BOOK REVIEW HOLIDAY SPECIAL SECTION : One Size Fits All

Even though we all wear clothes, that doesn’t mean fashion people think like the rest of us. Geoffrey Beene, for example, believes the zipper is headed for extinction because “it weighs too much.” Shoe designer Manolo Blahnik maintains that “Sex isn’t important. Beautiful underwear is.” And designers aren’t alone in this. The will of one Hermes-crazed businessman (who shall remain nameless) is said to contain instructions for a burial shroud patched together from his favorite ties.

We gain these insights and more from a wide range of good-looking new books on fashion and the people who practice it, out just in time for holiday gift-giving (happily, one size fits all). From photographs of the good life to scholarly tomes on costume history, here are windows into fashion-driven minds.

The most widely anticipated book of the group is “Then,” Alexander Liberman’s book of photographs of friends, family and beautiful people from 1925 to 1995. Eminent in international art and fashion circles, the 83-year-old artist has had an impressive career as a painter, sculptor, photographer, writer and creative power behind Conde Nast magazines. (Toquote his late wife, Tatiana: “Alex is superman.”) Along the way he had been invited to live with Pablo Picasso, lunched at Christian Dior’s country house, sipped champagne with American high society, and summered regularly in the south of France. Fortunately, he took his camera along.

This photographic record of his cosmopolitan life compels for several reasons. First, the pictures themselves. They are timeless, luminous, vital portraits of their subjects (with photos of Henri Matisse and Dolly Goulandris’ poodle as surly exceptions) that make the viewer feel like an insider, not a voyeur. Personal, candid pictures of art and fashion icons such as Picasso, Dior, Alberto Giacometti, Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp, Coco Chanel and Yves St. Laurent, among others, expand the visual historical record of this century,. And Liberman’s captioned commentary is as intimate as his shooting style. We learn, for example, that Giacometti never bought his wife a present, and that Liberman’s mother encouraged him to have affairs with her maids.

Examining “Then” for secrets of “the good life,” one realizes that elegant accessories are key. In the caption for a summer photo of a coiffed and pearled Tatiana, Liberman doesn’t neglect to mention that her white strappy sandals are from St. Tropez.

Dodie Kazanjian’s slender, autobiographical “Icons” devotes almost as many chapters to status-symbol shoes, handbags, underwear and jewels as it does to clothing. And now “The Book of Ties,” a handsome 180-page volume on “‘the quintessential masculine accessory,” reinforces the idea that God is in the sartorial details.

This definitive book on ties covers the history, fabric, patterns, knotting, makers and style of that little piece of cloth born in 1635 during the Thirty Years’ War. One of the few fashion items that allows a man’s creative expression to take flight, the tie is a far less mundane subject than it seems. Amusing anecdotes in this well-researched and well-written book include the businessman’s tie-shroud and a description of Beau Brummel’s fetish for the perfect gesture (he would knot and unknot dozens of ties in search of perfection, throwing the rejected at his feet). For Brummel wanna-bes or that uncle with the mermaid cravat, the book’s final chapter on color and pattern coordination is a godsend.

There is a time and place for paisley, says “The Book of Ties.” The witty men’s style guide, “Paisley Goes With Nothing,” thinks not. This collection of idiosyncratic advice on dressing, grooming, shopping and stylish living from magazine writers Hal Rubenstein and Jim Mullen promises the paisley-free man that “If you dress well, people think you have a personal life.”

Maybe not Liberman’s, but it’s worth a try.

Written in breezy, zen-like aphorisms--”Trying on suits is not a hassle. Chemotherapy is a hassle”--”Paisley” is a user-friendly self-help manual for the style-impaired. Chapters on tailoring and cooking are particularly useful, perhaps because Rubenstein, the former men’s style editor for the New York Times Magazine and a restaurant critic for Interview, knows those subjects cold. Thereader leaves “Paisley” knowing what to look for in a suit lapel and also how to make a classic icebox cake--two important life skills.

Despite its emphasis on looking right and living well, “Paisley” is remarkably free of references to well-known labels and brand names. Armchair shoppers in search of a designer fix should turn instead to “Icons,” in which Vogue writer Dodie Kazanjian recounts tales of shopping undercover for pricey coveted items such as a Chanel suit, a Kelly bag, an Armani jacket and Manolo shoes. The Woodward and Bernstein of the dressing room, Kazanjian discovers at Chanel that new suits are in such short supply that each suit has its own waiting list. The $2,800 Kelly bag and $1,300 Armani jacket require equal perseverance. Tracking the perfect Manolo Blahnik shoe, she learns Blahnik’s views on beautiful underwear and that her Size 4 “feets” deserve nothing less than custom-ordered mules. But Kazanjian is tenacious, and before you can say “Thorstein Veblen,” she’s bagged “the stuff that makes us feel wonderful, glamorous and beloved.”

