BELLAS ARTES

India in Fashion explores the beautiful and sophisticated history and aesthetics of traditional Indian fashion, dress, and textiles and their profound impact on European and American fashion from the eighteenth century to today. This intoxicating and visually rich volume—with texts by experts from India, Europe, and North America—is published to accompany a major exhibition that celebrates the long historical contributions that Indian dress, textiles, and embroidery have had on Western fashion. From the introduction of chintz dressmaking fabrics in the eighteenth century to the early nineteenth-century vogue for light Indian fabrics, paisleys, and chikan embroideries to larger realities of empire and cultural appropriation, this volume features paintings, fashion magazine editorials, and portraits of influential people who championed Indian style throughout history.

The work of renowned firm McALPINE has always communicated the power of romanticism, speaking directly to the heart through the beauty and poetry of the home. Tapping diverse influences, the residences draw from architectural languages ranging from Elizabethan and Dutch to colonial Caribbean and agrarian American. The book opens with Bobby McAlpine’s own newly designed house, featuring exquisite spaces that are modern in expression but classical in order and balance. Other projects include a white-on-white neoclassical pavilion-by-the-sea in the Bahamas; a masonry dwelling in the rolling hills of Virginia; a quintessential American country house in Tennessee that combines the familiarity of a farmhouse with crisp minimalism; and an exuberant house sited on the edge of a pastoral golf course in Alabama. Freely choosing from architecture’s treasury, the assembly of houses is familiar, bold, and surprising, all at the same time—reflecting the complexity of the human experience.