Lavishly illustrated and thematically arranged, Fashion Muse looks at the many iterations a muse can take: Greek goddess, fairy-tale princess, wife, lover, supermodel, celebrity, and artist. A prominent art historian with a profound knowledge of the culture of fashion, Debra N. Mancoff delves far and wide to present pairings both familiar and surprising, including the first couturier Charles Frederick Worth and his wife; Elsa Schiaparelli and the Surrealists; Yves Saint Laurent and the painter Mondrian; Oleg Cassini and Jacqueline Kennedy; and Audrey Hepburn and Hubert de Givenchy. She reveals numerous designers whose muse was their own image, from Coco Chanel to Diane von Furstenberg to the Olsen twins. And she examines the influence of figures from the worlds of art, celebrity, and pop culture. Entertaining, inspiring, and surprising, this enthralling exploration places the muse where he or she belongs: at the highest peaks of the creative process.

Few artistic movements capture classic notions of beauty as romantically as the Pre-Raphaelites — a group of nineteenth-century painters and poets who aimed to revive the purer art of the late medieval period. In this beautiful volume, Debra N. Mancoff, an expert on Pre-Raphaelite art and the floral lexicon presents forty breath-taking examples, which illuminate the meaning of flowers in all aspects of Victorian culture. She offers brief commentaries on individual paintings as well as biographies of the period's leading artists and their models. A captivating introduction to an artistic movement, this exquisitely produced book is also a romantic keepsake of an artistic sensibility that speaks volumes.

Even before the advent of haute couture, Paris was a great centre of fashion. During the second half of the nineteenth century, when the capital was transformed by an ambitious urban plan, its residents responded in kind, wearing styles as polished and modern as the city itself in order to participate in the exciting new social scene. Featuring famed paintings by such Impressionist masters as Degas, Cassatt, Manet, Monet and Morisot, this delightful book revisits the world of Parisian fashion through the eyes of first-hand observers. Thematic chapters present a gallery-like ensemble of paintings that follow in the footsteps of stylish Parisians as they stroll in the parks and boulevards, meet friends at cafes, take in the theatre, relax at home and go on holiday. In an extended narrative-style caption to accompany each image, fashion and art historian Debra N. Mancoff offers a detailed discussion of what men and women wore and how their dress defined them. To complete the picture, illustrated interludes, providing glimpses into dressmaking, corsetry and millinery, the origins of couture and the rise of the department store, reveal how Paris became the fashion capital of the world.

Van Gogh was inspired by the beauty and colours of nature. He brought this passion to life in some of the most vibrant depictions of the natural world ever put to canvas. This book takes a look at this side of the artist's life and work. It offers insight into the artist's unique vision with the help of his most beautiful paintings and excerpts from his own writings. We see that flowers such as the iris and the sunflower served as emblems of self-identity and that the fields were a testament to the cycle of life and a warning of the inevitability of death. The book offers a portrait of the joy and pleasure that Van Gogh experienced in his life and expressed with his brush.