Fashionable Selby

Hi, what an absolute wonderfully interesting book! Loads of colorful photos, verbiage, by designer, very interesting, and if you are into design,and fashion, this is the book with a ton of inspiration. Lovely very large book, great for coffee table, and that student of design for sure. I am interested in fashion and wanted to get some ideas for sewing and what makes some designers tick, their inspiration, passions and how they do it! Got a lot!The book is 11 inches by 8 inches by almost 1.5 inches thick! Drawings, pictures of the designers, their craft and stories. I loved it, Quite interesting indeed.Quote "understanding the importance of skill, passion and craft,, the foundation of great fashion!" YES This book is 345 pages, it will take you awhile to go through it! Also the pages are lovely, thick quality, just overall a lovely book and well made.I hope you find my review helpful, This would make a very unique gift for sure. Some of the designers you might think are out there, but I love the creative souls, as I am one of them, and appreciate their creations and stories! Have fun, this is a great read and a conversation piece of a book! Enjoy! Kat =^.^=

Only a few pages really caught my eye in Fashionable Selby, which I found overall pretty disappointing, much to my surprise given all the extremely positive reviews. The designers and other artisans featured in the book are undoubtedly more interesting than they appear here. The book's presentation of them keeps the details of their work mostly shrouded. For each designer/artisan, we are shown only a few cluttered, murky, hyper-saturated photographs. In the few cases where I found an image visually interesting, I wished the book would give some information about what I was looking at, but none of the images is accompanied by captions or explanations. Each set of images *is* accompanied, however, by a fake-spontaneous, Pollyanna-toned, nearly illegible handwritten/sketched exchange between (presumably) Selby and the artist. These tend to convey a pretentious, "insider"-y attitude that ultimately comes off as empty.The table of contents, which is done in freehand illustration style, also takes the book's eclectic, hyper-busy M.O. to the point where it is very difficult to read.Overall, the book takes its jumbled, bohemian, quirky aesthetic--which normally I would really quite like--to such an extreme that it becomes nearly illegible and therefore alienating. It's as if Selby wants to tantalize but ultimately exclude readers, consigning them to remain "outsiders" who can never really glimpse the arcane, esoteric worlds he (just barely) represents. This is probably the point, actually--to remind us of the exclusivity of the fashion world by excluding us even at the level of looking and reading. If the book's aim is to convey the fashion world as a world shrouded in mystery, in this it admirably suceeds. It just doesn't inspire the requisite awe in me.The two heavier, card stock pages at the front make it very awkward and difficult to skim through the book in a leisurely way, as one might wish with an eye-candy-ish, oversized "coffee-table" style book such as this. I believe these card stock pages are designed to be ripped out--they appear perforated near the gutter--but I didn't attempt to do so, since I knew I would be returning the book.On the good side, this is a large, attractive hardcover book with a colorful, eye-catching, texturally pleasing matte paper-over-board cover and high-quality paper and color reproductions. This is the sort of book you see featured on the tables at stores like Anthropologie. A lot of those books are very satisfying; this one, not so much.I am a photographer, illustrator, and art historian and have had a long career in publishing. I love books about artists, artisans, designers, and craftspeople who make unusual, quirky, creative things. So I wanted to--and fully expected to--love this book. As it is, I'm kind of amazed at all the accolades.

I am a Selby fan and a fashion fan so of course I purchased this book. I chose the kindle edition which I read on my iPad. I was looking forward to the opportunity to "enlarge" the photos so that I could really hone in on the details. This did not happen. The photos enlarge but not "indefinitely," only to a specific size. Also, there is a feature of the kindle edition that I found annoying and couldn't seem to figure out. When I tapped or slid my finger across the screen to turn the page, the individual photos on the page enlarged instead. Sometimes there were three or four photos that enlarged in turn. Sometimes I managed to turn to the next page as I intended and sometimes not…. I found this frustrating and wish I had purchased the book edition instead. As far as the actual features in the book, I loved them and give the book five stars.

As an artist, it's difficult to read even a few pages of this book without getting new ideas about what I might want to make next. If you're looking for insight into what fuels the fashion industry's creative engine, this book delivers. See directly into the living and work spaces of fashion's biggest names and it's up-and-comers. Read Todd's quirky interview questions and his subjects' inventive responses. The book's lavish production, prodigious size and aesthetic punch make it a great bargain. I highly recommend it to those on the Fashion World's creative side and anyone else who wants to see visual ingenuity in utero.

As a professional fashion journalist, I expected to meet the usual suspects. High end designers and bankable fashion houses. Well, some of them are here, or course. But the most spectacular here is the roster of under the radar designers, adorable mavericks, amazingly talented, hard-working artists the Selby has enrolled. It made me feel like jumping on planes immediately to go and meet them all over the world. Although I already get the feeling that they are all my BFFs.

Fun inspiration book, though expensive and a bit useless over time. I still like flipping pages to get visually stimulated.

There's a reason Hipster Nation sees the world through the lens of Todd Selby. Every movement has its champion, and Todd clearly sets the pace for we who appreciate the cool and quirky. I have all of his books and thumb them when my creative juices begin to run dry. This is a book for anyone curious about what's happening on the streets of Hipsterdome. Or for someone who needs to hippen up their Gen X game. Rock on Selby!

Had never heard of Selby until I bought this book last week. Turns out his writing is very accessible, and each chapter seems interesting even for those with no interest in fashion itself (maybe preferring interior design or something - perhaps not those who don't like the arts at all...). The book is fairly large, well presented, and has colourful and high quality pictures. Todd asks unusual questions which give him fun results.I would recommend this to anyone looking for inspiration in any area of their life and to those who want to see different, less well-documented sides of the business. It has none of the pretensions of the (few) other fashion books I have read, making it an easy and fun read.

A truly inspirational book. There are so many very clever and artistic designers, some are so quirky with wonderful ideas. It is a lovely book that you can keep dipping into. I find it sparks off ideas of my own.

good price, great book

brilliant book. thank you

Again a great visual journey by Tod Selby! They give you lots of inspiration or distraction when you need it!