Andrew Bolton

Unparalleled in its luxurious presentation, this publication celebrates the virtuoso artistry of Karl Lagerfeld (1933–2019). Designed to evoke an elegant parchment-and-cloth artist’s portfolio, it boasts a pageant of stunning fashion photography alongside Lagerfeld’s original sketches, offering a behind-the-scenes window into his process as well as his sartorial brilliance. Silver inks and select gold pages punctuate the book’s stylish packaging and recall the designer’s signature accessories. An illustrated timeline, unfurling from the back of the volume, chronicles the designer’s long and illustrious career. Lagerfeld produced over 10,000 pieces of clothing across his extraordinary 65 years as a powerhouse fashion designer, from his time at Chloé and Fendi in the 1960s and 1970s to his celebrated leadership in the 1980s and beyond at Chanel and with his own label. His voracious curiosity and boundless imagination yielded beautiful, evocative garments, more than 200 of which are showcased here. These are accompanied by personal reflections from Lagerfeld’s premieres d’ateliers—the seamstresses behind his extraordinary creations—as well as by Anna Wintour, Patrick Hourcade, Amanda Harlech, and Tadao Ando. A lavish work of art in its own right, this book is also an essential resource on Lagerfeld and how his designs transformed the entire fashion industry. Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

A stunning look at the paradoxical relationship between the artisanal and the technological in fashion The complex and often ambiguous relationship between the hand crafted and the machine made is examined in this intriguing look at the ever-changing world of fashion and taste. Manus x Machina traces styles of dress from one-of-a-kind works and haute couture created by highly skilled artisans, through the introduction of industrial manufacturing, to extraordinary recent technological advancements applied to high fashion, such as 3D printing, laser cutting, and computer-generated weaving and patterns. The oppositional relationship between the machine, as representative of democracy and mass production, and the hand, as the hallmark of elitism, is explored in its many facets in this fascinating book. Paradoxically, technology in fashion has both advanced artistic creation and obscured the sense of the designer's expert hand. Similarly, handmade garments have come to represent either a nostalgia for lost craftsmanship or, in haute couture, a cult of personality and affluence.Interviews with renowned and cutting-edge designers such as Sarah Burton, Karl Lagerfeld, and Miuccia Prada discuss how technology can blur the line between haute couture and pret-a-porter, and ultimately question the relevance of the distinction between hand and machine. A tour de force in art book production, Manus x Machina incorporates two volumes into its innovative package. The main volume of the book includes a smaller hand-sewn booklet, which features the printed interviews, tucked into the back jacket flap. The outer cover of the main volume is made of three-ply plastic layers with high-frequency weld and die-cut flaps. The paperback cover is die cut (modelled on the punch cards used in the first automated weaving looms), and the main volume includes 5 different paper stocks and silver foil stamping, and is printed with both high-density and ultraviolet inks. The book also features new photography of extraordinary pieces, including intricate 19th-century floral designs by William Morris, handcrafted haute couture of designers such as Christian Dior and Alexander McQueen, and the specatuclar 3D creations of Iris van Herpen.