process of weaving textiles with four finished selvages, or edges. Without cutting a thread, master Peruvian weavers wove each textile to the specifications of its intended use, whether a child’s garment, royal mantle, or ritual cloth. This weaving technique required the highest level of skill and forethought and reflects a high cultural value placed on maintaining the integrity of cloth―not only its design and function but also the very way in which it was constructed. The resultant textiles have long been admired for their mastery of color, technique, and design.While exploring the origins and development of this approach to weaving, Phipps also examines its influence on three contemporary artists―Sheila Hicks, James Bassler, and John Cohen―all of whom have considered ancient Peruvian weaving processes in their own work.

"I have rarely met someone as vivid, as alive, as vital, vivacious, irreverent, joyous, relevant, and needed as Iris. She breathes young air, thinks young thoughts, and gathers no dust. I simply adore her."--Dries van NotenA unique and lavishly illustrated collection of musings, anecdotes, and observations on all matters of life and style, infused with the singular candor, wit, and exuberance of the globally revered ninety-six-year-old fashion icon whose work has been celebrated at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and by countless fans worldwide.A woman who transcends time and trends, Iris Apfel is a true original, one of the most dynamic personalities in the worlds of fashion, textiles, and interior design. As the cofounder with her husband, Carl Apfel, of Old World Weavers, an international textile manufacturing company that specialized in reproducing antique fabrics, her prestigious clientele has included Greta Garbo, Estee Lauder, Montgomery Clift, and Joan Rivers. She also acted as a restoration consultant and replicated fabric for the White House over nine presidential administrations. Iris’s travels worldwide and a passion for flea markets of all sorts ... [Read More]

Q'ero is an isolated indigenous community in southern Peru, on the eastern slope of the Andes. In this harsh environment, a rich and complex textile tradition, the chief artistic expression of the Q'ero people, has endured from pre-Hispanic times. Woven from the hair of local alpacas, the colorful shawls, ponchos, bags, and other textiles produced are worn daily and form part of the rituals and ceremonies of Q'ero. Examining the textile traditions that are distinctive to Q'ero within those of the Cuzco area in general, Hidden Threads of Peru combines ethnography, anecdote, and textile art to offer fascinating new insights into a culture that can trace its traditions back to the Inca empire. The Q'ero people themselves discuss the significance of the fabrics they make and the nature of their Andean life, while photographs taken from the early twentieth century to the present day illustrate the daily life and rituals of the Q'ero people, as well as-in sumptuous full color-the textiles themselves, revealing the evolution and range of patterns over a one-hundred-year period.

Navajo Textiles provides a nuanced account the Navajo weavings in the Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science—one of the largest collections of Navajo textiles in the world. Bringing together the work of anthropologists and indigenous artists, the book explores the Navajo rug trade in the mid-nineteenth century and changes in the Navajo textile market while highlighting the museum’s important, though still relatively unknown, collection of Navajo textiles.In this unique collaboration among anthropologists, museums, and Navajo weavers, the authors provide a narrative of the acquisition of the Crane Collection and a history of Navajo weaving. Personal reflections and insights from foremost Navajo weavers D. Y. Begay and Lynda Teller Pete are also featured, and more than one hundred stunning full-color photographs of the textiles in the collection are accompanied by technical information about the materials and techniques used in their creation. An introduction by Ann Lane Hedlund documents the growing collaboration between Navajo weavers and museums in Navajo textile research. The legacy of Navajo weaving is complex and intertwined with the history of the Diné... [Read More]

Intrigued with the possibility of integrating texture in his work, American landscape photographer Robert Glenn Ketchum has a long-standing collaboration with the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute (SERI) in China. This splendidly designed volume describes the history of SERI with illustrations of its traditional embroidery and then proceeds to pair Ketchumís stunning photographic images with their exquisite embroidered counterparts. Essays locate the achievement of the Suzhou Embroidery Research Institute within the context of traditional Chinese embroidery and trace the willingness to innovate that has long characterized this remarkable institution.