The second edition of
Contemporary Fashion, a revision of the late Richard Martin's 1995 edition, provides students and scholars with useful information on more than 400 fashion leaders from the 1940s to today. New entries include Stella McCartney, Vera Wang, and companies such as Abercrombie & Fitch and Victoria's Secret. Each alphabetically arranged entry contains a capsule biography or company history, a list of books and articles by or about the designer, an essay, and in some of the entries a brief quote from the subject on design philosophy or his or her work. Unique to this edition is an advisory board of industry professionals who helped choose approximately 50 new designers and companies. The number of photographs has doubled from the previous edition. A "Nationality Index" provides the only indexing.
A similar publication is Anne Stegemeyer's Who's Who in Fashion (Fairchild, 1996). Although it includes color photos, unlike Contem porary Fashion's black-and-white photos, only 250 fashion designers are represented, with very brief entries and no individual designer bibliographies. Another recent title, In an Influential Fashion: An Encyclopedia of Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Fashion Designers and Retailers Who Transformed Dress [RBB Ag 02], focuses primarily on the U.S and serves as a good general introduction for high-school and public libraries. Large public libraries and academic libraries serving fashion and design programs will find the more comprehensive Contemporary Fashion useful. RBB
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