Genio tormentato, stilista tra i più influenti del ventesimo secolo, Yves Saint Laurent ha contribuito a rivoluzionare il modo in cui si vestono le donne. Dopo i trionfi giovanili presso Dior, aprì la sua Maison che lo proiettò immediatamente nel firmamento dell'alta moda. Creatore di uno stile unico, raffinato e moderno, è stato tra i primi a ispirarsi all'abbigliamento di strada, a introdurre capi maschili nel guardaroba femminile e a disegnare abiti che tutti possono indossare.

Loulou de la Falaise is the first monograph to celebrate the life and work of the style icon and muse to Yves Saint Laurent who became the embodiment of French chic. Renowned for her bohemian chic, daring style as well as for her lightness, nonchalance, and humor, Loulou de la Falaise was not only an influential fashion icon but also a breath of fresh air to the world of Parisian haute couture. The Anglo-French beauty assisted the designer Halston and modeled briefly for Diana Vreeland’s Vogue before moving to Paris in 1972 to work alongside the iconic designer Yves Saint Laurent. A true original, her sense of color and fantasy and her attitude would energize the mythic house and fashion in general. For almost forty years, de la Falaise would forge her professional reputation designing extraordinary jewelry and accessories both for Yves Saint Laurent as well as for her own line. This elegant volume is a life in pictures, with over 400 images by legendary contemporary photographers, from Helmut Newton and Richard Avedon to Steven Meisel and Bettina Rheims, as well as an essay by Pierre Bergé and interviews with Loulou intimates such as Betty Catroux, Inès de la Fressange, Diane von Furstenberg, Christian Louboutin, Elsa Peretti, Paloma Picasso, André Leon Talley, and Oscar de la Renta. A celebrated style icon from the ’60s until her death, Loulou's appetite and flair for fashion continues to be an inspiration today.

A collection of the lavish and iconic gowns of Christian Dior, from the 1950s and ’60s, captured by the legendary photographer Mark Shaw. Iconic photographer Mark Shaw documented the ultra-exclusive Parisian fashion world, focusing on Paris’s long-standing top couturier Christian Dior. Shaw’s photographs—some of the first fashion photographs ever shot in color—capture the most stunning and extraordinary fashion of the era. This lavish volume embodies the glamour of that time, from rare moments of Christian Dior during fittings to editorial-style photographs of models, socialites, and actresses posing in Dior’s ballgowns, day suits, and haute couture collections. Shaw’s photojournalistic style changed fashion photography forever: his approach was to photograph wide, giving the subject a sense of context, creating an environment as exquisitely transformative as the subject and garment. With an eye for intimacy and opulence, this book features more than 200 color and black-and-white photographs, many never published before, having only recently been found in a secret vault by his estate. Dior Glamour: 1952–1962 captures the drama and elegance of the period’s style and will be treasured by lovers of photography, fashion, style, history, and cultured living.

The incredible life and times of Hollywood's most iconoclastic producer, the miracle worker who went from penniless refugee to show biz legend, and made possible The African Queen, On the Waterfront, The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia, not to speak of many more, including movies as distinct as Suddenly, Last Summer; Nicholas and Alexandra; The Last Tycoon; and Betrayal; all of them sharing the unique vision that earned Spiegel twenty-five Oscars: star-filled, bigger-than-life, conceived on a vast scale, intensely dramatic, and overwhelmingly ambitious.

In this rich and brilliant biography, Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni, who had the advantage of knowing and working for Spiegel, brings into sharp focus a Hollywood legend who was at once crafty, unscrupulous, mendacious, and equally capable of great charm and petty meanness, who was sentimental and ruthless, a shrewd judge of talent, a gambler on a colossal scale, a man of almost unique artistic vision and courage who was, in the final analysis, that most elusive and rare of movie producers, a genius.

The story of a how a Jewish refugee without a penny to his name managed to produce several of the greatest films of all time is alone worth telling, but Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni has done more; she has drawn the definitive portrait of the man himself -- the elusive, witty, cynical adventurer who, like so many refugees, was able to live, succeed, and raise money everywhere, but who was at home nowhere. Spiegel surrounded himself with luxury and beautiful women but remained a loner despite his countless friends.

Spiegel was mysterious about his origins, prompting Arthur Miller to refer to him as 'The Great Gatsby.' In reality, he was born of middle-class Jewish parents in the last years of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Raised in Jaroslav, in western Galicia, Spiegel left home in his late teens and quickly became a hero of the Hashomer Hatzair, a Zionist youth movement.

Step by step, with immense research and a vast number of interviews, Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni recreates the world of Sam Spiegel's childhood and youth, separating often self-serving fiction from fact. She follows Spiegel's dramatic flight from the Nazis in Berlin, a prison sentence in London, problems with the police in Paris and Mexico City, and finally his arrival in Los Angeles. In America his career languished for a time, though he acquired a reputation for being a supreme 'fixer,' a brilliant luftmensh on the fringes of Hollywood power, the ultimate party-giver who knew everybody's secrets and was always quick to charm women and take advantage of men. Billy Wilder called him 'a modern day Robin Hood, who steals from the rich and steals from the poor.'

With a brilliant sense of time and place and a deep understanding of Spiegel's complex personality, Fraser-Cavassoni traces his disasters, successes, romances, friendships, and tangled finances in a narrative that is rich with colorful Spiegel stories, scandals, and bon mots.

The cast of characters in Spiegel's life includes Lauren Bacall, Humphrey Bogart, Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift, Robert De Niro, Barry Diller, David Geffen, Katharine Hepburn, John Huston, Elia Kazan, David Lean, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Mike Nichols, Harold Pinter, Otto Preminger, Elizabeth Taylor, Gore Vidal, Orson Welles, Billy Wilder, Darryl F. Zanuck, bevies of beautiful women, three wives, countless members of high society, and, most important, Sam Spiegel himself -- the last of the great independent film producers who, in the swashbuckling tradition of David O. Selznick and Sam Goldwyn, operated alone, aimed high, and believed, above all, in their own star.

More than a major book about the movie business, Sam Spiegel is an intricate and engrossing biography, comparable in its richness, depth, and attention to detail to A. Scott Berg's acclaimed biography of Samuel Goldwyn. It is a marvelous, once-in-a-lifetime reading experience and an astonishing debut for Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni.