Martin Margiela's pioneering and timeless designs made for the luxury house of Hermès between 1997 and 2003 are the stars of this book, highlighting this period in the iconic and enigmatic Belgian designer's career. The first edition was published to accompany an exhibition in the Modemuseum Antwerp. The new edition, accompanying the exhibition in Paris, includes images from the Antwerp exhibition, and more extensive essays by Rebecca Arnold, Kaat Debo and Sarah Mower, and a foreword by Suzy Menkes.This key period between 20th- and 21st-century fashion is evoked through interviews with Margiela's closest collaborators. Never-before-published material from the Maison Martin Margiela archives, numerous striking and exquisitely refined images from Le Monde d'Hermès, as well as new photographic material tell the story of Margiela's supreme wardrobe for Hermès.

Graduating from Antwerp’s Royal Academy of Fine Arts in the 1980s, Martin Margiela (and his contemporaries in the Antwerp Six) transformed global fashion with his aggressive restatement of traditional fashion design and a polemical approach to luxury trends. Working first with the house of Gaultier, Margiela absorbed the radical design of Japanese deconstruction, making it wholly his own with the founding of his own label in 1988. Margiela propounds a singular, enigmatic look, moving beyond the recognizable tropes of deconstruction—a monochromatic palette, outsized garments, non-traditional fabrics, exposed seams, or roughly appliquéd details—to develop a fully considered worldview, one with elegance, mystery, and menace in equal measure. This book provides an inside look at the design process from a craftsman who creates pieces prized for their originality, delicacy, and daring. In the spirit of Margiela’s garments, the book is a work of art in itself, designed exclusively by Margiela and complete with silver inks, ribbon markers, a variety of lush paper types, twelve booklets, and an embroidered white-linen cover. This book provides a window onto the intimate, handmade world of a unique designer.

A breathtaking survey of 20 years of fashion designs by Martin Margiela Timed to coincide with a major exhibition, this volume revisits the years during which celebrated designer Martin Margiela achieved the status as one of the most important designers at work today. One of the "Antwerp group of six" who changed the face of contemporary fashion, Margiela created 41 runway shows between 1989 and 2009 which promoted a unique vision of understated luxury -- monochromes, oversize volumes, and his signature "constructed-deconstructed" cuts - whose credo is comfort, timelessness, sensuality, and authenticity. Famously reclusive, Margiela never showed his face even at his own shows in order that the work could stand purely on its own, free from any link to celebrity or self-promotion. This volume chronicles these amazing fashion shows in careful detail: the extraordinary spaces, the music, the designer's intentions, the iconic pieces. Over the years, recurring motifs and inspirations become more apparent including anonymity, whiteness, past and anteriority, diversion. The book reveals the sensitive, poetic and incredibly innovative universe of this most influential contemporary fashion designer.

Widely recognized as among the most important and influential designers of the past forty years, Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons has defined and transformed the visual language of our time. Since her Paris debut in 1981, she has blurred the divide between art and fashion and transformed customary notions of the body, beauty and identity. This lavishly illustrated publication weaves an illuminating narrative around Kawakubo's revolutionary experiments in interstitiality—the space between boundaries. Brilliant new photographs of more than 120 examples of Kawakubo's womenswear for Comme des Garçons, accompanied by Kawakubo's commentary on her designs and creative process, reveal her conceptual and challenging aesthetic as never before. A chronology of Kawakubo's career provides additional context, and an insightful conversation with the author offers a fascinating glimpse into the mind of this fashion visionary.

This book traces the history of fashion in every part of the world, from Greco-Roman draped clothing and the silk court dress of teh Chinese Tang dynasty to contemporary sportswear designers and Japanese street fashion.

In 1985, Nike released Michael Jordan’s first sneaker, the Air Jordan 1, and sneaker culture was born. Now thousands of people wait in line at Supreme, and companies throw millions of dollars at LeBron James to keep him in their marketing plans. The trend that saw steady growth for decades with the emergence of sports, hip-hop, and sportswear advertising has exploded into a phenomenon. And no one has watched that phenomenon more closely than Complex. Sneaker of the Year explores the past 35 years of sneaker culture with the expertise, authority, and passion that only Complex can offer. With vibrant photographs and illustrations throughout, as well as input from some of the sneaker world’s most important voices, this compilation is a must-have for hypebeasts and sneakerheads everywhere.

The work of renowned contemporary artist Daniel Arsham blurs the lines between art, architecture, archeology, and design. In his distinctive style, he takes ancient art works and objects from twentieth-century pop culture and casts sculptures of them in geological materials such as quartz or volcanic ash, colliding past, present, and future in haunted yet playful visions that prompt viewers to question their everyday surroundings. Gathered from interviews and other sources, Arsham-isms is a collection of lively, thought-provoking, and memorable quotations from this exciting young creative talent on a wide range of subjects-including art, architecture, film, design, pop culture, the art world, and what it means to be a globally recognized artist today.