PERHAPS A GIFT VOUCHER FOR MUM?: MOTHER'S DAY
This huge, slipcased Festschrift checks in at 11 x14 , and covers each of the Gucci years individually, compiling product shots, ads, runway candids, snippets of Ford wisdom ( I think you have to have personality at a brand-otherwise, it's just clothes ), Gucci-sporting celebrities and commercial stills. Vogue 's Anna Wintour and Vanity Fair 's Graydon Carter contribute a foreword and introduction respectively. The much-covered growth at Gucci and YSL are the real story behind the book, to the point where the press chat credits Ford with carving out a new industry archetype: the businessman designer. But the 375 color and bw photos, all culled from existing fashion archives, is more of a look back at how Ford's creations were presented (including year-by-year portraits of the photogenic Ford himself), rather than what led to their creation, how they were actually made or how they fit into the culture at large. As a 10-year time capsule of brand fashioning, the book succeeds perfectly. -Publishers Weekly
