Trunks and Trunks
Luis Vuitton: 100 Legendary Trunks by Pierre Leonforte
Before the standardisation of luggage enforced a set of cumbersome limitations, trunks were the bastion for the globe-trotting jet-set. Louis Vuitton: 100 Legendary Trunks recounts the history and legacy of the world’s most coveted luxury luggage brand. The romantic idea of a trunk, covered in stickers, accompanying its owner on exotic journeys certainly is one to inspire great stories. This beautiful coffee table book will feature over 800 photographs, documenting some of the fashion house’s most iconic and often custom made pieces for history’s most interesting people, from Ernest Hemingway to the Maharaja of Baroda. An exhibition titled Voyage En Capitale: Louis Vuitton and Paris (ends February 27th) at the Carnavalet museum in Paris is currently host to the trunks that with a rich visual and cultural history.
Dolce & Gabbana Uomini by Mariano Vivanco,
Yes, it is that sort of coffee table book that idealises the modern Adonis, reminiscing of Greek and Roman traditions: the hero, the soldier and the sportsman. Photographed by Mariano Vivanco, both in black and white and in colour, the volume lets us admire well-known faces from international catwalks merging into a masculine and sensual snapshot of Mankind. Their perfect bodies and their tensed muscles, in the nude or at the very most a pair of D&G briefs, are almost reminiscent of an anatomy manual. This book published in support of Project EUPLOOS (www.linesonline.org) aims to put online Uffizi Gallery’s (Firenze) entire collection of prints and drawings by creating a complete, accessible computerised catalogue.
Published by Dolce & Gabbana and Rizzoli
Then Stories about Smoking by Stuart Evers
Linked by cigarettes and subtle interpretations of love, alighting on possibility in the smallest of lives, these powerfully yet understatedly written tales are in fact coupled not only by the glowing ember, but also by the idea of what can happen when the head and the heart don’t see eye to eye. Ten stories of allure, betrayal, nostalgia, solitude, desire and loss, of silence broken by the click of a lighter explore the sad side of love, whether unrequited, faded away or simply ill-advised, but in the end with a decisive wink at the humour that lives alongside everyday’s sadness. There is great understanding for humanity in Evers way of aiming at the heart of things; at their circumstantial irritabilities.
Published by Pan MacMillan, to be released in March 2011
The Decameron by Professor Giovanni Boccaccio
Set against the background of the Black Death of 1384, the hundred linked tales in Giovanni Boccaccio’s undisputed masterpiece are peopled by nobles, knights, abbots, nuns, philosophers, artists, peasants, pilgrims, spendthrifts, thieves, and gambler. Its unabashedly earthy tales of love, appearing in all its opportunities, from the erotic to the heartbreaking, recapture both, the tragedies and comedies of medieval life.
It is known that since its first publication in the 1400 writers have been drawing inspiration from The Decameron, a literary work culturally so important it is now part of an initiative to preserve printed works worldwide, and made yet richer by a new introduction by Thomas G. Bergin and an afterword by Teodolina Barolini.
Published by Signet Classics
