Customer Reviews

19th Century Clothing (Historic Communities)

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I didn't have a problem with the book, per se, but I wish there were more detailed captioned to place the garments at a particular year or decade. Also missing was information about the type of person, urban vs. rural or wealthy vs. working class, would wear particular clothing. The American is mixed with the British and Continental with no distinctions made to geography. Most of the attire was geared towards what the upper classes wore, while scant attention is given to regular, everyday clothes of average people. That makes it much less useful for me as a teaching tool. I had hoped to be able to use as a reference for students to be able to use as a jumping off point for making their own illustrations of historic events or perhaps keying it to historical fiction, something beyond Little House.

The book has some high points, but I still wanted more. For example, the section on underwear will surely thrill kids of all ages, however, each garment is shown separately on a page with different types of underclothes from different styles of the century, so it was difficult even for me as an adult to exactly determine, for example, which type of drawers would go with which crinoline. My daughter loves to make paper dolls, but this book had little to offer that isn't done elsewhere in more detail... for example, with the American Girl paper doll collection.

Definitely lacking is the section on women's hairstyles. It is impossible to even figure out how to begin to re-create any of the hairstyles, which are only shown from one perspective, the front.

The section at the end of the book about living history really didn't fit. The reader is inspired to re-create period dress, but there just isn't enough meat in the reference sections of the book to do it.