Edition 7l, Paris

ISBN 3-88243-925-4

Fashion has strange habits. Season by season, the industry promotes creativity, individuality and diversity, yet each country in Europe has a set of retail clones duplicated with tedious predictability in every town and city. It is difficult to know whether men, or women are less well served. Certainly, women's clothes are cheaper and far more retail space is given over to women's wear than clothing for men. On the other hand, men's clothes are far more predictable from year to year and generally more practical, adaptable and long wearing. Judging by the success of H&M, with their low cost derivatives of famous names, the top end of the industry is little bothered by the imitations of the mass market. While the exclusive designer stores on Berlin's Ku'damm are perenially deserted, these same brand names, Jil Sander, Versace and all, are everywhere in the chain stores selling cosmetics.

Accepted as the basis for business success, shouldn't we be surprised that branding has not created its own stars in the areas where their products actually sell - skin care, hair care and perfumes?

A book about hair is a rare excursion and "Hair Style" is built around photographs from dozens of haute couture and pret a porter shows, all emphasising the impact of Odile Gilbert's work with hair, rather than the clothes, or the models. Gilbert's work is ephemeral. If the cut of our hair is at best temporary, then these fashion show transformations endure for a matter of minutes, or maybe some hours on a photoshoot. The immediate impact is mediated by the enduring future of the photograph and it is clear that Gilbert anticipates the eventual appearance on the page. Contextualised by the character of the collection and the atmosphere of the show, Gilbert's work is sometimes extravagantly sculptural, often geometirc in line and body, with references to cinema, Louise Brookes, Marilyn Monroe, almost every period from the early twentieth century onward is drawn upon. The only major style not represented is the partially shaved feminist cut of the early 1980's. Indeed the overall impression here is feminine rather than feminist. The selection of photographs in 'Her Style' begins in 1985, but the majority are from the 1990's for designers such as Gaultier, Galliano, Lagerfeld and McQueen, or magazines like Harper's Bazaar and various editions of Vogue.

A good number of the photo's backstage and working polaroids are Gilbert's own, though the development of her work is best revealed in a series of 46 shots by Peter Lindbergh, ranging from the early '90s with hair cut close to the head establishing light and shade to emphasise the face, to the extraordinarily complex constructions prompted by Galliano's pret a porter collection in 1996. The first sign of this shift in style to incorporate extentions and decoration is a shot of Kristen McMennamy for Harper's Bazaar in 1993, where the head is almost encased by a mass of braids and artificial flowers. From then on, Gilbert's work extends the geometry of the whole figure, balancing the body to redefine the physical presence of the figure, creating both a new silhouette and visual balance, while enabling the hair to provide a source of colour and textures that complement both the fabrics and form of the clothes. This culminates in a group of four photos by Jean-Baptiste Mondino from Gaultier haute couture in 2001, where Gilbert produces a framework extending upwards and sideways from the head to use the hair to create calligraphic line and pattern.

"Her Style" has little, or no text, or commentary, simply a brief introduction by Karl Lagerfeld and an index of thumbnail images to navigate the photographs. The images have been edited aesthetically, rather than chronologically, or according to designer, model and photographer. Opposing pages often share a formal similarity though the images come from completely different sources and there is a careful juxtaposition of close-ups, head and shoulders and full length shots. This is a well made book that successfully follows its subject, hair, when it could easily have lapsed into a catalogue of recent fashion. As part of Karl Lagerfeld's publishing project, K7, this is another interesting claim for the whole experience of couture to be defined as culture.

JC.