Travel Italia by Lorenzo Ottaviani

    Travel Italia, The Golden Age of Italian Travel Posters by Lorenzo Ottaviani was just recently published.   
    This book features over 150 beautiful and brightly colored Italian travel posters that were designed between the 1920's and the 1960's. These posters are from Alessandro Bellenda's private collection.
    In the book Lorenzo Ottaviani gives us some background on when multi-colored lithographic posters came about and of how the Italian National Tourism Agency and the Italian State Railways commissioned artists to create posters to promote tourism in Italy.
    I found that two very useful features of this book were: the small maps of Italy, that were located next to each of the larger poster images, showing the area which the poster represents and the chapter of artist biographies that tells of the poster artist's histories.
    This book is a must have for anyone interested in poster collecting, vintage graphics and travel.
    A perfect gift for this upcoming holiday season!
    Please refer to my February 26, 2008 post to view vintage Italian travel posters from Alessandro Bellenda's Galleria L'IMAGE

And The Winners Are...

*Style Council member Henriette Weber Anderson of Web Avant-Garde and Green Girls Global

*Marvelous Mouse Designs

*Ulla of Ullabenulla

*Ang of Dorothea's Closet

As of today  Kate, The Woman Who Was Hepburn paperback is available for purchase at your local bookstore as well as online.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

*Don't be disheartened if you didn't win today- there will be more book give aways in the future!!!

***Win A Free Copy of Kate, The Woman Who Was Hepburn***

    ***UPDATE***

    Today I received 3 more copies of the book to give away to my blog readers and members of The Style Council!
    Keep those comments coming in and I will announce the 4 winners tomorrow (Tuesday) afternoon!

Book Give Away! Kate, The Woman Who Was Hepburn

    The kind people over at Picador sent me two paperback copies of Kate, The Woman Who Was Hepburn by William J. Mann.  
    The paperback is being released for sale to the general public next Tuesday, October 30- but, one of you, my lucky Lulu's Vintage blog readers will receive a copy for free!
    You can enter to win the free copy of Kate one of two ways:
    -Leave a comment on this particular blog post (I have to approve every comment [because of problems with spam] so don't worry if your comment doesn't show up immediately)
    or
    -Email me:   lulusvintage (at) yahoo.com
    I invite readers from around the world to enter- because, no matter where you live the shipping cost is on me!

*Inspirational Costume Book*

    Yesterday I was out window shopping with a friend when I came across this book Masquerade: Costume Inspirations From The 1920s To 1950's
    The book features children's, men's and women's costume designs.
    Some of my favorite costumes are: "Modern Architecture" (a woman with a skyscraper hat and skyscraper decorated skirt- which is like something out of a Busby Berkeley movie), "Eat More Fruit" (a woman dressed up as a fruit basket), "Target" (a woman with a jaunty target hat and target embelished skirt), "Windmill" (a woman with a windmill on her head and a skimpy little outfit) and "The Glad Eye" (a girl dressed up in a jester like costume covered in drawings of eyes- which is very Surrealist/Dada influenced).
    If only the costumes of today were so inspired!
    I have grown so weary of the mass produced pirate, French maid, vampire costumes...etc...etc... that are so common in our culture!
    So, this Halloween why not think outside of the big box Halloween supply store and let your own imagination and creativity run wild!