Charles James: Portrait of an Unreasonable Man: Fame, Fashion, Art

by Michele Gerber Klein, Harold Koda (Foreword by)

Overview

Inspired by the discovery of long-overlooked interviews conducted just before his death, this is the first biography of the visionary fashion designer Charles James.

Christian Dior described him as the inspiration for the “New Look.” Salvador Dalí called his work “soft sculpture,” and Virginia Woolf exclaimed, “He is a genius.”

As George Bernard Shaw tells us, only unreasonable men change the world. This portrait of the life and times of Charles James—winner of two Coty awards, and the subject of a 2014 Metropolitan Museum of Art show—draws on the glamour of Europe in the 1930s, and the dazzle of New York City from the ’40s through the ’70s as it travels with James from his birth to privilege in England in 1906 and follows his career through his complex and turbulent relationships with exceptional women such as Elsa Schiaparelli and Eleanor Lambert, ending with his penurious death in New York’s fabled Chelsea Hotel.

As engrossing as a novel, as dramatic as grand opera, James’s story will provoke, rivet, and inspire.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780847861453
Publisher:	Rizzoli
Publication date:	03/20/2018
Pages:	254
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.40(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

The founder of joan vass U.S.A. and vice president of the Liberman Foundation, Michèle Gerber Klein has written about art and fashion for many publications and has served on several boards including the Dia Art Foundation and the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.

Table of Contents

Foreword Harold Koda viii

Introduction How I Met Charles 1

1 In the Beginning: Between Europe and America 11

2 Art and Invention: Elsa Schiaparelli 33

3 Fairy Tales for the Future: Anne, Countess of Rosse 53

4 Setting Up Shop: Elizabeth Arden 73

5 Immortality: Millicent Rogers 89

6 Beyond Fashion: Modess, Andy Warhol, and Dominique de Menil 105

7 Apotheosis: Austine Hearst 123

8 Nemesis: Eleanor Lambert 141

9 The Last Muse: Nancy James 163

10 After All 185

Credits 216

Acknowledgments 217

Author's Note 218

Bibliography 219

Notes 233

Index 247

Editorial Reviews

12/18/2017
Klein, vice president of the Liberman Foundation, paints an amiable portrait of the self-taught couturier Charles James (1906–1978), tracing his life from his school days at Harrow, an exclusive prep school in London, to his final years living at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City. Focusing on his relationships with industry insiders and socialites, such as Anne Armstrong-Jones and Dominique de Menil, both of whom served as James’s muses, Klein shows how James “set the standard for style in the Western World” for mid-20th-century haute couture. In addition to inventing the “trapeze” coat, James pioneered the “new look” of the 1950s through his custom designs combining small waists with figure-eight skirts. Klein balances an appreciation of her subject’s talents as a designer with an acknowledgement of his shortcomings as a friend and businessman who could “never stop whining about cash.” In 1943 cosmetic tycoon Elizabeth Arden offered him a professional “partnership for life” that ended badly after two years. His reputation as a whiner and malcontent caused Diana Vreeland to exclude him from her 1975 Met show American Women of Style. Determined to tell his side of the story, James spent his last years writing letters to his former friends and associates—a handful of which are excerpted here. The result is a juicy account of the influence of an often-overlooked figure in the history of fashion. Illus. (Mar.)

Publishers Weekly

"A luscious exposé of a game-changing designer who revolutionized the fashion industry. In her debut biography, Klein, the founder of joan vass USA, introduces readers to Charles James (1906-1978), the notoriously fabulous British-born fashion designer who sought to incorporate countless areas of study into the art of fashion. Self-described as "a legend because my work is too little known," James started making waves in the fashion industry in the 1930s. "There were never more than a handful of Charles James matrix designs," writes the author. "But each one is a masterpiece, developed with painstaking care and slowness, and so beautifully calibrated that one small change could throw everything off balance." This close attention to pristine detail is what set James apart from the other aspiring designers. More specifically, it was due to his wild imagination for new ways of stitching fabric together and his wide social network. Klein organizes the chapters according to specific people who influenced James or with whom James went into business, drew inspiration from, or loved. Interestingly, Klein pushes the biographical genre by writing about her subject through the stories of those who surrounded him. "
—Kirkus Reviews

"James seems to have met, befriended, loved, or reviled most of the 20th century's great fashion and style makers, from Paul Poiret to Antonio Lopez, and this book is a who's who of those glittering, fascinating characters. The impossible Mr. James emerges as one of the most compelling of them all."
—Hamish Bowles, Vogue.com

"Peppered with society drama, his patrician connections, and the financial and personal pitfalls that haunted him, she also memorializes the remarkable women that inspired the creative genius of James. The author draws on close to 40 hours of interviews—filmed by Anton Perich, with R. Couri Hay and James in 1977—shortly before his death."
—Jeena Sharma, Interview Magazine

"I loved this book, and could not help but admire the man’s exquisite if sometimes detrimental resistance to compromise, right to the end."
—Denis Ferrara, New York Social Diary

From the Publisher

2017-12-12
A luscious exposé of a game-changing designer who revolutionized the fashion industry.In her debut biography, Klein, the founder of joan vass USA, introduces readers to Charles James (1906-1978), the notoriously fabulous British-born fashion designer who sought to incorporate countless areas of study into the art of fashion. Self-described as "a legend because my work is too little known," James started making waves in the fashion industry in the 1930s. "There were never more than a handful of Charles James matrix designs," writes the author. "But each one is a masterpiece, developed with painstaking care and slowness, and so beautifully calibrated that one small change could throw everything off balance." This close attention to pristine detail is what set James apart from the other aspiring designers. More specifically, it was due to his wild imagination for new ways of stitching fabric together and his wide social network. Klein organizes the chapters according to specific people who influenced James or with whom James went into business, drew inspiration from, or loved. Interestingly, Klein pushes the biographical genre by writing about her subject through the stories of those who surrounded him. Refreshingly, the result is neither a chronological nor traditional biography. However, the narrative oozes with white privilege and unrestrained, ultimately tiresome affluence—e.g., "in the ballroom, whose walls were decorated with shining floor-to-ceiling mirrors set into seventeenth-century boiserie, the elite of Paris society were seated on small gold-backed chairs around little white circular tables, lit by long narrow tapers in three-pronged silver candelabras." Although this was certainly the world in which Klein's subject thrived, the author could have provided deeper explorations into the designer's cultural and social milieu. Ultimately, the book is a frothy, readable catalog of luxury; whether or not this kind of affluence resonates (or is of interest) in today's landscape unclear.A biography that would benefit from acknowledging the problems with the world its subject inhabited.

Kirkus Reviews