Customer Reviews

Costume: 1066 to the Present (Third Edition)

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

 

 

Peacock puts together a book that focuses itself on British fashion of the royalty from 1066 through 2005. Pages are filled with designs that the royalty as well as the wealthy would have worn during this time period. They say a picture is worth 1000 words, and this book contains over 1000 pictures to demonstrate the changes in fashion over the years.

The book has very little text in it. Each page is filled with 8 different designs, typically 4 are male fashion designs, and 4 are for women. What I do like about these designs is that each one has notes about trim, how garmets were fastened, hair styles, and information regarding proper head dress is also given. I feel if you are trying to recreate one of these designs this book would be helpful in getting the small details correct.

While short on words, this book has many sketches, and much information is contained on each sketch. There is very little text, or any form of long dry reading here. You may even wished he spent more time going over the design changes in text. I feel this book does an excellent job of giving someone a feel for what clothing looked like in the time periods covered in this book.

This sort of book might have been very helpful if you could rely on the pictures. It gives relatively many drawings for each period (though too few if you want to focus on one exact date), but I could never find out where the pictures came from, what were they based on, as I found so many obvious mistakes and fantasy elements that for a serious costumer, this would be an absolutely terrible and useless book. Besides, the pictures are not very well drawn, the illustrator wasn't as skilled as another painter of untrustworthy costumes, A.Racinet.

This could be only help for people who want to have a general "overview" of the fashion history and its changes through decades, but I must add that the dresses depicted aren't always very typical for the period, which can spoil the general impression.

I often sew historical costumes for friends and clients. This book has helped me turn terminology that they don't understand into pictures they can point at! Unfortunately it's upper classes only. No Merchant class or lower class. Still an excellent resource though.

I bought this book because I make Cloth Dolls and also mini dolls and the costume has to be authentic so looking at these styles enables me to make the exact costume I am looking for. Even if you have Fairs to go to you can also make these costumes for adults as well. It is very interesting to see what people wore at that time if you are interest in fashions during that time period.

I got this book several years ago when I only had a minor interest in costumer design, now it's my career and I still find it useful. Peacock's illustrations are clear but relatively simple and great for a period overview and for sketching and silhouette references.

The only thing I think this book is lacking is descriptive text and breakdown of the class of the people represented. This can't be your only research but should definitely be in the collection of anyone with even the slightest interest in costume and fashion history

Have used this book many times as a resource when making costurmes for the Renaissance Fair as well as for the local Model A Ford club. Clear, easy to interpret pictures and excellent captions.