Less time is devoted to exploring exactly why we want this stuff, and the role of advertising in it all, but Kazanjian’s ear for the humorous quote and her complete lack of pretension make for engaging reading nonetheless.

Glossy new books on designers Geoffrey Beene and Issey Miyake are far more awe-struck in tone. So lavishly printed they seem almost 3-D, the books chronicle the creative inspiration and output of two of the world’s most inventive designers. The viewpoint is designer-as-artist, with the female body as his naked canvas. Both books show and tell how Beene and Miyake are obsessed with exploring the potential of unusual fabrics. Pleats fascinate Miyake; zip-less (and hence nearly weightless) sheaths absorb Beene. Ultimately, their clothes seem to dance.

Clothes that dance on stage are described in “Costumes by Karinska,” a profile by retired ballerina Toni Bentley of the life and work of the late, great costumer Barbara Karinska. A longtime George Balanchine collaborator and inventor of the powder-puff tutu, Karinska was a perfectionist whose theatrical imagination was never fettered by formal training. She designed and executed magnificent costumes for dance, film, theater and opera, bringing grace to everything from Gypsy Rose Lee’s G-string to Laurence Olivier’s Becket. Her only weakness? A slight problem with deadlines that literally left the cast on pins and needles many opening nights.

Oleg Cassini’s book on dressing Jackie Kennedy, “A Thousand Days of Magic,” is paean to both clothier and clotheshorse. Using sketches, photographs, private correspondence and a raconteur’s memory, Cassini doesn’t drop a stitch while telling the inside story of helping make one of America’s favorite First Ladies into a trend-setting style idol. Cassini’s genius was to recognize that the First Lady didn’t need clothes--she needed a wardrobe. With Joe Kennedy paying the bills, Cassini ushered in a new era in American fashion with boxy military-inspired suits topped by berets and pillbox hats, swingy A-line coats and dresses, and geometrically cut gowns. Despite its tendency to gush (and don’t we all, when it comes to Jackie O), this book is a valuable social chronicle of Camelot.

What fashion people know instinctively is that all clothes talk, even if some of us don’t know what ours are saying. Two impressive scholarly books help us to become better observers through their own meticulous scrutiny of fashion details. “Dressed for the Photographer” studies the clothing of ordinary Americans from 1840 to 1900 for economic and social clues. It’s a tremendous resource for dating all photographs from that period and provides a wealth of information on the evolution of American dress. “The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France, 1750-1820” brings a costume historian’s eye to portraiture for revelations of political, social, and cultural currents. And “Vital Mummies: Performance Design for the Show-Window Mannequin” analyzes the theatrical expression of contemporary American window display, or what the author calls “a fugitive time art.” Shop windows tend to have an even shorter shelf-life than the fashions they sell.

Then again, no less a dandy than Oscar Wilde maintained that fashion was “a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.” But this new batch of clothing books needs no such altering and should continue to inform and entertain long after fashion people have made up their minds about paisley.

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THEN: Photographs 1925-1995, by Alexander Liberman (Random House: $65; 272 pp. ; 190 black & white photos )

A THOUSAND DAYS OF MAGIC: Dressing Jacqueline Kennedy for the White House, By Oleg Cassini (Rizzoli: $40; 223 pp.)

VITAL MUMMIES: Performance Design for the Show-Window Mannequin, By Sara K. Schneider (Yale University Press: $35; 187 pp.)

GEOFFREY BEENE, By Brenda Cullerton (Harry N. Abrams: $49.50; 144 pp.; 120 illustrations, 70 in full color, 50 in duo tone)

PAISLEY GOES WITH NOTHING: A Man’s Guide to Style, By Hal Rubenstein with Jim Mullen (Doubleday: $26.95; 226 pp.)

THE BOOK OF TIES, By Francois Chaille (Flammarion/Abbeville: $45; 180 pp.)

THE ART OF DRESS: Fashion in England and France 1750-1820, By Aileen Ribeiro (Yale University Press: $55; 257 pp.)

DRESSED FOR THE PHOTOGRAPHER: Ordinary Americans & Fashion, 1840-1900. By Joan Severa (Kent State University Press: $60; 592 pp.; 272 illustrations)

ISSEY MIYAKE, By Mark Holborn (Taschen: $29.99; 166 pp.; 190 illustrations in color )

ICONS, By Dodie Kazanjian (St. Martins: $22.95; 155 pp.)

COSTUMES BY KARINSKA. By Toni Bentley (Harry N. Abrams: $60; 192 pp.; 242 illustrations, 78 in full color )