come from tennis at the country

n. In the last decade, they have risen as cult figures and influencers. Think Carine Roitfeld or Katie Grand. But for real insight into the mysterious process that goes into transforming a studio cheap hermes bagfilled with shoeboxes and garment racks into artistry, you will have to buy “Lori Goldstein: Style Is Instinct” (Harper Design, $80), a new monograph of Ms. Goldstein’s exploration of style. Early last week, Ms. Goldstein sat down in her Chelsea studio to discuss her career. Below is an edited and condensed interview. ause they were handmade treasures. He envisioned a commercial venture and priced them very low. He sold 84 dresses that first day, and when he told me, I burst into tears.

 How was I going to make them all? Bob decided to run ads for a knitter, and I thought he was crazy. Who would know how to operate a knitting machine like mine? But we ended up with one professional knitter Gucci cluthes, along with my mother, Bob's mother, him, and me. Our mothers helped to crochet because everything was put together by hand. Of course, our moms worked without pay. We lived in the San Fernando Valley and rented a small shop in North Hollywood. We borrowed $5,000 from our parents and a little bit from On Bright Lights, Big Cities was about precisely that: fashion.

 The clothes, vividly lighted, were front and center, with the models chosen for their well-scrubbed, patrician femininity. They looked, as often as not, as if they had just come from tennis at the country club, though reassuringly free of sweat. Ms. Turbeville’s photos, by contrast, were unsettling, and they were meant to be. In her fashion work, clothes are Hermes constance handbagalmost beside the point. In some images the outfits are barely visible; the same is often true of the models, resulting in an elegiac landscape defined more by absence than by presence. In a de facto commentary on fashion’s manipulation of women, Ms. Turbeville literally manipulated her negatives — scratching them, tearing them I always knew two things. I knew I loved clothes, and I knew