Fashion books are great resources for designers as well as fashion students because they are not only textbooks of how garments should be designed and made, but also many times covering wide range of designers in one book, or successfully showing works from the entire period of a designer's career. Here are four books we love to go back often when we need an inspiration, or a time to relax without thinking what we should finish by tomorrow.



This book is absolutely one of our favorites. It is basically made of the runway photo shots from each and every collection of McQueen's, and it would probably be the best way to show the designer's sensational, dramatic works of shapes, colors, materials, and patterns.

Title: Alexander McQueen, Genius of a Generation
Author: Kristin Knox





One great thing about this book is that it really shows details of the incredible works by the designer. This book contains so many interesting images and stories, and would be a great book to own whether you are in fashion industry or not.

Title: Valentino, Themes and Variations
Author: Pamela Golbin






The dresses in this book are from the Brooklyn Museum Collection at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the book has quite a good amount of works by American designers which include Charles James (about 22 wonderful pieces by him).


Title: High Style
Author: the Metropolitan Museum of Art


This book is all about variety. It tries to cover all of the most famed designers we can think of to showcase a brief modern history of the dressmaking. Having said that, this book is very well edited, and it is probably thanks to the vast collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Some of our favorite dresses in this book are the ones by Christian Lacroix, Emanuel Ungaro, John Galliano, and Vivienne Westwood.


Title: 100 Dresses
Author: the Metropolitan Museum of Art

FashioNext Generation

As the winners of 2010 Fashionext competition, we were invited to a judges lunch on October 20th. It was a casual but insightful meeting where we met again with Tim Long, Curator of Costumes, Noren Ungaretti, President of Costume Council of the Museum, Cassie Walker, Senior Editor of Chicago Magazine, and Roger Price & Tommy Walton, Fashionext 2009 winners.

You can see the finalists' works here;

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/Special-Advertising-Feature/Chicago-History-Museum-I-Do-Chicago-Ties-the-Knot/FashioNext/

It was our first time to be a panel of judges, and we were greatly impressed by witty & sincere approaches that other judges showed to the these three students' pieces. It was such an interesting meeting where we not only had a good time but also learned quite a lot about how judging processes are done. We were also told by Ms. Noren Ungaretti that we would be invited as an honorary Costume Council members of the Museum for one year!

It's been such an exciting year for us with the whole experience we had with FashioNext 2010, and we cannot wait to see next year's finalists when we participate as a panel of judges.

And also, According to Mr. Long and Ms. Ungaretti, the Museum's next fashion exhibition will be the works of Charles James. It is one of those exhibitions we shouldn't miss!