Cassell, 1989 - 343 頁 Cecil Beaton's history of fashion and the people who influenced it during the first half of this century is an original and extremely personal account, illustrated throughout by his own delightful drawings and photographs. It would be difficult to imagine a happer combination of author and subject. The book abounds in anecdotes of the famous personalities who left their imprint on fashion during the author's lifetime: from Diaghilev, who was responsible for the fantastic revival of Orientalism in European taste which the Russian Ballet fostered, to Gertrude Lawrence, who 'smoked cigarettes with a nuance that implied just having come out of bed and wanting to go back into it'. He discusses to great couturiers from Schiaparelli and Chanel between the wars to Dior in the fifties; Mrs Dudley Ward, Lady Diana Cooper and others famous beauties; the legendary figures of the demi-monde, Lantelme, Polaire and Forzane whose strange incandescent beauty was 'a clarion call to sex'. No one knew better than Cecil Beaton how to recapture the mood and style of an era: the famous 'white' interior decoration which Mrs Syrie Maugham created; the poignancy by the music of Cole Porter; the'twenties full of the 'precipe-bound excitement of youth', year a period of immense creativeness, when Virginia Woolf was writing and Picasso was painting. His talent for the most juste in a description, combined with the wealth of obstervation and reflection which he poured into this book, make it stimulating and though-provoking, as well as most entertaining reading.