What is allure? Who had or has allure? Every era has chosen its own models. Who are they? How did they differenciate themselves? How did they style their lives? The Allure Of Women highlights our most well-known icons, women recognized all over the world, for their style and elegance. Francois Baudot also invites you to discover lesser-known women of allure, envied and copied by people within their own world. Chic, natural and elegant, women are captured in lavish photographs and compelling text, making The Allure Of Women impossible to put down....

Originally published in 1999 and now fully revised and updated, Fashion is a photographic celebration that surveys all the preeminent couturiers and fashion houses from the era before the Great War through the revolutionary changes wrought by the Jazz Age and the Swinging Sixties to designers at work today. Everything is included in this authoritative volume, from Chanel's little black dress to the latest Prada or envelope-pushing boutiques.What distinguishes Fashion from other overviews or histories of the subject is that it also examines the ancillary driving forces that have propelled fashion trends and fuelled the rise of styles. In many ways, this book makes clear that these supposedly secondary influences (fashion editors, advertising, newspapers, magazines, department stores, boutiques) became increasingly important during the course of the twentieth century. Included in the book are overviews of key figures in the fashion industry and design community....

Aside from clothes, the most immediate extension of the human body is the decor in which it evolves. From interior architecture to interior life, the distance is often slight. It is to this coming together of the mental and the ornamental, as well as to the dialogue between form and content, that this work, with its abundant and eloquent iconography, is dedicated The chapters wed the chronology of the styles that followed one another using, as examples, the most beautiful houses in the world. The first part starts with the Medieval era and ends with the twentieth century, while the second is devoted to the roots of design from the Belle Époque to contemporary aesthetics.

Each style has its own elegance, its function, and its reason for being. Each style comes back, at one time or another, to haunt new decades short of references. Thus, the periods overlap each other: yesterday via nineteenth century s historicism, and today with the rise of all the retro fashions.

But regardless of the choices one makes, what is fascinating in the organization of an architectural volume is that it always speaks of its own time. And it often does so very well....