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Images of a little boy on the seashore in the 1960s or a newborn baby devouring mother’s milk might are not generally considered part of a style bible, but King of Hats, Stephen Jones, and Queen of Bags, Olympia Le-Tan have exposed themselves with all their fun and foibles in two tomes.
Stephen Jones' biography is filled with intimate, personal photographs, such as this family snap of Stephen as a toddler - already showing an affinity for hats!
Courtesy of Stephen Jones
Rizzoli has become the publisher of choice for the fashion world. But what is so often a visual feast with a scant regard for storytelling is served up in a more lavish way for what can be seen as instant Christmas gifts.
In both cases, it is the fashion artists’ sense of humour that adds to the overall merriment.
One of Olympia's trademark "book" bags
@SuzyMenkesVogue
A Certain “Hatitude”
Stephen Jones: Souvenirs is an apt title for a book in which Stephen John Moffatt Jones, from England’s northern city of Liverpool, seems to have been born to design headgear. The frontispiece, with its hundred intricate doodles of hats, expresses the power of the calling that turned the young student of Saint Martin’s – whose first forays in fashion included transforming the Queen of England into a Punk – into a hat maker for high fashion.
A model wears a Stephen Jones headpiece of burnt peacock and ostrich spines for Marc Jacobs’ final show for Louis Vuitton, Spring/Summer 2014. "The green light for over forty of these creations was given only four days before the show,” Jones remembers.
ODDA Magazine
This “head master” to haute couture took his talent forward to create extraordinary pieces, especially for John Galliano. Their joint imaginations produced hats inspired by a Samurai warrior’s rising sun helmets, or bouquets of flowers - cellophane included - and so much more. The images are not only a feast for the eyes but also a display of vibrant and poetic imagination.
Stephen's hand-drawn sketches for initial crown ideas for Comme des Garçons Spring/Summer 2006
Courtesy of Stephen Jones
In the words - less obviously enticing than the images - the “Mad Hatter” reveals his working relationship with Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons and discusses the importance to his febrile imagination of the crown, which he describes as “the absolute thing”. His most remarkable inspiration, he claims in the text (written with fashion editor Susannah Frankel), was an Indian crown entirely knitted in gold thread on display at the Victoria and Albert Museum.
“I love the idea of one culture taking something from another culture and inventing it all incorrectly - because out of that comes something incredible,” says the author, who might be talking about his own process.
Stephen (right) was an habitué of London's lively clubbing scene in the Eighties, where the New Romantics would parade their latest styles
Graham Smith
An introduction by American Vogue’s fashion guru Grace Coddington sums up the story of this milliner “extraordinaire”. Photographed wearing a cat-shaped hat on her marmalade hair, she says: “I have a real love for the way Stephen’s mind works - there is such happiness in his millinery genius.”
The cover of Stephen's new book, published by Rizzoli
(Stephen Jones: Souvenirs, Rizzoli, £95)
The Story of O.L.T.
Full disclosure: I interviewed Olympia Le-Tan for her book, which is a visual feast but includes only my questions and her witty replies as written content. But the relationship between the half-French, half-English designer and books is far more than her obsession with Roald Dahl and J.D. Salinger, as well as the Dickens and Shakespeare of her Parisian teenage years.
Designer Olympia Le-Tan with a model wearing an embroidered jacket she designed
@SuzyMenkesVogue
Each handbag that she has created is in the shape of a book, offering a Keith Haring collaboration with the artist’s cartoon-like images in dense embroidery on a square clutch, or another artistic fusion as a painting by Manet woven into a bag
Famous artworks rendered in embroidery and appliqué for Olympia Le-Tan's collection of clutch bags
@SuzyMenkesVogue
Hand-embroidered Harris tweed and tiny beads worked Indian-style into the White Rabbit from Alice In Wonderland give the 21st-century fascination with the “It Bag” a new dimension. The book could have used more of these extraordinarily imaginative accessories to show the designer’s cultural reach and sense of humour.
Olympia Le-Tan's new book in its slipcase box
@SuzyMenkesVogue
The pretty pink reading matter comes - but, of course! - in a matching pink cover shaped like a big, fat book. Inside is a pattern of flowers, just like the one for the hand-decorated O.L.T. label. So the offer is a holiday gift of book and bag - for the price of one.(Olympia Le-Tan: The Story of O.L.T., Rizzoli, £60)