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The Beautiful Fall: Fashion, Genius, and Glorious Excess in 1970s Paris Paperback – September 6, 2007

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Alicia Drake (Author)
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4.5 out of 5 stars 51 customer reviews
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Product Details

  • Paperback: 448 pages
  • Publisher: Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (September 6, 2007)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0316001856
  • ISBN-13: 978-0316001854
  • Product Dimensions: 5.5 x 1 x 8.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #386,296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Top Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsA Fascinating Portrait of Two Fashion Legends and the Forces that Shaped Them
By Claire Calladine on February 15, 2007
Format: Hardcover
The Beautiful Fall is a fascinating view into the Paris fashion scene during the intensely creative and revolutionary period of the 60's and 70's (and beyond). The book concentrates on fashion as lived by the rival camps of Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, but its scope is much broader. Throughout a narrative that reads as compellingly as fiction, the author analyzes the socio-cultural events that shaped the Paris fashion world. Drake astutely pays homage to the symbiotic realtionship fashion has always had with society. She also taps into the fashion world's neuroses in all their terrifying glory: Saint Laurent's and Lagerfeld's ongoing fear of being outdone by the other; YSL's battles with his own creative demons; the manic way in which Lagerfeld surrounds himself with an everchanging fashion coterie that fuels his own creativity.

Drake's writing style is fluid, with her prose as rich and elegant as the world she depicts. Turning the pages of the book, one can see, taste and feel the luxe accoutrements that are the lot of fashion royalty: the sumptuous residences, the sit-down dinners for a hundred, the plush privelige of a chauffered limousine. Yet Drake also opens a door to the down side of fashion--the wounded egos as entourage members are cut loose, the heinous drug hangovers after all night parties at Le Palace, or the letdown of a fashion season fallen flat, when an anticipated collection is panned or ignored.

Class, too, is an overriding theme. The weight of the aristocracy is evoked, with its crushing confines of hierarchy and tradition.Read more ›
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5.0 out of 5 starsMust-read for anyone even remotely interested in fashion
By Glenn Belverio on April 7, 2007
Format: Hardcover
I have been a fashion writer for about 10 years and this is absolutely one of the best fashion biographies I've read since perhaps DV by Mrs. Vreeland. The Beautiful Fall is beautifully written--a richly detailed account of Paris in the 50's through 80's packed with fashion and Parisian history, insight, and delicious gossip and scandal. You'll feel like you're there at the party and front row at shows that took place long before the televised mania over fashion began in America in the early '90s. Fabulous photos, as well.
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5.0 out of 5 starsa BEAUTIFUL book
By Caroline Weber on October 26, 2006
Format: Hardcover
I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Like Alicia Drake, I write on fashion, but the comparisons end there, as Drake, who is superlatively gifted author, truly exists in a league all her own. Her treatment of this gripping topic--fashion-world excesses and catfights in 1970s Paris--is nothing short of excellent: astonishingly well researched, fascinatingly detailed, and wonderfully readable. THE BEAUTIFUL FALL is a must-have for anyone who cares about clothing, or Paris, or just plain terrific writing.
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5.0 out of 5 starsIntriguing & Excellent Reportage
By Elizabeth Dudley on January 3, 2007
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
This book is a great read, and is an intensely intriguing tale of social history and personality in the context of the fashion world. The reportage is very credible and well documented. The approach and the narrative in just the right tone so that one reads for twenty pages and is totally engrossed before lifting one's head for a cup of tea. Too bad that the French have exercised censorship in a most undemocratic maneuver and banned it from being sold there. There is a lot of ugliness in the fashion world as emodied in several characters and events in this true story. Yet the narrative of a time with different cross currents interacting in fashion, style, industry & culture is intriguing and educational.
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5.0 out of 5 starsThe Beautiful Fall
By Nevada Snow on July 3, 2007
Format: Hardcover Verified Purchase
Alicia Drake's "The Beautiful Fall" was the most fascinating and informative book about the last fifty years of the world of haute couture I have read to date. In essence it was the joint biography of Yves Saint Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, but it also created a vivid picture of the Parisian fashion scene during the period.
The book was meticulously researched and filled with marvellous anecdotes and characters, including Antonio Lopez, Paloma Picasso, and Loulou de la Falaise, to name just a few.
Especially interesting was the inimitable Pierre Berge, the business brain behind Yves Saint Laurent.
I originally found out about this book in a newspaper article about the court case in France over its contents. Karl Lagerfeld sued the author, but in my opinion, it was Yves Saint Laurent whose image was tarnished. Saint Laurent was portrayed as a self-centred, immature man who became increasingly reclusive with time. Lagerfeld, on the other hand, was portrayed as a survivor thanks to his own creativity, hard work and business acumen.
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5.0 out of 5 starsDecadence indeed
By a reader on January 28, 2007
Format: Hardcover
"The Beautiful Fall" (which is a somewhat literal translation of the word `decadence' in French, and nothing to do with its English meaning of the word) is a superbly researched account of the influential generation of young men and women who, in the aftermath of the gilded age of post-IIWW fashion and the revolution of 1968, refused to lead their lives in a less than young, beautiful and shocking modern lifestyle.

