Accessorizing The Bride: Vintage Wedding Finery Through The Decades [Hardcover]

Norma Shephard (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 5, 2004

Beautifully photographed and exhaustively researched, this romantic journey through fifteen decades of bridal fashion offers a comprehensive, yet intimate, look at wedding costume c.1860 to the present day. Using original wedding portraits and hundreds of full color photographs, this enchanting book chronicles the changing image of brides, from petticoats and parasols associated with Victorian bustle gowns, to late 1990s bustiers and pashminas, with emphasis on the supporting garments and accessories that add finishing touches to each unique and timeless style. It is a look over our shoulder at those brides of the past, a tribute to the skills of their seamstresses and designers, and a sentimental torch passed to the brides and fashion designers of the future. Accessorizing the Bride is a must have reference for fashion collectors, costumers, vintage clothing dealers, dress designers, and historians. The gowns and accessories within these pages are set in historical context, with notations on design, fabrication, embellishment, provenance (where known), and estimated current value.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 213 pages
• Publisher: Schiffer Publishing (March 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764321854
• ISBN-13: 978-0764321856
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,460,592 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars REFERENCE OR KEEPSAKE?, September 12, 2005

By 

Patricia Boyle (Ontario, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Accessorizing The Bride: Vintage Wedding Finery Through The Decades (Hardcover)

Readers may find it difficult to believe that author Norma Shephard has such a magnificent collection of wedding accessories. And then to see them photographed so beautifully is almost beyond the realm of imagination. But it is true. Most artifacts exhibited in Accessorizing the Bride, Vintage Wedding Finery Through the Decades are part of the Mobile Millinery Museum's Wedding Collection and yes, she did all the photography in her tiny Burlington, Ontario studio.
What makes this coffee table book so fascinating? It may be the detailed pictures of fabrics, styles, hues, beads, sequins and lace. Or it may be the memories and dreams that it ignites as we flip from era to era and maybe for the first time experience what grandmother or greatgran or even her mother may have worn on her wedding day.
If a bride-to-be is lucky enough to view this book before she's selected her gown and accessories, it may help her decide about a veil, train, headpiece, waistline or hemline.
And for the many ladies who donated or loaned gowns to the Mobile Millinery Museum's Wedding Collection, the book takes on a magical quality of pride and appreciation to know that their wedding finery is being admired all around the world.
What Shephard shows she also tells and her apparent wealth of knowledge goes beyond fashion. Between the lines of real-life stories, anecdotes and progression of style, she subtly integrates the social history of women's movements, traditions, issues and advancements.
Collectors, historians, curators and fashion aficionados will devour this tome of information and illustration, but Accessorizing the Bride, Vintage Wedding Finery Through the Decades offers more than that. While many wedding books feature gowns of celebrities, this issue credits everyday women like you and me with the ability to select, design or create that special gown for that very special day.
Whether chosen as a reference or as a keepsake, this is one high quality coffee table book that will be opened over and over for second, third, fourth and more perusals.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A lovely retrospective, October 12, 2005

By 

Leah (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Accessorizing The Bride: Vintage Wedding Finery Through The Decades (Hardcover)

Norma Shephard's book is a beautifully nostalgic tribute to the wedding fashions and trends of generations past and present. It is as delightful as it is informative.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Get Out Your Hanky, October 11, 2005

By 

Hat Lover "Nancy" (Burlington, Ontario) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Accessorizing The Bride: Vintage Wedding Finery Through The Decades (Hardcover)

Sentimental,enlightening and gorgeous. I especially liked the non-traditional wedding gowns and bridal stories.