Beauty in Exile: The Artists, Models, and Nobility who Fled the Russian Revolution and Influenced the World of Fashion

Beauty in Exile: The Artists, Models, and Nobility who Fled the Russian Revolution and Influenced the World of Fashion by Alexandre Vassiliev. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9780810957015.

Glamorous and intriguing, packed with hundreds of incomparable pictures and marvelous anecdotes about some of the flamboyant personalities of the first half of the 20th century, this stylish volume illuminates as never before the pivotal Russian influence on 20th-century European and American culture and fashion. Alexandre Vassiliev, a well-known Russian-born costume and set designer, gives an insiders account of the artists and aristocrats who fled Russia after the 1917 Revolution and went on to play key roles in the European fashion scene. Wonderful stories abound about such noted emigrs as Serge Diaghilev and Anna Pavlova, fashion illustrator Ert, photographer George Hoyningen-Huene, and couturier Prince Felix Yusupov, better known as Rasputins assassin. With its wealth of documentary source material and photographs of stars from Greta Garbo to Marlene Dietrich wearing couture designed by Russian emigrs, this exotic fashion book will have broad appeal. ALEXANDRE VASSILIEV is a fashion historian, a costume and set designer, and a collector of antique clothing. He graduated from the Moscow Art Theatre Studio before moving to Paris in 1982, where he established his international career. He lectures regularly on the history of fashion, costume, and theater design and writes for Russian Vogue and Harpers Bazaar. 840 black-and-white illustrations, 91/2 x 121/8"