Designer Valentin Yudashkin has brought a contemporary Russian aesthetic to modern fashion. Yudashkin, the only Russian designer honored with membership in the exclusive Syndicate of High Fashion in Paris, showed his first collection in Paris in 1991. Today he creates both luxurious haute couture and ready-to-wear lines, and his fashions are in the Louvre, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the California Museum of Fashion, and other prominent collections. Lavishly illustrated, this book presents the many facets of Yudashkin"s work, showing how he draws inspiration from czarist Russia as well as his own poetic imagination. Yudashkin"s lush, vividly colored fashions are rich with incredible detail, including fur, beading, embroidery, and all variety of ornamentation. His technical mastery and his theatricality have wowed critics around the world. This book, which includes runway photographs and never-before-seen sketches, brings his work to a wider audience.