FEW forms of creativity are as transient as fashion. Which is why a new series of slim volumes on some of this century's greatest designers is so welcome. Most important of all in the collection is the volume dedicated to Madeleine Vionnet, a pioneer in the 1920s and 1930s but now largely unknown outside fashion cognoscenti. Born in 1876, she opened her own house in Paris in 1912; at its height, this employed 1,200 workers as demand for Vionnet's work soared.
But although she only died in 1975, the designer closed her atelier at the outbreak of the second World War and never returned to clothes thereafter. "I have tried all my life to be the physician of the figure," said Vionnet and her greatest skill, inspired by classical Greek statuary, was in draping fabric around the body. Mistress of the bias cut, which she brought to perfection, she constantly introduced new techniques which were subsequently used by other designers - Vionnet used to photograph every one of her designs from several angles to deter potential plagiarists.
With Vionnet "the art of couture was never taken further or higher", according to Christian Dior, subject of another monograph in this series. A year after opening his own house, Dior caused a sensation around the world with his "New Look"; famously, there are photographs of Parisian women attempting to rip garments off a model, incensed that they could never afford to use so much fabric during post war rationing. By 1948, Helene Rochas could write:
"Dior's collection was awaited as eagerly as the opening of an opera". The first couturier to appear on the cover of Time magazine, the designer died suddenly of a heart attack just 10 years after he launched the New Look.
A much longer survivor on the French fashion scene was Coco Chanel, indisputably the most famous designer of the 20th century. There really can be little left to say about Chanel; every aspect of her work and personal life has been intimately examined. But this little book has some wonderful photographs of the woman herself: dressed in the early 1920s in clothes borrowed from her then lover, the Duke of Westminster and, most remarkable of all, snapped by Man Ray in 1935 when she was aged 52, yet looked at least 20 years younger.
Final subject in this new series is the tiny Tunisian Azzedine Alaia who, in a convenient link with the past, began his career in Paris working for Christian Dior - where he lasted a mere week. Always an outsider, not least because he is an Arab working in France, Alaia launched his own label in 1980, a decade in which he became favourite designer with the likes of Madonna and Tina Turner. An advocate of new stretch fabrics, particularly Lycra, he was responsible also for designing the voluminous tricolour gown worn by diva Jessye Norman at the French Revolution bicentenary celebrations in Paris seven years ago. Appropriately enough, one of his favourite designers is Madeleine Vionnet.
Each of these books comes with an introductory essay, followed by a generous selection of photographs and drawings and a chronological history of the designer in question. Two more monographs - on Valentino and Gaultier - are due to be published this autumn, with further additions to the series planned for next year.