Customer Reviews

Royal Dress: The Image and the Reality 1580 to the Present Day

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This book takes you through five centuries of royal dress from 1580 to the 1980s and concentrates on the differences between how dress used in portraits etc and the reality of what rulers actually wore. To do this, throughout the book are illustrations, mostly black and white, that are then commented on in detail. These comments are full of interesting titbits of information on the dress of the various periods/ rulers discussed.

There's a lot in this book, but it's not a "pretty" book. It has a small colour section in the centre of pictures, but it's the black and white illustrations and their commentary which is where you'll get the real value out of this book. With the 1860s you start to get photographs and the story finishes with Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson in their early royal careers in 1988. For anybody who is interested in royal dress this book is filled with interesting, obscure facts on British royalty and fashion and recommended.

I liked this book, it had paintings/drawings where photos couldn't be used. I got the book for the art and design of dress in it, and I thought it could've used more pictures rather than the history behind them. Yet, I'm glad I got it, it's a good read.