Five Recent Fashion Books: From Valentino to Vivienne Westwood

Fashion books, once dismissed as lightweight biographies, have evolved into a significant editorial phenomenon. In the 1980s, they were status symbols in showrooms and architects' living rooms, but digital seemed to doom them. The pandemic, however, revived print as a tool for brand communication. Five recent titles exemplify this trend. 'Valentino Collezione Milano' (Rizzoli, 2021) features Liz Johnson Artur's photographs of the spring/summer 2021 collection presented at Fonderia Macchi in Milan, with text by Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo. Enrico Mannucci's 'Emilio Pucci' (Diarkos, 2021) is a text-only biography tracing the designer's journey from Gestapo torture to international success after a Harper's Bazaar photographer spotted his fluo ski outfit in Zermatt in 1947. 'Naty Abascal: The Eternal Muse' (Rizzoli, New York, 2021) catalogues the haute couture wardrobe of the Spanish model and duchess, previously exhibited at Museo Jumex in Mexico City in 2019-2020. Eva Riccobono's 'Mammitudine' (Rizzoli, 2021) is an illustrated autobiography of pregnancy and motherhood, photographed by her husband Matteo Ceccarini. Finally, 'Vivienne Westwood. Sfilate' (L'ippocampo, 2021), edited by Alexander Fury, documents over 1,300 images of Westwood's runway shows from her 1981 Pirates collection onward, ending with a radical message: 'Save the world / let fashion find its way: buy only what you need / Quality vs Quantity.'