Tim Walker is one of my favorite fashion photographers. Here are some nice wintery images.

This year, he released a book of his work, which would make an amazing gift: Tim Walker Pictures

As far as I can tell, the name of this book shop is “mode… information.” It’s a small shop that specializes in content for the fashion/design industry, including trend forecasts, pantone color books, catwalk reports, and design books. If you’re in the industry, I suppose you might have upwards of 200 euro to spend on a magazine-sized trend forecasting lookbook. For the rest of us, it’s a rare glimpse.

Personally, I’m more interested in the technical details than the trends, so I snagged a copy of a french patternmaking book I’d never seen before. I’ve already used it to improve a sleeve I was working on.

mode…information
22, rue Pierre Lescot
75001 Paris

If you’ve been reading a while, you know that I love Japanese craft, fashion, and style books. Japanese publishers put out a huge range of well-designed, beautifully photographed books and “mooks” (a cross between a magazine and a book), spurred by the Zakka design movement.

“Zakka has also been described as “the art of seeing the savvy in the ordinary and mundane”. The zakka boom could be recognized as merely another in a series of consumer fads, but it also touches issues of self-expression and spirituality. Cute, corny and kitschy is not enough. To qualify as a zakka, a product must be attractive, sensitive, and laden with subtext.”

Now I’ve gotten many questions about how to go about purchasing Japanese craft books, which can be pretty hard to come by, especially if you don’t live in a big city with a Japanese community. So I thought I’d put together a few resources that could be helpful.

One of the most helpful resources is the Crafting Japanese site, which is chock full of photos of various photos from books, and always lists each ISBN. If you see a book you like, having the ISBN can be really really helpful when searching a non-english site.

Another great resource is Flickr. There are groups on Flickr dedicated to craft books, many of which are Japanese, and it’s become standard practice for members to tag each book with its ISBN. My favorite is the “inspiring images from craft books” pool, but there are others dedicated to Japanese books as well.

As for buying the books, one option is to try a big Japanese bookseller. Many people order from Amazon Japan, and Craftlog has a guide to doing an ISBN search, if you don’t speak Japanese (I don’t). YesAsia is another big one. You could also try Kinokuniya, which now has an English interface. I buy almost all my Japanese books from Kinokuniya, but in the physical retail store in San Francisco, so I haven’t used the site much.

Ebay is another option. Try a search by ISBN, or check out this list of sellers.

You can also find them on etsy. I’ve found sellers such as chocolateswirl that offer a good range of knit and crochet books.

Last, try checking your local Japanese neighborhoods for bookstores. I am lucky enough to live in the bay area, where we have the blessedly huge Kinokuniya. I could live in this store.

Some people are concerned about being able to read the patterns in these books. I’m not sure why it is, but Japanese books tend to be extremely visual. For knitting and crochet, charts are always provided, and techniques are diagrammed. I’ve never had a problem figuring a pattern out, but keep in mind I’m a really visual learner.

By the way, if you’re looking for design inspiration, the Paumes books are incredible.

Hope this is helpful to you!

A quick note to let you know that I reviewed this lovely book, The Cocktail: 200 Fabulous Drinks over at Cocktailia.

You might be interested in the pretty pictures, which are illustrations by one of my favorites, the Australian illustrator Kat MacLeod. Check it out!

I love Japanese magazines, and every once in a while I have to indulge myself. I normally go for the street style magazines like Cutie (tag line: “For independent girls”), because they show actual real people with real style. (By the way, if you like street fashion photography, that’s one of the themes for the next issue of JPG.)

But this one has such nice photography and styling, I chose it in spite of being a bit more high fashion. Here are some images from Fudge (tag line: “NEW TYPE FASHION MAGAZINE for GIRLS.”)

I’m guessing crochet must be very popular in Japan, judging from the amazing array of great crochet books they have at Kinokuniya. I picked these up recently.

The book on the right are just a treasury of different motifs and edgings. The book on the left is called “romantic lace.” The below images are from this book.

I especially liked these roses.

I recently took a trip to Kinokuniya for some Japanese crochet books, but as always, I left the bookstore with more than I’d planned. I think anyone interested in art, design, or fashion should go to Kinokuniya, and especially if you’re into Japanese art, design, or fashion. There are so many incredible books here that you won’t find anywhere else.

I came across this book, Apartements d’amoureux a Paris while browsing around and couldn’t resist its charms. This seems to be part of series of books. There were also books called “Stockholm Love Apartments,” “Paris Ateliers,” etc. I wanted all of them, but forced myself to choose just one. I liked the Ateliers books because I love looking at creative workspaces and studios, but these pictures of Parisian love nests were especially gorgeous and happy-making, and include some home work spaces. The Stockholm series was great too, but a little more sleek and Scandinavian. I like the messy jumbles here.

Also, I like to see that some girls have as many shoes as I do:

Honestly, some of the most adorable couples ever.

I’ve been meaning to post about these books forever: Pattern Magic Vol. 1 and Vol. 2, which I purchased from the always wonderful Kinokuniya in San Francisco.

I’ve been working a lot on pattern making lately, and I can’t tell you how inspiring these books are. They’re laid out like many other Japanese mooks, with large clear shots of the finished garments and a section of detailed, heavily illustrated instructions. The designs are complex and sculputral and very very Japanese. Looking at the photos, it’s sometimes difficult to imagine how a piece of two dimensional fabric was used to create such three dimensional sculpture.

Then you come to the layouts and instructions, which you can study to understand the process. It really tests your spatial abilities, but more than that, it’s a great lesson in constructing 3D shapes from fabric.

Ok, it’s a bit intimidating at first, but the copious illustrations mean you really don’t need to understand Japanese to figure out what’s going on. It’s not for the novice, but if you want to dig into pattern construction, these books are an incredible resource. I really enjoyed studying the images, trying to figure out how it was done, then examining the diagrams. But maybe I’m just nerdy like that.

I am loving these images Julia Rothman posted over at Book By Its Cover, which is an amazing blog, if you haven’t read it.

I love illustration, but I’m particularly into fashion illustration right now. There’s something about the way it melds the ideas of creating identity, and telling a story visually that really sparks my interest.

Click over to Julia’s blog to read her review.

I once had this painting teacher that I really liked. I remember one bright day in October, walking down the street in NY with her on the way to class and she complimented me on my plaid skirt and said, “One autumn, I decided that I would wear nothing but plaid, for the whole season.” I always wanted to try that, like some bizarre modern female version of the Duke of Windsor.

I have long loved plaid. It simultaneously represents both a classic tradition and, thanks largely to Vivienne Westwood, the subversion of that tradition into a punk rock aesthetic. It also has a comforting, woodsy quality that feels perfect for staying indoors in cold months and drinking tea and knitting. These are all things I love.

This book, Tartan: Romancing the Plaid, published by the wonderful folks at Rizzoli, is a gorgeous volume that covers plaid in fashion, interior spaces, and even architecture. From Balmoral to Gaultier, it’s all here, with fascinating text on history, production, and meanings. The book itself is incredibly well produced, with a perfect balance of text and image, thick glossy paper, and even an attached plaid ribbon bookmark.

I really really want to make a red plaid coat like the Marc Jacobs version (minus the real fur, yuck).

If you love plaid, I highly highly recommend ordering a copy of Tartan over at Amazon.