Customer Reviews

Costume and Fashion: A Concise History (World of Art)

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This book is aptly titled. It gives just a little bit about everything from ancient Egyptian styles to fashion in the 1990s. Those of you looking for photos and descriptions with great attention to detail should look elsewhere, but those of you looking for just an overview of fashion, this would be a good introduction.

The author discusses the rise and fall of fashion trends through the ages, and how society, industry, and particular people influenced them. The text in this book seems as informative, as it is concise. However, other reviewers seem to think that the author's information about pre-20th century costumes is inconsistent with other sources, but the post-20th century information is consistent with what I have learned from other sources.

Therefore, I recommend this book with some hesitation. If you want a good overview of fashion history, especially a pictoral history, I would recommend this book. On the other hand, if you are looking to learn more about a particular era, especially ancient costumes, I would recommend choosing a book specifically written about that era.

This classic by James Laver is a very good introduction to the subject. This is not an exhaustive history of clothing that one should consult for lengthy descriptions, or pinpoint accuracy tied to the latest scholarship. But what this book is (and is wonderfully) is an overview of a very vast subject distilled into one portable volume. The illustrations are excellent and worth the price of the book in themselves. Great amounts of detail are lacking, but the student of costume history can look elsewhere for in depth information in the works of Boucher, Davenport, Ribeiro, and others. This book can provide the basic knowledge one needs to approach the more advanced publications.

There are discrepencies of terminology in comparison to other texts. This is especially true in his descriptions of Byzantine court costume; Laver uses some Greek terms as opposed to the Latin terms used by most other historians. Laver also has an ethnocentric bias and gives much information from an English point of view. As with Contini's "Fashion: A Social History" and Batterberry's "Fashion: The Mirror of History" (both sadly out of print), Laver's prose and scholarship are a little dated, and he predates political correctness. But the history of clothing is heavily tied to religion and superstitions, public morals and sexuality, gender and social hierarchy. To tell a politcally correct history of clothing is to apply a bias as skewed as the biases it would seek to rectify.

This is a highly readable and succinct account of its subject and is strongly recommended. Given that the wonderful Contini and Batterberry books are not available, Laver's very accesible text is an excellent introduction for the beginning costume historian.

This book is filled with pictures. The problems I've found with it are (1) it does not seem consistant in its terms with other historical costume history books so it is difficult to compare with other sources. (2) The writer tends to make sweeping statements that are true only for England, such as saying that hose weren't knitted until the 16th century because knitting didn't reach England until than. (3) Other statements are very frustrating since the author will state that so and so was dressed in a Persian or Arabic style and then does not describe that style at all. On the good side the pictures are helpful and some of the statements agree with other souces.

An easy read. Covers from 2900 B.C. to the 1990's with a particular emphasis on the 1800's. James Laver's writing style is wonderful, describing not only the clothing but the historical and social context for each style of dress. The fashions of each period are illustrated by a variety of historical evidence, including statutes, famous works of art, fashion drawings, diaries, cartoons and photographs. The book is not an in-depth study of each period but rather a very brief overview. The last chapter covering from 1940 to the 1990's was writen by Amy de la Haye and is markedly different in writing style. She does not discuss the social and historical context to the extent that Laver does but rather gives an overview of the major designers of each decade and their respective styles. As there is a lot to discuss in the last 50 years of fashion, I wish that this book had dedicated more than 31 pages to modern fashion.

This is a nice *SMALL* (which is important when you are carrying it back and forth to class) book that is FULL of pictures. Don't by this book if you are looking for detailed explanations of the costumes...go to Boucher if you are looking for that... But if you want a good colour pictoral quick reference, this is the one to buy.

I love it and use it all the time. It is cracked open to the picture of Rubens and Isabella Brant!

Using only primary resources (paintings, statues, etc. from the periods being shown), this book is both concise and trustworthy. Unlike other books that try to cover an expansive period of time in Western costume, this one never uses original or after the fact illustrations, which can be misleading and/or inaccurate. The only downside is that there are only a few samples from each period, so the reader doesn't get as broad a sense of the time as one might hope. Still, if the idea is to get a broad understanding, the text with the pictures combine to make a decent starting point for Western fashion from Ancient times to the 1990's.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book, especially as I enjoy European history so much. It was full of interesting historical details and how fashion influences the world, and how the world influenced fashion (ex: architecture changed because of the skirt size). The one thing I would have liked to see more of was a discussion on Eastern Fashions. The book did a great job explaining how the West was influenced by the East, but had no stand alone history of the East. The authors are seamless, and as Laver's narration ends, the others pick it right up without the style of writing changing much.