MetPublications

In Pursuit of Fashion presents outstanding works from the greatest private collection of twentieth-century fashion and explores the modern discipline of fashion collecting. This unique group of ensembles and accessories, assembled over several decades by Sandy Schreier, includes many rare and historically significant pieces that define key moments in fashion and features not only iconic works by established designers but also looks by pioneering couturiers rarely represented in museum collections. These remarkable objects, by designers including Gilbert Adrian, Cristobal Balenciaga, Boué Soeurs, Gabrielle Chanel, Christian Dior, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, Maria Gallenga, Karl Lagerfeld, Paul Poiret, and Madeleine Vionnet, are illustrated with stunning new photography by fashion photographer Nicholas Alan Cope. Schreier is a pioneer in the field of collecting fashion. Her interest began at a time when collecting and treating these creations as an art form was rare. She amassed a staggering breadth of work that reflects her wide-ranging taste and connoisseurship. An informative introduction discusses the unique evolution of Schreier’s collecting in parallel with a developing field. The book also includes descriptions of more than eighty works, including rare works on paper, as well as a lively interview with Schreier that traces the progress of her collecting from its roots in Detroit to the present day.

This investigation into Karl Lagerfeld’s (1933–2019) artistry explores his extraordinary sixty-five-year career, from the designs for Chloé and Fendi in the 1960s and 1970s to his celebrated leadership in the 1980s and beyond at Chanel and his own label. Inspired by the “line of beauty” theorized by eighteenth-century English painter William Hogarth, this dazzling publication pursues the straight and serpentine “lines” and their intersections in Lagerfeld’s work as a means of understanding his unique creative process.