Description: For more than three decades, Geoffrey Beene has devoted himself to the joy and the mystery of the "possession" between a woman and her clothes. It is his passion, his pleasure. Most often described as "perverse", "radical", "enigmatic", Geoffrey Beene is as revered by the Establishment as he is by fashion's underground. He is a man who revels in his own unruliness, in his role as the subversive outsider. For Geoffrey Beene, "simplification is a very complicated process". Propelled forever forward, he continues to pare down, to streamline the female anatomy, removing padding and innerlinings, doing away with zippers and fasteners. As one reviewer has observed, "Beene works a bias so finely around bodily curves that even his seams look like they're picking up speed". The first to desert conventional runways and megamodels, he now shows his clothing on a stage with dancers leaping, doing grand jetes in layers of weightless wool melton, double-faced jersey, silk matelasse. In addition to Brenda Cullerton's bright, witty, utterly engaging and provocative text are 120 photographs - all specially chosen for this book by Mr. Beene. In them we glimpse the super-structured dresses from the early 1960s, just before Mr. Beene sets in and liberates once and for all the body from the bodice; the impact of menswear; the maverick pairings of fabrics; the explosive use of color; the refined, controlled style of his body-skimming gowns.

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