Project brief: To design a book that took an arcane subject and treated it in a strongly visual way that lifted it out of its academic milieu.

Approach: With close art direction, more care than usual was taken in the shooting of flat bolts of fabric, which allowed us to make dramatic enlargements so that the genius of the detail and the construction of these pieces would come to the foreground.

Effectiveness: When we started this project, we were worried that the book’s 10 essayists may compose the total audience. But I think we succeeded in giving the book such visual appeal that the audience has expanded far beyond the original expectations.

A gorgeous, finely detailed and well-paced tome.