book club: the fashion book

In the time before the internet, people relied on books for information, and while it may seem like technology is making printed goods no longer relevant, I don't think that could be further from the truth. Case in point: The Fashion Book published by Phaidon.

If you get the internet, which I'm assuming you do since you're reading this article, you're probably well aware that nearly anything and everything about fashion has been catalogued online, from designers, to models, to photographers--everything! But the problem with relying on the internet alone to get fashion news is that while it's good for finding things you already know about, it's not easy to find things you don't know about. You can't really Google something if you don't know it exists. 

That's why The Fashion Book is such a valuable asset. At 576 pages long, it categorizes fashion for the past 150 years--that's everything from Charles James to Alexander Wang! Each page represents an important fashion figure and is adorned with a giant photo, a couple of lines of explanatory text, and recommendations for other fashion folk in the book who might be of interest. And this isn't just the standard list of industry people either, it's a compilation of icons that span from David Beckham to Oscar Wilde and models from Veruskha to Kate Moss. 

Buy your copy here and learn about anything and everything fashionable. Then once you know who you're favorite designer from the '20s is, you can Google her. 

Lady Gaga's image

Hedi Slimane's image.

Iris Apfel's image

Raf Simons' image.