Product Description

The flexi-bound 2008 V&A Museum Diary is illustrated with images of Parisian and British couture from a decade that Christian Dior described as the 'Golden Age' of fashion. Dior's launch of the 'New Look' for his first collection in 1947 shocked and delighted the fashion world, creating a new style that symbolized femininity. The decade saw the rise of the celebrity, designer, photographer and supermodel. Glamour, sophistication and fashion are all represented here. The diaries contain national and religious holidays and astronomical information and has a pocket on the inside front cover.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #325531 in Books
• Published on: 2007-07-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Turtleback
• 112 pages

Customer Reviews

Stylish and beautiful
The Victoria & Albert museum in London puts out two engagement diaries every year. There is a desk diary and a smaller purse sized diary. The desk diary is printed on beautiful quality stock. Each two page spread covers one week, with a good-sized blank space for each day. There are 2008 and 2009 calendars up front, an integrated bookmark and a couple of blank pages at the end of the diary for notes.

What really sets the V&A diaries apart is the quality of the photographs. Every year a different theme is chosen from the V&A's vast collection: recent themes have included Middle Eastern Art and details of vintage fabrics. The photographs are always beautifully composed and pleasingly varied.

The theme for this year's diary is "The Golden Age of Couture: Paris and London 1947-1957" and it makes full use of the extensive couture clothing collection held by the museum. Illustrations include fashion photography from the 40s and 50s, catwalk sketches, advertisements and detailed photographs of dresses, hats, shoes and jewellery from the V&A collection. Designers who are featured include (but are not limited to) Balmain, Dior, Worth, Chaumont, Desses, Cavanagh and Fath. Some but not all of the illustrations are in black and white (as they would have originally appeared).

This would be an excellent gift for anyone who has an interest in photography or fashion - or just culture in general. It does a beautiful job of capturing a golden decade of high glamour.

As glamorous as the exhibition!
I was lucky enough to visit the Haute Couture: London and Paris 1947-1957 exhibition at the V&A on New Years Day 2008. I was glad that I had gone on my own, as I spent nearly 4 hours there absorbing every detail of the exhibition. Bliss.

Interested to see the previous review was written by Julia Flyte of Seattle. My name is Julia and my sister lives near Seattle, but more interestingly wasn't that the name of Lord Sebastian Flyte's sister in Brideshead Revisited, which has just been released at the cinema!

My eldest daughter always buys my annual diary for me and this has to be the most sumptuous of them all!

Beautiful but pointless - a year out of date!
This was a stunningly beautiful book purchased in late December 2008 as a gift for my mum, who had asked for a desk diary and loves all things V&A and design-related. She was delighted until she got home and started to use it for its intended purpose eg as a diary.
It is a 2008 diary so therefore no good to anyone at the point at which I bought it - I was very embarassed and frankly disgusted that Amazon would sell an out of date diary without highlighting this important fact.