Walter Albini and His Times : All Power to the Imagination

A lively and multifaceted portrait of a true icon of the fashion world of the 1970s. Universally renowned as the master of the total look, Walter Albini created his first collection in 1963. After a meeting with Mariuccia Mandelli he worked with the Krizia atelier and, during his latest season, beside Karl Lagerfeld. Research on dress-making and fabric is one of the all-time features of Albini's work, to whom must be ascribed the birth of a new kind of relationship between the designer and the fabric manufacturer, opening a new groupage concept for advertising on specialized periodicals. This book addresses a crucial moment in the history of fashion: the birth of pret-a-porter with the definitive overcoming of the atelier and the achievement of a certain democracy in fashion. Walter Albini was a protagonist of this moment, aware as he was of the necessity for change and innovation in people's taste.

Maria Luisa Frisa is director of the graduate course in fashion design at the IUAV in Venice, and fashion curator of the Fondazione Pitti Discovery. She is also editor of the Mode series. Stefano Tonchi is the editor of T, the New York Times style magazine.