BELLAS ARTES

A giant of modern fashion photography, Bourdin lent his surrealist eye to the shoes and fashions of Charles Jourdan. Creating compositions full of movement, color, and sensuality, this pioneering collaboration between designer and photographer still exerts a profound influence on modern fashion photography. The late 1960s saw some of the most dynamic periods in French fashion. And the union between Bourdin and Jourdan captured the spirit of the moment unlike any other creative partnership of the era. Jourdan, a polymath who occupied the office of both couturier and shoe designer, tapped Bourdin, a true surrealist among the fashion photographers of the age, and engaged in a creative dialogue through to Jourdan’s passing in 1976.

Produced with the Yves Saint Laurent museums in Paris and Marrakech, this book examines how flowers served as the designer’s muse throughout his life and work. Yves Saint Laurent’s passion for flowers and gardens was the source of endless inspiration. From a thousand and one rose buds to sprigs of lily of the valley, from an avalanche of bougainvillea to delicate poppy blooms, and from sheaves of wheat to majestic lilies, he metamorphosed nature in his creations. Employing flowers as a palette of patterns and techniques, he adorned women in floral appliqués, prints, and embroideries.

This is the first of Pentreath’s books to present his own output in its entirety—from his personal residences in Dorset, London, and Scotland that brought him international fame to many old and new houses that he has designed and some of the larger, town-scaled projects that make his practice unique in the world of traditional design. Although the results range from his colorful and romantic versions of the English country cottage to traditional splendor, there are underlying ideas that inform the breadth of his output—a sense of scale, proportion, craft, detail, sustainability, and appropriateness—that have a universal relevance today.