Chloe Fox

'One is never over-dressed or under-dressed with a Little Black Dress'Karl LagerfeldNinety years after Vogue dubbed Coco Chanel's simple short black 'Ford' dress 'the frock that all the world will wear', Chloe Fox celebrates the best LBDs in Vogue Essentials: Little Black Dress. From the bold, dramatic designs of Zandra Rhodes to the eye-catching LBDs by Vivienne Westwood, from the pared-down simplicity of Calvin Klein's shift dresses to an asymmetric shoulder evening gown by Versace, Vogue Essentials: Little Black Dress celebrates the very best of the LBD.Published simultaneously with Vogue Essentials: Handbags. This irresistible new series from Conran Octopus and British Vogue explores the key pieces in a stylish woman's wardrobe and features photographs from Vogue's peerless archive of more than a million pictures.

Fashion’s leading shoemaker, Manolo Blahnik is one of the handful of designers whose name is synonymous with their product.His success has lasted from setting up as a shoe designer in a Chelsea boutique in the 1970s to the present day, with American Vogue’s Anna Wintour declaring ‘The truth is, I wear no other shoes except his’.Blahnik has collaborated with many leading fashion designers – from Ossie Clark at the start of his career and John Galliano at Dior at its height – but Blahnik’s greatest achievement is to have made footwear, previously subservient to the overall concept of a look, the most important of all accessories.His many covers and features in the pages of Vogue reveal that wearing a pair of ‘Manolos’ is to be utterly transformed; in Blahnik’s dreamy, handmade creations, a woman can reinvent her personality. She is a Lolita in his Mary-Janes and a red carpet diva in his satin mules. Or as Madonna once put it, with characteristic bluntness: ‘His shoes are wonderful, and they last longer than sex.’