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My Wonderful World of Fashion: A Book for Drawing, Creating and Dreaming
An interactive coloring book for fashionistas of all ages, My Wonderful World of Fashion is packed withbeautiful and sophisticated illustrations specially created by the leading fashion-illustrator Nina Chakrabarti.
The book encourages creativity, with illustrations to color in and designs to finish off, as well as simple ideas for making and doing (how to make a sari, turn a napkin into a headscarf, dye a T-shirt, and so on). Covering clothing, shoes, bags, jewelry, and other accessories, the illustrations span both vintage fashionsdrawing on beautiful and interesting objects from past agesand contemporary designs from the illustrator's own imagination.
'Did you know...?' features that give brief historical notes encourage children to be inspired by history and by other cultures. A wonderful celebration of fashion, the book will appeal to fashion addicts from 8 years plus.
The book encourages creativity, with illustrations to color in and designs to finish off, as well as simple ideas for making and doing (how to make a sari, turn a napkin into a headscarf, dye a T-shirt, and so on). Covering clothing, shoes, bags, jewelry, and other accessories, the illustrations span both vintage fashionsdrawing on beautiful and interesting objects from past agesand contemporary designs from the illustrator's own imagination.
'Did you know...?' features that give brief historical notes encourage children to be inspired by history and by other cultures. A wonderful celebration of fashion, the book will appeal to fashion addicts from 8 years plus.
272 pages, Paperback
First published September 23, 2009
About the author
Nina Chakrabarti
47 books3 followersAward winning illustrator Nina Chakrabarti grew up in Calcutta, India and moved to the United Kingdom in her teens. A love of drawing led her to study illustration at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, both in London. She brings her joyful style and distinctive line quality to an eclectic range of commissioned work and has written several illustrated books for children including the international bestseller ‘My Wonderful World of Fashion’ now translated into ten languages. She lives and works in Hastings on the south coast of England.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 8, 2022
This is a really solid and well done art activity book focused on feminine fashion. It’s great if you want a coloring book, but it’s also great for thinking about design at various levels, patterns and variations, and actually has a bunch of instructions for how to do some basics of altering and decorating clothes.
November 9, 2009
My Wonderful World of Fashion is flat out awesome. Though it is marketed for children 8 and up I thought it was fabulous. I think anyone interested in sketching, fashion, illustration, patterns or just a cool book to look at for inspiration for drawing would appreciate it. It sure made me want to sit down and draw.
Chakrabarti definitely has a talent for showcasing so much all under the umbrella of fashion. From a brief history of fashion to intricate patterns to giving people the confidence to create their own there is a diverse range of activities in this book. I love how detailed or simple her illustrations can be. They are beautiful and very inspiring.
My one suggestion for this book would be perhaps a different sort of binding that allowed for the book to lay open flat on its own for ease of use. I also think that after awhile the binding might crack. Personally I wouldn't want to make one mark in the book because it is so beautiful on its own but would love to perhaps make a copy of a page so I could complete the activity that way without ruining the book but the binding doesn't really allow for that. Tear out pages would have also been a great idea. The pages are definitely thick enough that they could hold up to coloring.
Overall I am extremely impressed with Chakrabarti's illustrations and ideas and I will definitely be watching to see what she comes up with next.
Chakrabarti definitely has a talent for showcasing so much all under the umbrella of fashion. From a brief history of fashion to intricate patterns to giving people the confidence to create their own there is a diverse range of activities in this book. I love how detailed or simple her illustrations can be. They are beautiful and very inspiring.
My one suggestion for this book would be perhaps a different sort of binding that allowed for the book to lay open flat on its own for ease of use. I also think that after awhile the binding might crack. Personally I wouldn't want to make one mark in the book because it is so beautiful on its own but would love to perhaps make a copy of a page so I could complete the activity that way without ruining the book but the binding doesn't really allow for that. Tear out pages would have also been a great idea. The pages are definitely thick enough that they could hold up to coloring.
Overall I am extremely impressed with Chakrabarti's illustrations and ideas and I will definitely be watching to see what she comes up with next.
April 27, 2015
Originally Published here : http://redheatherduff.blogspot.co.uk/...
Purchased on Amazon.co.uk
Continuing on my quest down the Amazon(.co.uk) to find colouring books to feed my obsession I came across this one, well actually I came across this one plus two others in the series but today its all about this book, Nina Chakrabarti's My Wonderful World of Fashion.
First of all this book is beautiful to look at it pretty, pink and it is massive, I believe it is 200 pages plus in length.
My creative juices were starting to flow and I hadn't even opened the cover yet, once inside you are treated to a visual spectacular, to the younger reader a lot of it may mean nothing such as the reference to many of the world's fashion houses but to the older reader it is a pure delight, for the budding fashion designer there are blank spaces to put your own creations, fabrics to doodle upon, accessories to make your mark upon.
Plus its not just plain white paper inside there are bright pink pages that I cannot wait to fill in. The paper itself is nice and thick, I have not used pens upon it yet so I can't vouch for them but I have used Koh-i-Noor Magic pencils and they looked great, well I think they did anyway!
