Charles James - Portrait of an Unreasonable Man - Fame, Fashion, Art
Author(s): Michele Gerber Klein
Inspired by the discovery of long-overlooked interviews conducted just before his death, this is the first biography of the visionary fashion designer Charles James. Christian Dior described him as the inspiration for the "New Look." Salvador Dal called his work "soft sculpture," and Virginia Woolf exclaimed, "He is a genius."
As George Bernard Shaw tells us, only unreasonable men change the world. This portrait of the life and times of Charles James--winner of two Coty awards, and the subject of a 2014 Metropolitan Museum of Art show--draws on the glamour of Europe in the 1930s, and the dazzle of New York City from the '40s through the '70s as it travels with James from his birth to privilege in England in 1906 and follows his career through his complex and turbulent relationships with exceptional women such as Elsa Schiaparelli and Eleanor Lambert, ending with his penurious death in New York's fabled Chelsea Hotel.
As engrossing as a novel, as dramatic as grand opera, James's story will provoke, rivet, and inspire.
Product Information
Michele Gerber Klein is the founder of joan vass U.S.A. and is now Vice President of the Liberman Foundation. She has written about art, fashion and arts de vivre for a wide variety of publications. She has served on the boards of the Dia Foundation for the Arts, the New Museum of Contemporary Art, The Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian National Design Museum, The Museum at FIT, The Alliance Francaise, New Arts Publications, Casita Maria, Chez Bushwick, the Brooklyn Rail, The New York Landmarks Preservation Foundation and Fondatzione Bogliasco. She chairs the Whitney Museum of American Art's library committee and is a member of the Architecture and Design and the Photography Acquisition Committees at the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan and the Photography Acquisition Committee at the The Whitney Museum of American Art.
General Fields
- :
- : Rizzoli
- : Raymond Pettibon
- : 0.671317
- : 01 March 2018
- : 229mm X 152mm
- : United States
- : 01 February 2018
- : books
Special Fields
- : Michele Gerber Klein
- : hardback with dustjacket
- : English
- : 254
- : Photo insert