Victorian and Edwardian Fashions for Women 1840 to 1919

by Kristina Harris

If you love the designs, fabrics, and sheer beauty of 19th and early 20th century women's fashions, this book will be your guide and time machine. It presents over 450 enchanting color photographs of modern-day models wearing the dresses, waists, undergarments, and accessories of this elegant era, including daywear, sportswear, and formalwear. Unusual items such as fancy dress, aesthetic garments, and reform styles are explained and illustrated. This book will help both novice and expert collectors accurately identify and date their collections by evaluating the silhouette, construction, style, and details of fashionable garments. Sound advice for maintaining, laundering, and repairing them is also provided, as is a price guide. , 466 color photos, 8 1/2" x 11", Price Guide

Genres: Fashion, Fashion History, Nonfiction, Reference, History, Victorian

208 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 1995

Reviews

[Nguyễn Thiên Kim · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is “A Schiffer Book for Collectors With Price Guide”. The first few pages have some tips for cleaning, storing and organizing for collectors. After that are the chapters about each decade with photos of models wearing real artifacts, periodicals and photographs of the period.

This is not quite my cup of tea:
- I feel like it is mainly about the US (while I’m currently interested in England's history)
- Since all the dresses in the book are real artifacts, it’s understandable that the earlier decades should have few photos (the older the time, the harder it is to find dresses in presentable conditions). The thing is I’m looking for dresses in the 1840s :)
- As mentioned above, there are photos of model wearing artifacts. From what I know, their hair are not styled for the periods. Now I know that it’s hard to style the hair according to each decade, but them wearing those dresses with modern hair styles just didn’t feel right for me, like they are playing some costumes games, but at least they had appropriate undergarments :)

[Emery · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, wonderful little book.