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"Thumbing through Icons of Vintage Fashion (Abrams, $55) is a bit like getting lost in the racks of the biggest vintage shop in the world. Which stands to reason, given that the 504-page book by fashion expert P\u00E9n\u00E9lope Blanckaert and writer Ang\u00E8le Rincheval Hernu is subtitled Definitive Designer Classics at Auction 1900\u20132000.\n\nPinterestFacebookA black silk-velvet and satin-duchesse evening dress by Jacques Fath sold at auction for $15,000 in 2011, more than 9 times its high estimate. Photo: Jacques Fath\n\nBeginning with an undated Jeanne Lanvin tea dress of slate-blue silk crepe that a young Eleanor Roosevelt might have worn and ending with an 1998\u201399 Alexander McQueen black cashmere jacket peppered with tiny buttons, Icons of Vintage Fashion is a dizzying cavalcade of what women wore and when they wore it, decade by decade. Most pages are given over to two ensembles, accompanied by just-the-facts descriptions, estimates, hammer prices, auction house names, and the specialists who determined the costumes\u2019 worth. A little more exposition, however, would have been helpful because a few entries are bound to puzzle. One 1920s Chanel black-silk chiffon cocktail dress is absolutely transparent, from collarbone to pubis, which seems a bit much, even for Les Ann\u00E9es Folles\u2014surely a slip was involved?\n\nPinterestFacebookA Paul Poiret couture design from the 1920s is embossed with gold lam\u00E9 and features a sarilike wrap. In 2008, it sold for $42,400 in Paris. Photo: \u00A9 Studio S\u00E9bert - photographes\n\nDiverting interviews with fashion insiders like Paris dealer Didier Ludot and curator Pamela Parmal of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, are included, as well as a tempting glossary of shops and auction houses. But Icons of Vintage Fashion (published simultaneously by \u00C9ditions de La Martini\u00E8re as Tr\u00E9sors du Vintage) is as much a dream book sur mesure as it is a reference guide, and it will provoke as many questions as it answers.\n\nPinterestFacebookJean Paul Gaultier designed this sheath for his Fall/Winter 1984 pr\u00EAt-\u00E0-porter collection, \u201CBarb\u00E8s.\u201D It sold for $22,100 in 2009. Photo: \u00A9 Christie\u2019s Images/ The Bridgeman Art Library\n\nWould Herm\u00E8s ever revive that smashing 1970s ready-to-wear coat of ochre wool with lambskin straps? Whatever happened to hostess skirts? Was anybody ever cut or bruised while wearing a Paco Rabanne metallic shift? Is it too late for Paul Poiret to be cloned? And how could that Givenchy-couture cloud of black dotted-Swiss tulle on page 271 sell at auction for only $305? Here\u2019s hoping the answers will come in an equally striking follow-up volume."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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