Now in a convenient paperback edition, this is a bag-making series with a difference: 15 stylish occasion bag designs, two handy plastic templates and endless variations! 

Focusing on occasion bags, this beautifully presented, 96-page book contains easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions for a wide variety of bags in a range of fabrics and styles. Included are two easy-to-use templates: durable, reusable, wipe-clean and perfect for fussy cutting, they make building a bag even easier.

The 15 occasion bags are each made using different techniques, pockets, straps and fastenings to create 15 very different results. The templates can also be used for your own further design variations, and Debbie gives advice on how to adapt and create your own unique designs. Each project in the book is explained using Debbie’s friendly style and clear step-by-step photography, and there is also a comprehensive techniques section and a guide to using the templates.

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Embrace female empowerment with J. J. Martin, founder of world–renowned Milanese lifestyle brand LaDoubleJ, in the ultimate insider’s guide to Italy and her magic.

After moving from Manhattan to Milan 20 years ago, with no job, no friends, and no patience for the Italian way of life, J. J. Martin realized she had no option but to surrender to the vibrant but slow-paced lifestyle. In so doing, she discovered more joy (and success) than she could ever have imagined. In this uplifting volume, Martin invites us to jump on board and join her on her journey – an outsider’s evolution through life, love, loss, creativity, and magic – to today’s beloved ‘Milano’. Dive into the delights of Italian fashion, food, and good living; meet some of Italy’s leading female tastemakers (the ‘LaDoubleJ Babes’); tap into Martin’s spiritual secrets for unleashing inner creativity and wisdom; and more – all with a dash of LaDoubleJ vintage chic and oodles of Italian style. This feel-good book is a celebration and a creation story – both of a brand and of becoming your own woman, the Italian way.

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Designer, punk, rebel, dame… Vivienne Westwood was all this and more. One of the main architects of the 1970s punk era, the inimitable Westwood refused to take fashion too seriously, finding unique and arresting ways to subvert tradition and challenge the status quo.

But her impact on the industry was more than ripped T-shirts. A master of tailoring and mistress of corsetry, she deconstructed street fashion and parodied English looks with tight waists, bustles and a zany take on tartan and Harris Tweed.

Clients include Dita Von Teese, FKA Twigs and Doja Cat, her signature designs have featured in Japanese manga, Nana, and having captivated the TikTok generation, her vintage pieces still go viral today.

Punk in both fashion and politics to the very end, Vivienne Westwood will remain an icon of fashion and feminism for generations to come.

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The couturière Elsa Schiaparelli (1890–1973) was a key figure in Paris fashion between the two World Wars. Following in the footsteps of her mentor Paul Poiret, she designed her first knitwear collection in January 1927. Decorated with trompe-l’oeil motifs in black and white, her sweaters were an immediate success in both France and the USA. In 1935, the Maison Schiaparelli opened in the Place Vendôme in Paris, selling collections designed for sports, city and evening wear.

Like her arch-rival Gabrielle Chanel, Schiaparelli also worked closely with artists, including Man Ray, Jean Cocteau and Salvador Dalí, with whom she created a lobster dress. Taking a cue from Surrealism, her creations were hugely imaginative and made use of innovative new materials. The ‘Schiap’ style continued to develop through the 1930s. Her most famous collections had themes including the circus (summer 1938) and astrology (winter 1938–39). In 1937, Schiaparelli launched the fragrance Shocking, named after shocking pink, which had become her signature colour.

Alongside vintage photographs, sketches and contemporary features from Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue, this volume presents specially photographed masterpieces from the collection of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. All 120 garments and accessories from the Schiaparelli archive are illustrated, along with a selection of her drawings dating from 1933 to 1953.

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Colour is fundamental to our experience and understanding of the world. It crosses continents and cultures, disciplines and decades. It is used to convey information and knowledge, to evoke mood, and to inspire emotion.

This book explores the history of our understanding of colour, from the ancient world to the present, from Aristotle to Albers. Interspersed in the historical story are numerous thematic essays that look at how colour has been used across a wide range of disciplines and fields: in food, music, language and many others.  

The illustrations are drawn from the Royal College of Art’s renowned Colour Reference Library which spans six centuries of works and nearly 2,000 titles, from a Gothic manuscript on the composition of the rainbow to hand-painted Enlightenment works on colour theory and vibrant 20th-century colour charts, including many fascinating examples not  seen in other books.

Delving far and wide in this fascinating and varied subject, this book will help readers find new layers of meaning and complexity in their everyday experiences and teach them to look closer at our colourful lives.

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• Britain’s industrial age is often perceived through a black-and-white filter as the ‘funereal’ age of coal pollution and bleak working class slums. This catalogue will dispel that perception, demonstrating how the industrial revolution transformed colour, and focus on the central role it played in art, culture and technology
• As opposed to approaches favouring a long history of colour, the catalogue focuses on the second half of the 19th century and argues that this was a crucial chromatic turn, which has been significantly ignored by prominent historians of colour and previous publications
• Several essays in the catalogue offer new research into key chromatic events of the period including the 1862 International Exhibition
• Accompanies an exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum from 21 September 2023 to 18 February 2024

Contrary to the monochrome vision of Queen Victoria’s mourning dresses and the coal-polluted streets of Charles Dickens’ London, Victorian Britain was, in fact, a period of new and vivid colours. The Industrial Revolution had transformed the Victorians’ perception of colour and, over the course of the second half of the 19th century, it became the key signifier of modern life.

Colour Revolution: Victorian Art, Fashion & Design charts the Victorians’ new attitudes to colour through a multidisciplinary exploration of culture, technology, art and literature. The catalogue explores key ‘chromatic’ moments that inspired Victorian artists and writers to think anew about the materiality of colour. Rebelling against the bleakness of the industrial present, these figures learned from the sacred colours of the past, the sumptuous colours of the Middle East and Japan and looked forward towards the decadent colours that defined the end of the century.

Section 1: Glowing Colour: Introduction; Ruskin and Colour Pedagogy; Turner, Ruskin and the Lure of Venetian Colour; The Colour of the Middle Ages; Unweaving the Rainbow: Nature’s Colours in Art and Fashion; Pretty Plant Photographers or Pioneering Women?; Object in Focus: Hummingbird Necklace by Harry Emanuel;

Section 2: Colour for All: The Aniline Revolution; The International Exhibition of 1862; Object in Focus: Technical Analysis of the Great Bookcase; Sculpture and Race; The Colours of the Ancient Past; Orientalism; Object in Focus: Joseph and his Brethren by Owen Jones; India and Colour;

Section 3: Colour for Colour’s Sake: The Colours of Decadence: Yellow, Green and Blue; Object in Focus: St. Mark’s Venice by James McNeill Whistler; Queering Colour; Object in Focus: Tanagra; Object in Focus: Japanese Boardgame; Loie Fuller.

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