“She is the most completely sensational new beauty and the best example of what it means to be of mixed blood. Nothing pure is interesting.” Richard Avedon

Nico was one of the most fascinating and mysterious women of the multimedia revolution of The Sixties, and long after that till the present day. She was born on October 16th, 1938, in Cologne, in Nazi-controlled Germany. At the age of two she was taken to the little town of Spreewald on the outskirts of… More

When France refurbished its identity after the defeat and deprivation of the second world war, two men were crucial to the re-establishment of the nation as global supplier of luxuries. One was the couturier Christian Dior, the other his chief visualiser, artist René Gruau, who has died aged 95.

“Who knew that 40 years after the ‘death’ of fashion illustration it would be undergoing such a revival of interest? The depth and breadth of talent today is extraordinary. The truth is that we will always need artists to record and interpret a designer’s work. It’s a symbiotic relationship; one art-form describing another.” David Downton

“My favorite thing in the world is women. There have been basically only two women who interested me. One I was married to–Allegra Kent. The other was Marilyn Monroe. I had no way of knowing what her demons were.”