Reaktion Books Announces the Publication of Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury By Mary E. Davis
Reaktion Books Announces the Publication of
Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury
By Mary E. Davis
A New Look at Paul Poiret: Tastemaker, Innovator, and Father of the Luxury Industry
Published October 13, 2025
Available in the US in December, 2025
New York, NY – October 22, 2025 – Long before Chanel or Dior, the French designer Paul Poiret (1879-1944) created the blueprint for modern luxury. A new book, Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury, by historian and cultural critic Mary E. Davis, illuminates Poiret’s importance as the visionary who transformed fashion into a cultural force that continues to define luxury commerce. The book appears at a time when Poiret’s life and work are in the spotlight, in the major Paris exhibition Paul Poiret: Fashion is a Feast at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs (on-view until January 11, 2026), in the launch of Maitrepierre’s Poiret-inspired Spring 2026 ready-to-wear collection, and in the U.S. debut of the exclusive skincare brand Poiret Beauté.
While best known as the designer who freed women from corsets, Poiret’s legacy is much more complex. As Davis demonstrates, he was a pioneer in developing the luxury industry as we know it today—the first lifestyle guru, who linked perfume to his fashions a full decade before Coco Chanel introduced her famous No. 5, as well as the first to build an interior design business tied to his fashion house. He developed the concept of using celebrities, including Andrée Spinelly and Peggy Guggenheim, as brand ambassadors alongside his wife, Denise, who was also his muse and business advisor. In 1913, he became the first Parisian designer to make a major tour of the United States, with the ambition of opening a US market for his designs. He gained even more attention by throwing legendary costume parties, creating a nightclub in his gardens, and circulating in the highest echelons of Parisian society.
A respected amateur artist, he was a discerning collector of Fauvist and modernist art, with holdings including significant works by Picasso, Derain, Vlaminck, and Marie Laurencin. Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon was first shown at the Galerie Barbazanges, the art gallery he supported on the premises of his maison.
“Poiret’s story has fascinated me for decades because it captures a crucial moment in fashion’s evolution as a modern cultural force,” said the author. “Writing this book opened the opportunity to reintroduce this astonishing creative polymath to a broader audience and to show how his career continues to shape our thinking about luxury.”
Although most scholarship and exhibitions focus on his heyday before World War I, Davis challenges the notion that his relevance declined afterward. Even while his brand was in financial decline, she argues, he remained active during the 1920s and 1930s with entrepreneurial and forward-thinking projects that are often overlooked.
In the words of Rhonda Garelick, author of Mademoiselle: Coco Chanel and the Pulse of History: “…Poiret created an entire, glittering empire of Parisian art, media, design and celebrity – whose influence remains with us to this day. This beautifully written, impeccably researched book is at once a delicious journey back to a glorious moment in French history and a remarkably smart commentary on today’s luxury goods industry.”
Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury was published by Reaktion Books in London on October 13, 2025, and will be distributed by the University of Chicago Press in North America in December, 2025.
“The designer is, by definition, an artist in luxury.”
– Paul Poiret
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Paul Poiret: Inventing Modern Luxury, Edited by Reaktion Books, London. Distributed in U.S.A. and Canada by the University of Chicago Press.
£25 GDP / $35 USD
ISBN-10: 183639117X
ISBN-13: 978-1836391173
320 pages, 50 color plates, 47 halftones | © 2025
About Mary E. Davis
Mary E. Davis is a cultural historian and critic specializing in fashion and its relationship to music, sport, dance, and visual art. She is the author of Ballets Russes Style: Diaghilev’s Dancers and Paris Fashion (Reaktion, 2010), Waiting For A Train: Jimmie Rodgers’s America (Rounder Books, 2009), Erik Satie (Reaktion, 2008), and Classic Chic: Music, Fashion, and Modernism (University of California Press, 2006). Currently, she is an undergraduate capstone faculty member at the Jackson School of Global Affairs and a Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Business and the Environment at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. More information can be found at www.mary-e-davis.com.
Image Captions:
Mary E. Davis: Paul Poiret, Inventing Modern Luxury. Published by Reaktion Books, October 13, 2025.
Poiret with model Renée, 1927, photograph by Thérèse Bonney. Credit: The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley/Ville de Paris/BHVP, photo © The Regents of the University of California, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley (CC BY 4.0)
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