There is so much fun to be had with this book and it'll last for ages too, as it says it is a book for creating, dreaming and drawing, my only problem is keeping it away from 8 year old!
Purchased on Amazon.co.uk
Continuing on my quest down the Amazon(.co.uk) to find colouring books to feed my obsession I came across this one, well actually I came across this one plus two others in the series but today its all about this book, Nina Chakrabarti's My Wonderful World of Fashion.
First of all this book is beautiful to look at it pretty, pink and it is massive, I believe it is 200 pages plus in length.
My creative juices were starting to flow and I hadn't even opened the cover yet, once inside you are treated to a visual spectacular, to the younger reader a lot of it may mean nothing such as the reference to many of the world's fashion houses but to the older reader it is a pure delight, for the budding fashion designer there are blank spaces to put your own creations, fabrics to doodle upon, accessories to make your mark upon.
Plus its not just plain white paper inside there are bright pink pages that I cannot wait to fill in. The paper itself is nice and thick, I have not used pens upon it yet so I can't vouch for them but I have used Koh-i-Noor Magic pencils and they looked great, well I think they did anyway!
There is so much fun to be had with this book and it'll last for ages too, as it says it is a book for creating, dreaming and drawing, my only problem is keeping it away from 8 year old!
Read
December 17, 2010When I first received
My Wonderful World of Fashion
, my main concern was that I would write such a raving review that I’d sound like the publisher’s flack. Nina Chakrabarti’s lovely line drawings take us on an interactive tour of fashion history, letting her young audience explore their own twists on the designs en route. Opening it made me want to either take a hot tub back in time to play with it as a 12-year-old, or breed purely for the pleasure of giving it to my girls later.
The book contains a mishmash of colouring, design and basic crafty projects, the latter all simple enough that a ten- to thirteen-year-old (which seems to be her target audience) could do them without adult help. My favourite pages let you colour in iconic designs such as Marc Jacobs’ animal-face flats, Elsa Schiaperelli’s shoe hat, Hussein Chalayan’s wooden corset, Ferragamo platforms and two full pages of Roger Vivier pumps! She also includes guides to a mixed bag of sartorial topics, such as basic embroidery stitches, Yoruba Adire textile patterns and antique Bengali jewels, and throws in the odd project like making paperclip necklaces or pom-poms. She is keen to teach, often showing her audience how to draw an article and then giving them space to get creative with it; so, for example, she’ll include several examples of collar lace to colour in, followed by a page of blank collars where her users might render their own lace patterns.
I decided to test drive this bad-boy with an accomplice, the lovely and talented Miss Eva Barney, 11. Eva is a young designer, currently drawing a portfolio of her own dress patterns around a demanding public school schedule. I couldn’t have asked for a more fun book review buddy, and she helped me catch some of the book’s age-appropriate foibles that I otherwise would have missed.
We started out filling in a design on an outlined dolly dress, which we decided would be best suited for a sailoress. Eva came up with the concept, and she executed her vision with the precision of a field marshal. I’ve been out of the colouring game for a while, so she patiently gave me some tips for staying inside the lines and taught me how to smudge the pencil crayon so the colours bleed into a pretty fade. We were supposed to design a handbag to go with our dress, but we decided that sailor girls don’t need handbags and moved on. I sort of coerced Eva to colour several pairs of Vivienne Westwood platforms with me, and she begrudgingly obliged, even though they were a bit bizarre for her taste (“that one looks like a rock star’s head upside down!”).
Which brings us to our first issue: Chakrabarti wears her taste on her sleeve—the lady really goes for weird couture—which is both a strength and weakness of the book. While this subtly encourages her audience to embrace fashion at its most whimsical, my colouring partner merely found a lot of these designs weird (“where would you wear a shoe hat?”), suggesting that she might potentially be alienating her target audience. That said, the author really is all over the map, which I loved, and the book is eminently inclusive—the hair section in the back gives more space to afro stylings than to non-nappy locks, and the design portions are evenly distributed between couture history, street fashion and forays into global or ethnic fashions such as henna tattoos, Moroccan kaftan or geta shoes (the book has a pronounced shoe fetish, in case this wasn’t clear—but, hey, who doesn’t?).
After we’d had our way with Ms. Westwood’s oeuvre, we flipped around for a long time before finding a new project. Which brings us to issue number two: Eva was most interested in designing and stylizing full outfits, and she didn’t think that the book made enough room for this. There are a lot of smaller tasks where users can decorate or personalize parts of her images—creating tee shirts logos, embellishing Carnival masks, applying patterns onto tights—but very few spaces where you could use Chakrabarti’s line-work as the basis for your own design, as we did with our first project. Eva pointed out that anyone old enough to be interested in fashion history as it is presented here is probably too old for colouring—and I’d probably believe her if I didn’t have a date with a pack of pencil crayons and some Tokio Kumagaï slip-ons as soon as I finish this sentence. (reviewed by Emily Raine and Eva Barney)
The book contains a mishmash of colouring, design and basic crafty projects, the latter all simple enough that a ten- to thirteen-year-old (which seems to be her target audience) could do them without adult help. My favourite pages let you colour in iconic designs such as Marc Jacobs’ animal-face flats, Elsa Schiaperelli’s shoe hat, Hussein Chalayan’s wooden corset, Ferragamo platforms and two full pages of Roger Vivier pumps! She also includes guides to a mixed bag of sartorial topics, such as basic embroidery stitches, Yoruba Adire textile patterns and antique Bengali jewels, and throws in the odd project like making paperclip necklaces or pom-poms. She is keen to teach, often showing her audience how to draw an article and then giving them space to get creative with it; so, for example, she’ll include several examples of collar lace to colour in, followed by a page of blank collars where her users might render their own lace patterns.
