Style File: The World’s Most Elegantly Dressed

SYNOPSIS

Style File is a celebration of the stylish as opposed to the stylized--a timely subject when the media is over-run with programming that promotes the notion that anyone can be a designer (Project Runway), a supermodel (America’s Next Top Model), a celebrity hairstylist (Shear Genius)…the list is seemingly endless. This is an age where celebrity stylists are now as famous as celebrities themselves, and with the hiring of Project Runway’s Tim Gunn from his job as chair of the fashion design department at Parsons to chief creative officer at Liz Claiborne, the public and media obsession with fashion may be higher than it has ever been. Every major publication, from weekly tabloids to women’s monthlies such as Allure and Vogue include features that profile the hottest (or worst) looks as well as style-worthy celebrities.

Style File appeals to those with an interest in fashion, graphic design, art, and celebrity. It appeals to a cultured audience with an interest in pioneering stylemakers and receiving that point of view in both interview format and smart, but not academic, essays by top thinkers in the field. This approach broadens the book’s appeal to a secondary, more mass audience, because it is lighter. The interview format and the heavy pictorial approach open the door.

In this book, “celebrity” is not tauted--an innate sense of fashionability and vision is, and it is these qualities, among others, that have made the interviewees chosen for this book enduring style arbiters. Following a foreword by Valerie Steele and an introduction by Harold Koda, the book includes more than 58 interviews--all with a photograph of the subject.

The book also features numerous special photo albums put together by Ike Ude specifically for the book. They include an album of images by the renowned fashion photographer Scavullo, an album by photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders and an album on the recently deceased and highly revered fashion stylist Isabella Blow, among others. Sidebars -- such as essays on the popular blog The Sartorialist, Motown Style, and the Belle Epoque -- and aphorisms on style also enhance the book throughout.

Personalities profiled and/or interviewed:

• Rufus Albemarle
• Iris Apfel
• Lara Aragno
• Marisa Berenson
• Hamish Bowles
• Valentina Cervi
• Alba Clemente
• Francesco Clemente
• Pat Cleveland
• Amy Fine Collins
• Peter Davis
• Victoire de Castellane
• Oscar de la Renta
• Jacqueline de Ribes
• Ines d’Urso de la Fressange
• Anh Duong
• Lapo Elkann
• Isabella Ferrari
• Duggie Fields
• Barnaba Fornasetti
• Montgomery Frazier
• Bella Freud
• John Galliano
• Romeo Gigli
• Carolina Herrera
• Sebastian Horsley
• Amechi Ihenacho
• Stephen Jones
• Kenny Kenny
• Klossowska, Harumi
• Krell, Gene
• Lemper, Ute
• Logan, Andrew
• Louboutin, Christian
• Ludot, Didier
• MacDermott, David
• MacGough, Peter
• Malle, Frederic
• McDonald, Patrick
• McFaddden, Mary
• Mounia, Orosemane
• Odukoya, Olu
• Ontani, Luigi
• Pearl, Mr.
• Pernet, Diane
• Posen, Zac
• Ruffino, Robert
• Sabisha
• Sparks, Cator
• Talley, Andre Leon
• Toledo, Isabel
• Toledo, Ruben
• Turner, Darryl
• Tworkowski, Mish
• Ude, Ike
• Von Keller, Cordelia
• von Furstenberg, Diane
• Von Teese, Dita

AUTHOR PROFILE

Written by Iké Udé with a Foreword by Valerie Steele and an Introduction by Harold Koda.

Iké Udé is an artist, writer, film maker, commercial photographer, and aesthete. His work has been in solo and group exhibitions worldwide and reviewed in prestigious publications such as Art in America, Flash Art, and The New York Times. Likewise, his articles on fashion and art have been published in magazines and newspapers around the world. He is the author of Iké Udé: Beyond Decorum: The Photography of Iké Udé (MIT Press), which accompanied a solo exhibit that traveled worldwide 2000-2002. Most recently, he contributed to Ralph Rucci: The Art of Weightlessness by Valerie Steele (Yale University Press, 2007). The publisher and editor of aRude magazine, which he founded in 1995, he lives in New York City.

Dr. Valerie Steele is Director and Chief Curator of the Museum of the Fashion Institute of Technology, in New York City. The author of numerous books, including The Black Dress (Collins Design, 2007), she is also editor-in-chief of Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and Culture.

Harold Koda is the Curator-in-Charge of The Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. He has co-authored 19 books, including 11 landmark catalogues for the Metropolitan Museum exhibitions. These include Extreme Beauty: The Body Transformed (2001), Goddess: The Classical Mode (2003), Dangerous Liaisons: Fashion and Furniture in the Eighteenth Century (2004), and Poiret: King of Fashion (2007). He has lectured widely, at both the Metropolitan and at other institutions, and has contributed a number of scholarly articles to Textile and Text and other publications.