So Sylvie

I am a big fan of selvedge magazine (The Fabric of Your Life: Textiles In Fine Art, Fashion, Interiors, Travel & Shopping). "The Imperial Issue" is out right now…

and it's loaded with yummy new books. Here are just a few:

Costumes and Textiles of Royal India (ISBN 0903432552). "After years of searching through dusty museum collections and royal stores across India, acclaimed designer Ritu Kumar has uncovered many of the last surviving examples of traditional royal clothing."

Soviet textiles: Designing the Modern Utopia (ISBN 0853319529). It focuses on textiles designed between 1927 and 1933. You can see the accompanying exhibit through January 21, 2007 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Clothing Culture: Dress in Egypt in the First Millennium AD (ISBN 090326157 x), published in conjunction with the exhibit that ran through the summer at the Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, England.

Staying on the subject of textiles, for those of you on the Left Coast, there is an exhibit at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, The Quilts of Gee's Bend, through December 31st.

The exhibit "features a selection of more than 60 quilts made by four generations of African American women who inhabit a strip of land formed by a deep loop in the Alabama River, about thirty miles from Selma. Descended from slaves and isolated for decades by geography, poverty, and government indifference, the women of this community assembled quilts of astonishing artistry. Described by one reviewer as "eye-poppingly gorgeous," the quilts were pieced from scraps of fabric often salvaged from worn-out clothes combined in extraordinary combinations of color, pattern, and texture. In design, the quilts are equally remarkable."

For more Autumnal inspiration check out two of my favorite design sites, Grace's blog Design*Sponge :

and Courtney's blog Style Court :