I decided to test drive this bad-boy with an accomplice, the lovely and talented Miss Eva Barney, 11. Eva is a young designer, currently drawing a portfolio of her own dress patterns around a demanding public school schedule. I couldn’t have asked for a more fun book review buddy, and she helped me catch some of the book’s age-appropriate foibles that I otherwise would have missed.
We started out filling in a design on an outlined dolly dress, which we decided would be best suited for a sailoress. Eva came up with the concept, and she executed her vision with the precision of a field marshal. I’ve been out of the colouring game for a while, so she patiently gave me some tips for staying inside the lines and taught me how to smudge the pencil crayon so the colours bleed into a pretty fade. We were supposed to design a handbag to go with our dress, but we decided that sailor girls don’t need handbags and moved on. I sort of coerced Eva to colour several pairs of Vivienne Westwood platforms with me, and she begrudgingly obliged, even though they were a bit bizarre for her taste (“that one looks like a rock star’s head upside down!”).
Which brings us to our first issue: Chakrabarti wears her taste on her sleeve—the lady really goes for weird couture—which is both a strength and weakness of the book. While this subtly encourages her audience to embrace fashion at its most whimsical, my colouring partner merely found a lot of these designs weird (“where would you wear a shoe hat?”), suggesting that she might potentially be alienating her target audience. That said, the author really is all over the map, which I loved, and the book is eminently inclusive—the hair section in the back gives more space to afro stylings than to non-nappy locks, and the design portions are evenly distributed between couture history, street fashion and forays into global or ethnic fashions such as henna tattoos, Moroccan kaftan or geta shoes (the book has a pronounced shoe fetish, in case this wasn’t clear—but, hey, who doesn’t?).
After we’d had our way with Ms. Westwood’s oeuvre, we flipped around for a long time before finding a new project. Which brings us to issue number two: Eva was most interested in designing and stylizing full outfits, and she didn’t think that the book made enough room for this. There are a lot of smaller tasks where users can decorate or personalize parts of her images—creating tee shirts logos, embellishing Carnival masks, applying patterns onto tights—but very few spaces where you could use Chakrabarti’s line-work as the basis for your own design, as we did with our first project. Eva pointed out that anyone old enough to be interested in fashion history as it is presented here is probably too old for colouring—and I’d probably believe her if I didn’t have a date with a pack of pencil crayons and some Tokio Kumagaï slip-ons as soon as I finish this sentence. (reviewed by Emily Raine and Eva Barney)
January 18, 2010
My take on the book:
One of the hardest things for tweens is trying to find something to interest them that is age appropriate. Things all seem to be either too old or too young. They don't want to be childish and have coloring books, but they still love to color. This book bridges the gap and will provide weeks of fun for tweens and adults alike.
There is a coloring activity on each page. You will be challenged to use your imagination with guided tasks, while at the same time learning the history of fashion and trends. The book teaches how to put a spin on a classic and make something totally new. It teaches how to imagine a fashion display, or how something would look on a person.
An excellent activity, I highly recommend.
On the Technical Side:
Lets get down to the nitty gritty, can you really color in this thing? You totally can, and its not like a childhood coloring book either. This book is all heavy weight paper that can take heavy markers on without bleeding on to the next page. The book is quite large and so are the images allowing lots of wiggle room with detail.
I say try mixing mediums, the paper is so thick you could even paint on some pages. It would be really exciting to finish the entire book, and then to be able to flip through and see all the different mediums used.
One of the hardest things for tweens is trying to find something to interest them that is age appropriate. Things all seem to be either too old or too young. They don't want to be childish and have coloring books, but they still love to color. This book bridges the gap and will provide weeks of fun for tweens and adults alike.
There is a coloring activity on each page. You will be challenged to use your imagination with guided tasks, while at the same time learning the history of fashion and trends. The book teaches how to put a spin on a classic and make something totally new. It teaches how to imagine a fashion display, or how something would look on a person.
An excellent activity, I highly recommend.
On the Technical Side:
Lets get down to the nitty gritty, can you really color in this thing? You totally can, and its not like a childhood coloring book either. This book is all heavy weight paper that can take heavy markers on without bleeding on to the next page. The book is quite large and so are the images allowing lots of wiggle room with detail.
I say try mixing mediums, the paper is so thick you could even paint on some pages. It would be really exciting to finish the entire book, and then to be able to flip through and see all the different mediums used.
March 22, 2011
Thanks to Amy, I have a most excellent coloring book for fashion purposes. SO EXCITED!
February 20, 2012
Great illustrations and interactivity. Really gets your inspirational juices flowing!
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews