Customer Reviews

Chronicle of Western Fashion

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

While this book isn't strong on text nor has any detailed clothing construction information, I do find it very inspiring when I'm looking for ideas for my own fashion designs. It's an excellent idea book and a general reference to those only superficially interested in fashion history in the western world. For something more in-depth for a seamstress or historian, you'd need to look elsewhere.

This book is good for peliminary research, as illustrated in the previous reviews. However, I find that the blocky figures sometimes interfere with capturing the right period sillouette. As mentioned before, this book depicts costumes almost year-by-year. But this doesn't provide a wide variety of clothing from one period. For example, you will see how women dressed in various countries for a stretch of five years or so, but nothing as to how men dressed, or regional variations in costume.

Although Peacock made a valiant attempt at giving an overview of costume, this is an extremely poor source for anyone doing serious costume research. Some of the details--silhouette, trim, seamlines, etc.--are grossly distorted or misrepresented. Although readers may get a general idea of what clothing in other periods looked like, they should not take any of these drawings seriously unless they can be verified with other sources. Even a cursory look at the artwork from which Peacock's redrawings were done will show obvious inaccuracies. This book may be useful as a take-off point for further research but nothing more.

An excellent reference and beginning point for most theatrical costumers, hobbyists, and others looking for ideas, not specific patterns. Literally hundreds of color drawings of both male and female dress from a decent variety of places, times and social backgrounds. Each drawing is labeled, but I'd suggest taking the dates and to some degree the places with a grain of salt-- John Peacock's drawing convey style quite well, but are a bit lacking in accuracy and detail.

The reader can immediately appreciate the layout of the book, with its full-color renditions filling each page (about 8 figures per page). There are, however, a few problems. While the colors and textile patterns are decent, the shapes are consistently off. All the figures have, more or less, the same shape, which is inaccurate. Corsets and varying understructures affect the shape of costumes in real life, but in this book it is unclear. The men and women look about the same, with the same bulky waistlines, wide necks, and longish boxy torsos.

While decently researched, the illustrator's talents fall short, and the costumes are, ultimately, inaccurate. The waistlines are fairly consistently off (often too low), the skirts have the same basic shape: a roundish lumpy farthingale, regardless of period, so that the 18th century panniers or the odd Elizabethan wheel farthingale, or the many mid-19th century dresses ALL look the same.

If you are looking for colorful drawings your average semi-pro costume designer might make, regardless of accuracy, then this book is for you. It is, after all, fun to flip through and is somewhat close to styles it represents, but its many inaccuracies (generous) because I do like flipping through colorful pictures and enjoy playing "find the historical error" with the figures, but if you are new to historical costume and want to know what things really looked like in the past, this book is not for you.

Moral of the story: Beware the many inaccuracies--this book is full of them!

As a costume designer, I use this book to refresh my memory on silhouette and style for specific eras. Although the garments are rendered on the same body style (blocky and androgenous) and Peacock deliberately ignores examples of non-European influence, I turn to this book regularly to see the fashions in the context of a chronological timeline, e.g. bustles after crinolines, hose before breeches. Its color and visual emphasis redeem its Anglo-centric attitude.

I agree with one reviewer that you don't get a sense of fashion for one prolonged period. For example, you get several pictures of what a Russian lady would wear in 1876, but not the men, and sometimes not what they would wear in other time periods. However, I still reccommend this book because of its color pictures, the way the fashion starts as far back as the 11th century up through the 21st, and how the garmet details are explained.
I'm writing a book where vampires are prominent and they all still wear clothes from their time frame, so this book was a huge help. At least I was able to write the correct names of the garments, especially the women and know what they would be wearing over the centuries. I reccommend this book if what you need is simple, like just a general sense of what a woman and man was wearing in the 1730's etc., and what the clothes were called. It's not that in depth, but is still very useful. If you can find it cheap (used) it's worth it and check you library for it too, that's where I first saw this, in my local library.

I'd been checking this book out from the library for a couple of years before deciding I needed it full-time. The illustrations are more sketches than perfectly accurate renditions but this suits my purpose. I draw fantasy and the number of costume ideas I get from this book are nearly infinite. I bought it "Used:Like New" and sure enough it arrived looking better than the new book (of a different title) that I bought with it. 2 thumbs up.

A complete compendium of fashion!! Charming illustrations, and an excellent teaching textbook!! Why it is not in constant publication baffles me!!!

I recently had to make a university research on fashion history, cause I'm studying fashion design....so I found these book on the university library....and it helped sooo much.....The dresses where very precise, fully colored and there where so many dresses, almost year by year, When I finished using it I wanted to get it right away....and I found it here at Amazon.com......I realy liked that book, its very helpful Thanks John Peacock