Chanel

Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel's original designs mingle with Karl Lagerfeld's contemporary interpretations for the House of Chanel in this profusely illustrated analysis. Journalist and fashion historian Gautier organizes the book not chronologically but by ideas he calls "Chanel identifiers"—little black dresses, tweed suits, and simple clothes inspired by menswear. Lagerfeld's vision, Gautier argues, made Chanel's fashion heresies relevant again for late 20th-century women. Chanel herself dominates this book, however. Gautier's explorations of the cultural norms Chanel flouted in her use of jersey and tweed and her invocations of androgyny are compelling. Photographs, identified in end credits, serve not only as historical documents but as methods of disseminating Chanel's style vocabulary, beautifully demonstrated here in images by Annie Leibovitz, Edward Steichen, Mario Testino, Cecil Beaton, Horst P. Horst, Richard Avedon, and Patrick Demarchelier, among others.