Customer Reviews

The Development of Costume (Heritage: Care-Preservation-Management)

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

 

 

Very few books can be useful to more than one time period or region of historical costuming research. This volume is one that is. The book starts out with a short discussion of skin garments, works through early peplos or bog-style dresses, and continues through the various centuries to modern clothing. It touches upon fabric weaving styles, various types of material, stitches and alternative fastenings, pattern layout and cutting methods, differences between male and female clothing, ect. There is no in-depth coverage of any one particular topic, but the information is useful to many different re-enactors based in general European or Early American cultures. I would suggest this book as an invaluable starting place for new costume makers. In particular, it collects information from many singularly useful sources into one place (an early Anglo-Saxon garment, the Greenland gown, when machine-sewn garments became widespread, examples of stitch types, short discussions on natural dyes, fiber and weave types, etc).

I bought this book because I heard about it on one of the re-enacting mailing lists, and was curious about it. I fell in love with in after a few minutes of reading it. I want to stress again that it's greatest strength is the range of topics it covers - it would be of equal use to a Medieval or a Regency or a Victorian re-enactor/costumer. If you are very new to costuming, or have friends who are, I highly recommend this book to start out a personal library.