To the eyes of the fashion photography connoisseur and novice alike, 'American Fashion' (commissioned by the Council of Fashion Designers of America) is a sigh-inducing pictorial narrative underscored by a concise and powerful text.
Tracking fashion as a mirror of society, Charlie Scheips (cultural historian, journalist and curator) keeps his peripheral vision on socioeconomic matters with his eyes focused on all things fashionable. Scheips manages to thoroughly identify every American fashion milestone in context without deviating into territory that is anything less than essential. He credits Lord and Taylor's legendary Vice President Dorothy Shaver as the first person to display American designers in store windows and cites 1943's proposition L85 which banned use of certain more...