The highly creative people who influence the way we look and dress, revel in beauty, sensuous materials, beautiful and original houses, and very often sumptuous gardens where they seek inspiration in nature and recharge their batteries. The gardens of fashion people are elegant creations of color, texture, line, shape, and form. This lavishly illustrated volume takes the reader on a private tour of the gardens of nearly twenty of the most renowned movers and shakers of the fashion world.

Many of the gardens are exquisite floral versions of a designer's clothes: the timeless grace of Valentino's garden in Tuscany; the luxuriant grandeur of Oscar de la Renta's garden in Connecticut; the quaint charm of Hardy Amies's garden in the Cotswolds; even the bold exoticism of Yves Saint Laurent's garden in Marrakesh. Others diverge surprisingly from our expectations, offering a new perspective. Nicole de Vésian, the late head of fashion at Hermès and epitomy of Parisian chic, created a stunningly austere aromatic garden in Provence after her retirement at the age of seventy. Giorgio Armani has grown an oasis atop a forbidding and arid volcanic island in the Mediterranean, while Kenzo has created a complete Japanese garden in the Bastille.

The link among these fashionable gardeners is their drive to create and remake in an endless search for perfection. Pierre Bergé, the business mastermind behind Saint Laurent's empire, is also an educated and experienced gardener who constantly replants and redesigns his many properties around France. For him, as for the others in this book, the garden is not an end but a process, a neverending, constantly changing vehicle for expression and a great source of pleasure for oneself and one's friends. Guided by the extraordinary eye of the photographer Claire de Virieu and the illuminating pen of author Francis Dorléans, followers of fashion trends and garden lovers will revel in this exclusive glimpse of the inside world of fashion from Tangier to Connecticut.

About the Authors:

Garden photographer Claire de Virieu's work has been published in a number of books, including the series "Small Books of Great Gardens" (Vendome), and has appeared in such magazines as Architectural Digest, Marie-Claire Maison, Elle Décor, World of Interiors, and Madame Figaro. Her photographs have been exhibited in Paris, Lausanne, Saint-Cloud, and at other sites in France. She lives in Paris.

Francis Dorléans worked for many years for French Vogue, and writes regularly for l'Officiel and Madame Figaro. He is also an antique dealer and decorator in Paris, and closely follows the French fashion world.