The Big Book of Fashion Ilustration: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

Another new feature!

I have a, well, big book of fashion illustration (they picked a pretty obvious title) that I absolutely love. It is honestly one of my most treasured possessions. It's a "Sourcebook of Contemporary Illustration" put together by Martin Dawber. I found it in a bookstore for around $30, and just had to splurge all of the 30 dollars that happened to be on my person to get it. I love fashion, and I love art, so put the two together and I'm a goner.

Anyway, I've spent weeks on end looking through this book, and ended up marking my favorites--which is starting to number around the hundreds. You can actually see all the tiny pink post-its peeking out of the top of the book in the above picture.
So, in this feature, I'll post some of the book's best and worst illustrations (in my opinion, anyway) of men's, women's, children's, and teen's fashion, swimwear, accessories, shoes, and so on. I also might have a separate feature that focuses on my favorite artists from the book.

I think I'll start this off with some of the better illustrations in the book. If I kicked things off with one of the... more daring illustrations (read: uglier) then I'd just end up scaring everyone away. And I really do love this book; there's some stupid illustrations, in my opinion, but also some truly amazing ones. So for women's fashion, we have:

This one's just glamorous in every sense of the word:

"Lady with Glasses" (2006)
This gorgeous watercolor & ink pen illustration is by Margot Mace van Huijkelom.

How incredibly chic does this girl look?

"Waiting for Marcello" (2005)
Pierre-Paul Paiseau, Adobe Photoshop

These next two are by the same person, and you can tell. The style and materials are so unique (although I haven't yet decided if the lack of faces creeps me out or not).

"Fleur," (2005)
Claire Anderson. Stitched cotton thread on calico

"Anna and Annabelle" (2005)
Claire Anderson. Stitched cotton thread on calico.

I love this artist's stretched-out, quirky style.

"Untitled," (2006)
Laura Laine, Pencil

I figure that's enough to start with, but trust me when I say that there's a lot more where that came from.