Sunday, November 14, 2010

Chanel, Chanel ...

Apologies for my complete and total absence this week. I've been busy travelling around the countryside with Di Morrissey (currently the number 1 bestselling author in the country, woo hoo!), and have barely had time to breathe, let alone blog.
My friend Jane, before she scooted over to New York for a holiday, lucky lady, gave me a copy of Justine Picardie's gorgeous new biography of Coco Chanel. After a slew of films and other books, you'd think everything that could be said about Ms Chanel would've been already, but critics are calling Picardie's tome the definitive biography. As I've been flying so much, I haven't got stuck into the lovely hard back yet, but I have looked at the gorgeous images, and I was particularly enamoured of this lovely lady - Marie-Helene Arnaud - who was one of Chanel's favourite models around the time she made her comeback after the war.


For even more Chanel love - and plenty of other designers and home dressmakers too - Charlotte Smith (the owner of the fabulous Darnell Collection) has just released her follow-up to Dreaming of Dior: Dreaming of Chanel. Grant Cowan again provides the beautiful illustrations and with the volume of vintage in Smith's collection, I doubt she'll ever run out of stories to tell. You can check out her blog here.


Both books are published by HarperCollins.

3 comments:

Anastasia Schembri said...

I am dying to get my hands on the new Chanel book, I have been hearing so much buzz about it and the images you have posted have sealed the deal for me!
Unfortunately, Charlotte Smith's new book is not available here in Canada yet but in the off chance that Charlotte reads this write-up maybe she might be inclined to send her old friend Lily a copy! (LOL!)I might just have to email her with a link to your post!
Hope you are having a wonderful weekend!

Louise said...

Ooh, I hope so. I know the first book was published in the US, so hopefully if the second is too, you'll at least be able to pick it up on Amazon.

Greetz from Tiz said...

absolutely fabulous!