Charles James

by Richard Martin

Exploring the career of designer Charles James, this work looks at the way in which he revolutionized the fashions of the 1940s and 1950s with his designs, and above all his sculpted dresses.

Genres: Fashion, Nonfiction

79 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1997

Reviews

[Elle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Charles James is in my opinion one of the greatest American fashion designer in the last century that few people outside the fashion world would have heard of. James is tireless innovator and experimenter; A great artist but a terrible businessman (which is why you don't hear about him a lot). Some of his creation, his dresses and evening gowns, could be better appreciated as sculptures than mere clothing.


Richard Martin's slim volume on Charles James for Assouline, publisher of a series of short fashion biographies in signature white covers, barely even covers the surface of this man's creative mind but it's a start. The beautiful photographs should give you a sense of the sculptural beauty in James's design.

This book is only one of two books currently published on Charles James; the other being Elizabeth Ann Coleman's The Genius of Charles James which is the most comprehensive study on Charles James to date but is currently out-of-print. Therefore I would still recommend this book due to a lack of better alternative.

[Victoria Moore · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lush and succinctly written Richard Martin's book about Charles James reads like a seamless report about a fashion designer who didn't shy away from genius. Historically influenced by "Winterhalter's painting of the court of Empress Eugenie" for his ball gowns created in the 1940s and 1950s, I was able to look at the famous color photograph by Cecil Beaton in a new way. After reading the way Martin compared this 1948 masterpiece to the women in Winterhalter's painting who had "bare shoulders and spacious forms" it became apparent to me how much James strove to personify the ultimate female.
Organized with the text in the front of the book, the photos and illustrations in the middle, the chronology and descriptions in the back, made for a very easy read that only took me about an hour to complete. The best part about its brevity is that it gave me a chance to re-examine the book and study specific parts. I particularly liked comparing James's original "Swan" ball gown, "created for Jennifer Jones", with the "short version of the "Swan" dress worn by Evelyn Tripp" in the 1951 Horst P. Horst photo.
Illustrations by James and Antonio Lopez also added to the visual appeal of the book and allowed me to actually see the lines of the clothing. Wonderfully evocative of a more glamorous time, "Charles James" is a book I know I'll refer to again and again.

[Stacy Schuttler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful book with many great pictures. Not much information about Charles James life but it really gave a glimpse into what the man was like and why he created the fashions the way he did.