Roxanne Lowit's Backstage Dior, available from teNeues November 1, 2009

When I visited Roxanne Lowit’s Kips Bay studio this week, I was among the very few to have a sneak preview of her forthcoming magnum opus, Backstage Dior. That isn’t a phrase that I typically throw around, especially when it comes to monograph art books. That being said, this book is not only an awe-inspiring look at John Galliano’s adroit couture and Lowit’s progressive photography, but also a very precise blueprint for publishers as to how future art/fashion/photography books should be crafted.

Backstage Dior, 2009 Photo by Roxanne Lowit

The thick pages turn and the images jump off the page; the dynamic hues staging a full-on attack of the senses. In-your-face provocative imagery sets the tone for this look back into the last ten years of Galliano’s reign at Dior as creative director. Since the beginning, Roxanne Lowit has been there to document his ascension into the annals of the most prolific designers of the 20th and 21st centuries. The 248-page book offers readers an intimate look behind the curtains of his exclusive shows where few have been before. Models, makeup artists, stylists, and Galliano himself are among the lucky few to have seen what this books brings to life: a dreamlike world of wearable art being displayed on vivacious human canvases. Her collection of candid and personable photographs convey the electricity of fashion’s most astonishing spectacle.

Backstage Dior, 2009 Photo by Roxanne Lowit

Few books come to mind that can offer even a glimpse of the light this project sheds on the worlds of fashion and photography. The brilliant use of empty, black pages is a technique that mirrors the photographer’s and designer’s personalities as artists and also gives the reader a moment of calm from the flashing of bright colors that fills nearly every page. Not since Tom Ford’s 2008 Rizzoli monograph has a major publishing house attempted this, sans Abrams’ unsuccessful attempt with 2009’s  Avedon Fashion, which employs white endpages. Leave it to Galliano and Lowit to do it right. The mix of black and white and color photography is something that Roxanne has been doing for the length of her career, and was something Warhol himself once told her he admired about her work.

Backstage Dior, 2009 Photo by Roxanne Lowit

With forewords by John Galliano and Suzy Menkes, as well as texts by Simon Doonan, Valerie Steele, and Jean-Jacques Naudet.