Header image: Victoria Silvstedt modelling for Panos in the late 1990s, with images newly scanned from transparencies. Top: The distinctive cover of Lilla boken om Panos: historien om den ikoniska badmodedesignern. Above: Rickard Engfors, who did a drag act in the 2000s, modelling Panos’s Unlimited Love collection, released in 2004. The campaign was ahead of its time but did not go down well in every market.
I’ve always liked The Little Book series, covering different fashion designers, but didn’t imagine I would be writing one. And now it’s out in Sweden, published by Tukan förlag, and available from many good retailers there.
Lilla boken om Panos: historien om den ikoniska badmodedesignern (The Little Book of Panos: the Story of the Iconic Swimwear Designer) is a wonderful, full-colour, 160 pp. look at Panos Papadopoulos’s design career. As I had already ghosted for Panos on his autobiography, I had the research done. This book, however, is vastly different from the earlier one.
For a start, there’s barely a page without pictures. Panos did a deep dive into his archive and old transparencies were scanned at a very high resolution: Jannike Björling, Victoria Silvstedt and Traci Bingham never looked sharper in print. Secondly, this isn’t a business book that charts Panos’s life and values: like the rest of the Little Book series, it is specifically about fashion, looking through decades of swimwear trends and the stories behind Panos’s designs. This is one for the fashionistas, with a series of behind-the-scenes anecdotes from Panos, including stories that don’t appear in the autobiography.
As I wrote it in the third person with Panos providing two-page anecdotes, I’m the lead author—and as with Panos: My Life, My Odyssey, yours truly (wearing my JY&A Media hat) designed the inside pages. This time, I can take credit for the cover, too. The template, however, is Welbeck Publishing’s, adapted by Tukan förlag for the Swedish market.
The task was very different: rather than prompt Panos for his story, and tell things in his own words, this is an objective look at his swimwear designs.
Lucire’s archives came into play, too, to get a comprehensive collection of photographs—thank goodness for CD- and DVD-ROMs on to which we archived this material.
It was a real pleasure to work with Panos on a second book, and with fellow publisher Karin Alfredsson, commissioning editor Nelly Isaksson, Monika Andersson who gave life to my and Panos’s words in Swedish, and the Tukan förlag crew.
Among many Scandinavian retailers, Adlibris and Bokus retail Lilla boken om Panos for 139kr, and over in Finland, you can get it for €14,90 from Akateeminen Akademen.
Jack Yan is founder and publisher of Lucire.
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