Sunday Read: The Art of Couture Embroidery
Publishing on 6 November 2025, The Art of Couture Embroidery: The Secrets of Runway Design by Jessica Jane Pile and Robert Ossant is poised to become an essential resource for anyone who longs to look more closely at the garments that have shaped contemporary fashion. Richly illustrated and meticulously researched, the book offers a rare dual perspective: part biography, part fashion history, part technical manual. Together, Pile and Ossant unravel the stories stitched into couture’s most iconic surfaces.
Pierre Balmain fitting one of his haute couture gowns on actress Ruth Ford in November 1947. Photo: Carl van Vechten/Pictorial Press Ltd/Alamy
The authors begin with the premise that understanding a garment requires understanding its maker. Echoing Renoir’s assertion that one must know the artist to understand the art, each chapter traces the personal histories, influences and working philosophies that shape a designer’s visual language. From Elsa Schiaparelli’s surrealist wit to Rahul Mishra’s poetic engagement with nature, embroidery emerges not as afterthought or embellishment, but as a narrative device able to expose deeper truths about the creative mind.
Evening Dress, Valentino, Spring/Summer 2014. Image: The Met Museum Collection.
Pile and Ossant examine more than forty designers from across a century of couture and ready-to-wear, positioning their work within the broader evolution of fashion. Particularly compelling is their art-historical approach: garments are analysed much like paintings, through composition, materiality and technique.
Material selection extract from The Art of Couture Embroidery: The Secrets of Runway Design.
For readers drawn to the mechanics of making, the Stitch by Stitch sections provide rare insight into the construction of complex embroideries. In one example, Pile and Ossant break down the execution of figurative tambour work in a Valentino evening dress (pictured above). In another, intricate beading is combined with traditional stitching and delicate organza manipulation to form striking, Chanel-inspired blossoms. These analyses are paired with practical exercises that guide embroiderers through design planning and material selection. The tone is instructional yet exploratory, encouraging readers not only to admire couture but to test its principles in their own practice.
Sarah Burton for Alexander McQueen. Spring/Summer 2018. Photo: Getty Images
Pile’s long tenure at Hand & Lock and Ossant’s deep grounding in textile history ensure that the book speaks fluently to embroiderers, students, designers and anyone interested in the intersection of technique and storytelling.
Rather than offering straightforward celebration, The Art of Couture Embroidery advocates for a more considered form of looking. By setting technique alongside biography and cultural context, it positions embroidery as a site where histories, ideas and materials converge — an interpretive lens through which fashion’s most intricate language can be understood.
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Further Information:
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Image Credits:
Lead: Gucci embroidery sample by the authors of The Art of Couture Embroidery.
All further images as credited in photo captions.