Books like Elsa Schiaparelli by Meryle Secrest

Diane von Furstenberg recounts her life—from Brussels childhood to founding a global fashion empire—overcoming cancer and championing women’s empowerment.

""What are we to make of those cultural figures, many with significant international reputations, who tried to find accommodation with the Nazi regime?" Jonathan Petropoulos asks in this exploration of some of the most acute moral questions of the Third Reich. In his nuanced analysis of prominent German artists, architects, composers, film directors, painters, and writers who rejected exile, choosing instead to stay during Germany's darkest period, Petropoulos shows how individuals variously dealt with the regime's public opposition to modern art. His findings explode the myth that all modern artists were anti-Nazi and all Nazis anti-modernist. Artists Under Hitler closely examines cases of artists who failed in their attempts to find accommodation with the Nazi regime (Walter Gropius, Paul Hindemith, Gottfried Benn, Ernst Barlach, Emil Nolde) as well as others whose desire for official acceptance was realized (Richard Strauss, Gustaf Gründgens, Leni Riefenstahl, Arno Breker, Albert Speer). Collectively these ten figures illuminate the complex cultural history of Nazi Germany, while individually they provide haunting portraits of people facing excruciating choices and grave moral questions"--

Explores rivalries between four famous pairs of 20th‑century artists—Picasso & Matisse, Manet & Degas, Pollock & de Kooning, Freud & Bacon—highlighting how friendship and competition spurred new artistic breakthroughs.

Christian Dior’s autobiography reveals the rise of the ‘New Look,’ the workings of a Paris haute couture house, and the private life of the famed designer.

Norman Bel Geddes, a 20th‑century American designer, shaped everything from Broadway sets to Chrysler cars and popular futurist visions like Futurama, revolutionizing entertainment and consumer culture.

Cornel West examines six 19th- and 20th‑century African‑American leaders—Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Martin Luther King Jr., Ella Baker, Malcolm X, and Ida B. Wells‑Barnett—revealing their commitments, contradictions, and lasting influence.

This is a comprehensive, compelling biography following the life and style of the inimitable Elsa Schiaparelli by renowned biographer Meryle Secrest. One of the most extraordinary fashion designers of the twentieth century, Elsa Schiaparelli was an integral figure in the artistic movement of the times. Her collaborations with artists such as Man Ray, Salvador Dali, Jean Cocteau and Alberto Giacometti elevated the field of women's clothing design into the realm of art. Her story is one of pluck, determination and talent with scandal as spice. As the daughter of minor Italian nobility whose disastrous first marriage to a Theosophist caused near penury, she transformed herself into a designer of great imagination and, along with Coco Chanel, her greatest rival, she was one of the few female figures in the field at that time.

Rhonda Garelick’s biography unveils Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel as a 20th‑century force whose revolutionary fashion, masterful branding, and complex personal network reshaped modern style and culture.

Kate Betts chronicles her 1980s Parisian debut as a fashion journalist, blending memoir, travel, and insider fashion lore amid the era’s shifting creative landscape.

"In The Long Weekend, acclaimed historian Adrian Tinniswood tells the story of the rise and fall of the English aristocracy through the rise and fall of the great country house. Historically, these massive houses had served as the administrative and social hubs of their communities, but the fallout from World War I had wrought seismic changes on the demographics of the English countryside. In addition to the vast loss of life among the landed class, those staffers who returned to the country estates from the European theater were often horribly maimed, or eager to pursue a life beyond their employers' grounds. New and old estateholders alike clung ever more desperately to the traditions of country living, even as the means to maintain them slipped away"-- "Drawing on thousands of memoirs, unpublished letters and diaries, and the eye-witness testimonies of belted earls and bibulous butlers, historian Adrian Tinniswood brings the stately homes of England to life as never before, opening the door onto a world half-remembered, glamorous, shameful at times, and forever wrapped in myth. The Long Weekend revels in the sheer variety of country house life: from King George V poring over his stamp collection at Sandringham to fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley collecting mistresses at ancestral homes across the nation, from Edward VIII entertaining Wallis Simpson at Fort Belvedere to the Duke of Marlborough at Blenheim, whose wife became obsessed with her pet spaniels. Tinniswood reveals what it was really like to live and work in some of the most beautiful houses the world has ever seen during the last great golden age of the English country home"--