Instead, they cultivated, all their lives, alternative ways of being perceived as nothing less than innovative and influential, which then became for a time still resonating today, the dominant cultural style of much of the fashion world.

Alicia Drake traces the fate of the gifted and glamorous generations of the Paris in the 1970's through the lives of two of its central figures, Yves Saint-Laurent and Karl Lagerfeld, and their members and accomplices, most of whom attained considerable importance in the shape and character of Paris life, such as Pierre Bergé, Betty Catroux, Loulou de la Falaise, Jacques de Bascher, Kenzo, Pat Cleveland, Antonio, Paloma Picasso, Anna Piaggi, among others.

Their story takes us from Germany, Morocco and Paris from the thirties to today, through the revolutions of the sixties, the arrival of new money, the dinner parties and balls, the impossible intake of drugs and alcohol, the disco area and the AIDS epidemic, into allusive womanhood, the opulence and decay of beauty, the importance of living the day, in glamour, as if it were the last.

The volume includes an enormous amount of first personal accounts and quotations and a good selection of photographs, many from private sources, of the fascinating personalities whose lives and careers Alicia Drake has woven into a provocative, richly textured social and intellectual history of fashion.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 starsOne of My Favorite Fashion Biographies

A must read for every fashion fan. The Beautiful Fall is easily one of the best fashion biographies out there that puts you in a time machine, as you go back in time to witness... Read more

Published 20 days ago by The Travel Bug
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Great nostalgia book. Enjoyed.

Published 1 month ago by Bernadette Hackett
5.0 out of 5 starsFive Stars

Very Well Written -- Great narrative style.

Published 1 month ago by Ordaz
5.0 out of 5 starsGood book for followers of YSL and Karl Lagerfeld

If only YSL and King Karl had words to add...

Published 4 months ago by Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 starsFascinating. A captivating narrative, and extremely well researched...

Fascinating. A captivating narrative, and extremely well researched. Not to miss!

Published 5 months ago by Jason Chadwell
5.0 out of 5 starsinteresting read with beautiful photos. i definitely recommend

lovely, interesting read with beautiful photos. i definitely recommend.

Published 9 months ago by sophia
5.0 out of 5 starsHistorical viewpoint of French Couture in its heyday

I have always been fascinated with fashion and specifically, the 1970s period when YSL and Lagerfeld were creating the foundation of today's fashion industry. Read more

Published 13 months ago by Jennifer A. Hoffman
2.0 out of 5 starsTearing down idols.

The book is a bit drawn out and terribly painful to read. I adore both Yves and Karl and think the book is quite malicious. I was hoping for a true study of fashion, not gossip.

Published 13 months ago by Anna
4.0 out of 5 starsGIFT

Purchased and sent as a gift. Recipient was very pleased.

Published 14 months ago by Rick Rowe
3.0 out of 5 starsGood book for people wanting to know all the details ...

Good book for people wanting to know all the details of 70s fashion. But too many details for people not involved in fashion business.

Published 18 months ago by guagualoveyou

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