Robert Redford in a 1966 article in a Japanese magazine, one of the illustrations in It’s Snowing!Supplied
With the Milan Cortina Winter Games under way, everyone’s got sports on the brain. But there’s no better time to dive into the chilly season’s design heritage with It’s Snowing!: Fashion, Art, Design and Winter Sports by Vittorio Linfante and Simona Segre Reinach (Marsilio Arte), a lavishly illustrated survey of the influence of winter sports on culture, visual art and design.
At the turn of the last century, slopes everywhere from Klosters, Switzerland, to Quebec became backdrops for glamour as skiing emerged as a pastime of the leisure class. Snow-capped peak and alpine motifs extended to knitwear, textile design and glassware, as well as to Tamara de Lempicka’s portraits of modern women in motion and chic chalet photographs by Slim Aarons.
As sporting attire transitioned into lifestyle fashion, cold-weather pastimes became a source of creative inspiration for designers such as Patou, Lanvin, Chanel and Courrèges. But the book isn’t limited to couture – it also traces the evolution of technical sports gear, and how material developments in performance wear eventually made their way to everyday clothing (for instance, legging aficionados may take for granted that, in 1952, French label Fusalp introduced technical, stretch-fit ski pants for the first time).
Also on the theme of la dolce vita, Berlin duo Tim Labenda and Hannes-Vincent Krause take readers to lesser-known areas of the country in Grand Tour Italy: The Renaissance of Refined Travel (teNeues). Every page is pure and unadulterated escapism, with gorgeous glimpses of cuisine, hotels and vistas doubling as an (aspirational) trip planner.
A photograph of Hotel Castiglion del Bosco in Tuscany from Grand Tour Italy.Tim Labenda/Supplied
Italian designer Emilio Pucci’s swirling psychedelic prints made him a favourite of wealthy bohemians – as well as fashion icons such as Marilyn Monroe (who was buried in a Pucci dress), Jacqueline Kennedy and Elizabeth Taylor. The contributions of the designer known as the “Prince of Prints” to hibernal culture naturally get a mention in It’s Snowing!, but Pucci’s remarkable life finally gets a biography of its own.
Before he cut an elegant figure in the emerging postwar jet set, the one-time Olympic skier (he was on Italy’s team as a teen in 1932) joined the Italian air force. After serving in Egypt, he opposed the fascist regime and aided the Allies by couriering compromising secret documents that were key evidence in the Nuremberg trials. His fashion career was a happy accident: In 1947, one of his homemade ski suits was snapped by American photographer Toni Frissell. Before long, her editor at Harper’s Bazaar – none other than the legendary Diana Vreeland – was helping Pucci launch his first collection. Terence Ward and the designer’s niece Idanna Pucci cover this history and more in the forthcoming Emilio Pucci: The Astonishing Odyssey of a Fashion Icon (St. Martin’s Publishing Group).
Meanwhile, the spectacle of fashion month is upon us, and its historical and social significance merits closer analysis in Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show A to Z (Vitra Design Museum). The book traces a century of the runway show – from 1900 to the present day – as cultural phenomenon, social statement and complex artistic practice. It’s a companion to the Victoria & Albert and Vitra Design museums’ new exhibition, which closes at the Vitra this month before moving to the V&A Dundee this spring. The greats, from Alexander McQueen and Dior to Maison Margiela and Viktor & Rolf, are all represented here.
The Alexander McQueen Spring/Summer 1999 runway show as seen in Catwalk: The Art of the Fashion Show A to Z.Robert Fairer Archiv/Supplied
Fashion month is a moveable feast of these runway extravaganzas and history credits English designer Charles Frederick Worth with inventing the fashion show when he used live models (instead of dress forms) to display his creations. The practice was later refined by designer Lucile, Lady Duff-Gordon, who paraded models on a stage and added scenery, music and lighting. But the runway show as we know it today was shaped by visionary couturier Paul Poiret. Fashion scholar Mary E. Davis unpacks his enduring influence in Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury (Reaktion Books).
Other tomes offer a glimpse of the enduring style that comes with character, not clothes. “Youth never moves me,” American photographer Richard Avedon once declared. “I seldom see anything very beautiful in a young face. I do, though: in the downward curve of Maugham’s lips. In Isak Dinesen’s hands.” In the companion book to a new exhibition at Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts, Richard Avedon: Immortal. Portraits of Aging, 1951-2004 (opening Feb. 12, published by Phaidon), the artist turns his unsparing eye on figures such as Marcel Duchamp, Toni Morrison and Gabriel García Márquez.
A 1980 portrait of actor Gloria Swanson from the Richard Avedon exhibition at Montreal’s Museum of Fine Arts.Supplied
Avedon considered himself primarily a portrait photographer, even as he revolutionized fashion photography by taking it out of the studio and into real-world settings. He’s affectionately satirized as shutterbug Dick Avery (Fred Astaire) in the Audrey Hepburn fashion film Funny Face, and the MMFA is screening the film as part of its programming (Feb. 13-14).
The photoshoots collected in Steven Klein Vogue (Abrams Books) are a testament to Avedon’s enduring influence. Photographer Steven Klein selects his favourite of the magazine’s indelible commissions between 2000-2019 – every one of them a capital-F fashion moment.
