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Shedding light on an era

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Long before Bill Cunningham was snapping his images of the fashionable on the street, before anyone had invented "paparazzi", way ahead of the cult of celebrity journalism, the Seeburgers were recording real fashion in what was then the undisputed fashion capital of the world, Paris and its environs. This book not only beautifully reproduces great images of the times, the personalities and the fashions, it delineates the hows and whys of what was taking place on all those fronts. You could revel in looking at the pictures and reading captions, but don't skip the text. To say the least it's enlightening about a remarkable era that exists only minimally in visual form.

At last, more of the Seeberger brothers' take on fashion!

Customer Rating:

I own the old book _A Fashion Parade: The Seeberger Collection_, by Celestine Dars, and love it. Unfortunately, it was only ever published in the UK and it's long out of print, so it's very hard to find and very expensive. Happily for all fans of fashion photography, Virginie Chardin has filled the gap with her new book _Elegance_. The key thing about the brothers Seeberger is that, unlike a lot of later fashion photographers, they didn't go for sometimes-arty, sometimes-pretentious, sometimes-stagy posed shots. They preferred to get out and take pictures of the fashionable women of their day as these ladies actually wore their latest and most stylish clothes; the chic racetracks such as Auteuil were an especially favorite destination for the Seebergers, as, like Ascot in Britain, the grounds were thronged by women dressed in the latest fashions. Therefore, in this book, you'll see hundreds of photos of high fashion as it was worn in real life - not just the photographer's studio - in the first half of the 20th century. That alone should make it a first-class resource for fashion students and historians.

a real treasure

Customer Rating:

wow, glad I found this book. my focus is entirely on fashion images and this has really great images, especially from the teens---which aren't that plentiful (in other books), ie, real photos of the clothes from that period. the difference between the illustration of a teens style and the actual photo of a real person can be a real hoot! Anyway, lots of images that I haven't seen before of fashions from the turn of the century to about the late 30's early 40's. I have quite a library of fashion books now, but this goes into the 'real treasure' category.