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Costume Through the Ages: Over 1400 Illustrations
Few books of costume design will prove more useful to artists, students, stage designers, and scholars than this volume. Presenting detailed drawings in a continuous chronological format, it provides a history of costume design through the ages, from the first century A.D. to 1930.
Culled from sculpture, lithographs, paintings, illuminated manuscripts, engravings, caricatures, fashion plates, photographs, and magazines, these illustrations have been carefully redrawn to bring out essential lines as well as all the details. Men, women, and children are shown in authentic dress, in characteristic period postures, and coiffed in contemporary hairstyles — even their gestures and bearing offer the reader insight into the attitudes and manners of their times. Due to the acceleration of change in styles, the book moves from single pages representing entire centuries to one-page-per-year depictions of fashion development. In all, more than 1,400 illustrations chronicle the full sweep of two millennia of Western garb, from Roman noble to Victorian dandy, from Elizabethan lady to Jazz Age schoolboy — all in easily accessible form.
Painstakingly researched and meticulously detailed, this book will be a valuable asset and resource for students, illustrators, costume and cultural historians — anyone interested in the history of fashion.
Culled from sculpture, lithographs, paintings, illuminated manuscripts, engravings, caricatures, fashion plates, photographs, and magazines, these illustrations have been carefully redrawn to bring out essential lines as well as all the details. Men, women, and children are shown in authentic dress, in characteristic period postures, and coiffed in contemporary hairstyles — even their gestures and bearing offer the reader insight into the attitudes and manners of their times. Due to the acceleration of change in styles, the book moves from single pages representing entire centuries to one-page-per-year depictions of fashion development. In all, more than 1,400 illustrations chronicle the full sweep of two millennia of Western garb, from Roman noble to Victorian dandy, from Elizabethan lady to Jazz Age schoolboy — all in easily accessible form.
Painstakingly researched and meticulously detailed, this book will be a valuable asset and resource for students, illustrators, costume and cultural historians — anyone interested in the history of fashion.
128 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1999
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November 26, 2019
If you like black and white "sketches," crowded on a page with no context and no details, this is the book for you. You can follow trends in fashion/clothing as each page is shown by year(s).
I must admit I dislike the costume books with drawings, rather than lithographs or plates. The "drawings" appear to me to dumb things down a lot, rather like clothes for paper dolls. However, the sketches probably demonstrate the overall trends better than the original engravings.
I'd like to know what were predominant colors in a fashion period. I know this affects how much I like the fashions shown in colors that duplicate well.
There are a lot of excellent source books out there. I buy over the internet, so the amount of information supplied by a seller is often negligible. Fortunately many of my best books are $4.00 to $20.00 with free shipping, so I can afford to buy a few lemons. The books are often out of print or rare, which makes the search more interesting for me.
I must admit I dislike the costume books with drawings, rather than lithographs or plates. The "drawings" appear to me to dumb things down a lot, rather like clothes for paper dolls. However, the sketches probably demonstrate the overall trends better than the original engravings.
I'd like to know what were predominant colors in a fashion period. I know this affects how much I like the fashions shown in colors that duplicate well.
There are a lot of excellent source books out there. I buy over the internet, so the amount of information supplied by a seller is often negligible. Fortunately many of my best books are $4.00 to $20.00 with free shipping, so I can afford to buy a few lemons. The books are often out of print or rare, which makes the search more interesting for me.
Displaying 1 of 1 review