From School Library Journal
Grade 9 Up—These engagingly written volumes provide a comprehensive examination of the history of clothing. Volume one (prehistory to 1500 C.E.) includes cultures such as ancient Greece and Persia; volume two (1501–1800) chronicles dress in places such as Europe, North America, India, and Japan; volume three (1801-present) has an international scope and is arranged chronologically. Each chapter targets a specific period and opens with an accurate and selectively detailed time line and an introduction to the era and the milestones in clothing and textiles, laying an appropriate foundation for the discussion that follows. The narrative is interspersed with plentiful, boxed supplementary material about historical topics mentioned in the text. Each chapter is appended with further reading suggestions (including Web sites), and a list of films, documentaries, and television shows. A user-friendly glossary concludes each volume. The authoritative presentation is enhanced by reproductions of paintings, decorations, and photos, in black-and-white throughout and in several pages of color inserts in each book . Bronwyn Cosgrave's
The Complete History of Costume Fashion (Facts On File, 2001) is a similarly beautifully illustrated guide to the history of clothing for men and women from ancient to modern times from a cultural perspective. However, Condra's resource also covers dress for children, servants, and wealthy classes, and describes how a plethora of cultures influenced fashion. An outstanding purchase with an ambitious scope.—
Hillary Jan Donitz-Goldstein, formerly at New York Public Library Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Editor Condra and six other scholars in the field of fashion, textiles, art history, and classics have done an excellent job in exploring the history of clothing. Condra notes that the field cannot be studied in isolation so sections on culture, politics, economics, art, religion, and architecture in specific eras are included. The three volumes are arranged by time period, beginning with prehistory to 1500 CE and ending with 1801 to the present. The text is enhanced by boxes and sidebars. One of the first sidebars describes colored cotton hybrids, which were discovered in prehistoric times and were marketed in the 1980s under the name FoxFibre. There are a number of black-and-white photos (but never enough for this topic) from Art Resource, a photo archive. One of the first illustrations is of Tollund Man, from the Celtic Iron Age (400–300 BCE); the last one depicts the cast of the television program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. Each volume also has a four-page center section of color photos. Each chapter starts with a time line, a detailed general history, and descriptions of the textiles and other materials used, and then goes on to the types of clothing. Descriptions of clothing are generally divided into men’s and women’s but also may include clothing worn by children, working people, the military, and others. Where applicable, accessories, footwear, hair styles, and undergarments are described. For some eras, the clothing of different regions or countries is included, for example, “North American Colonial Costume” and “Clothing in Mughal India.” Notes, bibliographies, and recommended Web sources and movies end each chapter. The index, glossary, and a list of museums are repeated in each volume, which is useful but means that in the three volumes, there are more than 200 duplicate pages. Clothing through World History will complement the Encyclopedia of Clothing and Fashion (Gale, 2004), which is arranged alphabetically rather than chronologically. The Greenwood set will be a very useful source for academic and large libraries where students are researching clothing and fashion for papers or theater productions. Also available as an e-book. --Christine Bulson
