The Beautiful Fall (2006)

Alicia Drake's double portrait of Karl Lagerfeld and Yves Saint Laurent in 1970s Paris, when the two designers and their circles split the city into rival camps. Drake built it from interviews with dozens of the designers' friends and colleagues, and it shows in the detail of the parties, feuds and studios. It is dense, and at times it reads like one glittering party after another, but no other book captures that decade of Paris fashion so vividly. Excellent for gossip and, unusually, just as good on why the work mattered.