Mary BlumeMaster of Us All, The: Balenciaga, His Workrooms, His World

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Review ------ This thoughtful and stylishly written book is perhaps the most serious and intelligent biography of a fashion designer ever written. --Benjamin Schwarz, The Atlantic One of the best biographies written about any personality in fashion... Take my word for it: Buy it, read it, and love it! --Jeffrey Felner, New York Journal of Books. The wit and sharp eye of Mary Blume have made the French accessible . . . Rather like Nabokov with butterflies, she pins her specimens to the page in full color. --Gore Vidal [A] penetrating and entertaining new biography. --Liesl Schillinger, The New York Times , enthusiastic, and lively first biography of the enigmatic designer. . . Blume, former culture columnist for the International Herald Tribune, writes with wit and omb; she was also a Balenciaga client, a fact that clearly informed the revealing and laudatory perspective shared with readers here. --Publishers Weekly [A] captivating new biography . . . [Blume] rounds out her recollections and Florette's with astute reporting, tracing Balenciaga's--and haute couture's--rise against a richly embroidered swath of social history. . . Despite her impossibly private subject, Blume goes a long way toward illuminating Balenciaga within his own context, finding his of influence on par with that of fashion's other revolutionaries, Chanel and Vionnet. --Megan O'Grady, Vogue.com Elegantly weaving interviews with Balenciaga's last living chums . . . with cultural history, Blume's account follows Balenciaga's top vendeuse Florette Chelot, who provides a keen . . . perspective on midcentury Luxe. Like a Balenciaga suit designed to skim the body rather than hug it, Blume's artful blend of history, reporting, and chat conjures the designer's world. . . Rhonda Lieberman, Bookforum Blume's extensive interviews with [Cristobal Balenciaga's top saleswoman, Florette] Chelot, who stayed with Balenciaga from hi --Various About the Author ---------------- Mary Blume, a native New Yorker who lives in Paris, was a longtime columnist for the International Herald Tribune. She is the author of Cote d'Azur: Inventing the French Riviera and of a collection of her Herald Tribune pieces, A French Affair.