FLARE June 201 4 FLARE.

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HAPPENI NG
QUEEN VICTORIA WAS THE
original wedding trendsetter, rejecting
the usual coloured gowns of the day
in favour of a lace-rufed white satin
confection. Wedding Dresses 1775
2014 (Victoria and Albert Museum,
May 3March 15, 2015) traces more
than 200 years of matrimonial garb,
including something old (a silk-covered
straw bergre hat from 1780), some-
thing new (Dazed fashion editor Katie
Shillingfords pale grey slashed chifon
gown by Gareth Pugh), something bor-
rowed (the dramatic purple Vivienne
Dior: The
Legendary Images
Edited by
Florence Mller
(Rizzoli, $45)
True
Stories
Hit the sand with one of
these buzzed-about
non-fction reads
Here Comes
the Retrospective
The V&A celebrates two centuries
of saying yes to the dress
Save the Date:
The Occasional
Mortifcations of
a Serial Wedding
Guest Jen Doll
(Riverhead, $29)
Atlantic writer and eter-
nal wedding invitee Jen
Doll has played every big-day
clich, from drunken-guest-
from-hell to bawling BFF. Funny
anecdotes aside, Save the Date
is really about love, and how
the oft-rocky search for a plus-
one continues to be important
to soulful singletons like Doll,
regardless of whether it ends
in I do.
What I Was Doing
While You Were
Breeding: A Memoir
Kristin Newman
(Three Rivers Press, $18)
While her friends were
getting married and
giving birth, caustic
sitcom writer Kristin Newman
was hooking up with hot men
the world over. Propelled by
Clooney-sized commitment
issues, she got with a Russian
bartender and a priapic Viking.
Here she shares her exploits
and the hard-won lessons
learnedwith a frankness that
would have had a lesser woman
reaching for a pseudonym.
The Phantom of
Fifth Avenue: The
Mysterious Life
and Scandalous
Death of Heiress
Huguette Clark
Meryl Gordon (Grand
Central Publishing, $31)
New York socialite
Huguette Clark had a seemingly
perfect life, swanning about
her 42-room Fifth Avenue
apartment and being courted by
French nobility. But she became
a recluse and, in her old age,
retreated to a tiny Manhattan
hospital room, where she
bunked, willingly, for the last
20 years of her life. (Her net
worth at the time: an estimated
$300 million.) Journalist Meryl
Gordons hyper-detailed biog-
raphy investigates why Clark
abandoned such spectacular
privilege. Flannery Dean P
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ADORING DIOR
As the Raf Simons renaissance breathes new life into Christian Dior, a sumptuous coffee-table
book, Dior: The Legendary Images, charts the history of the storied house through iconic photog-
raphy. From Richard Avedons Rene: The New Look of Dior at the Place de la Concorde to
Daniel Jacksons portrait of the labels latest muse, Jennifer Lawrence (in a gown modelled after
a 1949 Miss Dior dress), the hundreds of pictures spanning close to seven decades confrm that,
even if the house of Dior has the rare stumble, its legacy endures. Jillian Vieira
Westwood dcollet number Dita Von
Teese wore to wed Marilyn Manson)
and even something blue (hand-painted
forals on Bellville Sassoons wool coat
from 1970). Alex Brown
Above: Katie
Shilling ford in Gareth
Pugh. Left: A circa-1890
embroidered silk
wedding dress
Model Sasha
Pivovarova in a
Madama Butterfy
inspired jacket from
John Gallianos
spring 2007
couture collection,
shot by Patrick
Demarchelier
A couture topper
from the spring 1956
collection, snapped by
Henry Clarke
HPNbooks&art [Print].indd 1 14-04-21 6:09 PM