Runway Madness (Hardcover)

by Robin Givhan (Author), Lucian Perkins (Photographer) "makeup to dry. Behind the scrim is the panic over a broken heel, the last-minute desperate fittings, the silent anguish of a designer putting himself..." (more)
Key Phrases: Todd Oldham, New York, Calvin Klein (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
"Beyond the smoke and mirrors of the runway lies another part of the fashion world." It is there that Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Lucian Perkins finds the most compelling images: über-waif Kate Moss sipping champagne decked out in an undershirt, jeans, and a bogling network of curled hair extensions. Design maven Isaac Mizrahi fretting over a voluminous skirt. Glamour-pusses Naomi Campbell and Veronica Webb lolling around, waiting for their curlers to set, while the clock ticks at the rate of $250 per hour. Perkins gets up on the runway, too. He turns his camera on his colleagues, who form an impenetrable wall of extra-long lenses and tripods. He looks out into the audience, where he finds the gender-bending RuPaul, Southern belle Dolly Parton, and actress Mira Sorvino parked amid the ubiquitous fashion editors and buyers and socialites. And he follows the impossibly fabulous creatures as they strut their wares down that most glamorous corridor--the runway.

The unusually long and narrow shape of the book is an excellent format for Perkins's atmospheric panoramic shots, and leaves room for quotes by Azzedine Alaia, Coco Chanel, and other fashion fixtures to accompany the smaller images. Readers who don't share original supermodel Iman's fashion ennui--she's quoted as saying she "couldn't get excited about another dress"--should be more than sated by the 100 fantastic photos of frocks, gowns, and shifts in Runway Madness.

From The Washington Post
Backstage at a fashion show is all about smoke and mirrors: Just look at these photographs of models girding themselves for the runway, pouting at their own reflections, daubing paint on lips, eyes, cheeks, while cigarettes dangle from their limp elegant fingers. Lucian Perkins, a Washington Post staff photographer, won a Pulitzer Prize in 1995; in Runway Madness, he focuses not on the clothes but on the people creating and parading them. The primping, the waiting, the nerves, the backstage champagne, the gossip, the girl talk, the quick sashay down and back: That's the fashion world as captured here by Perkins and Robin Givhan, fashion writer for The Washington Post. Quotes from fashion mavens accompany the photos. 'So what's there to do after the thrill is gone' says model Yasmeen Ghauri. 'Maybe I'll go back to school and study economics or something. Oh, I don't know. Tell 'em I want to be an astronaut.'

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811821730
• ISBN-13: 978-0811821735
• Product Dimensions: 15.6 x 9.9 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #513,095 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars AWSOME!, October 19, 1998

By A Customer

The books cover caught my attention, I picked it up, looked at it and knew I had to buy it. As a photographer I found this book to be a new way of looking at the world of fashion. "Runway Madness," takes you on a journey of what happens backstage during a fashion show. This book is perfect for anyone who likes fashion and photography.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insightful Photography, December 9, 1998

By	Bill Wright "Alice Wright" (Abilene, Texas) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was fascinated by Perkins' book examining the fashon industry---something that was quite foreign to me. His insightful photographic analysis of the industry and the people opened a new understanding of this activity so foreign to those of us in west Texas. His photographs conveyed the the energy, the joy and despair, anxiety and confidence that accompanies modeling. A great "inside look" by an immanently accomplished photographer.