Survey of Historic Costume: A History of Western Dress [Hardcover]

Phyllis G. Tortora (Author), Keith Eubank (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1563671425 | ISBN-13: 978-1563671425 | Publication Date: May 1998 | Edition: 3rd

The latest edition of this bestseller brings the authors' analysis of Western dress through 1996 and adds a number of new features. Survey of Historic Costume is a basic text for readers who want an overview and chronology of costume, discussing the dress of each era within its historical, cultural, and economic contexts.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Phyllis Tortora is Professor Emerita at Queens College, where she was department chair for 17 years, teaching historic costume and furnishings, and textiles. Among the textbooks of which she is the author or co-author are Survey of Historic Costume and Fairchild's Dictionary of Textiles, 7th edition. She also serves as a consultant to the Historic Costume Collection of the Huntington Historical Society in Huntington, New York. Keith Eubank is a Professor of History, Emeritus, Queens College, CUNY. He had previously been the Chairman of the History Department and he was also part of the Doctoral Faculty in History, CUNY. Keith maintains scholarly affiliations with the American Historical Association and the Southern Historical Association.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: Fairchild Books; 3rd edition (May 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563671425
• ISBN-13: 978-1563671425
• Product Dimensions: 11.2 x 8.6 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #286,073 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Not my favorite historical clothing book, by far ..., November 21, 2010

By 

AmyG - See all my reviews

This review is from: Survey of Historic Costume 5th edition + Free Student Study Guide (Hardcover)

I am a living historian doing a senior thesis on women's clothing of the 18th century. The good thing about this book is that it covers a lot of time periods and places, though it only gives the briefest descriptions. The photos are decent but the illustrations are not good. The text itself is far less than desirable; I have found multiple spelling and grammatical mistakes (page 307 says that the Directoire and Empire periods spanned the years from the French Revolution until around 1920, which I would like to assume is a typo) as well as some incorrect historical 'facts'. The writing style is misleading and vague at times. I will not use this book for research because I have developed a distrust for the information it presents as facts. I would not have bought this book for my own reading and research. If you are pursuing a career in history, fashion or historical fashion, do not rely on this book. If you're not, it might be a nice read.

21 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I've seen better, February 19, 2010

By 

Solitaire "addicted to type" (living in my head) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Survey of Historic Costume (Hardcover)

Another class, another textbook. This book is a heavy, thick hardcover that is more of a chore to lug around than my laptop. Another book published by Fairchild Publications, the New York publishers who own WWD and W magazine. This is the text chosen by the current professor teaching History of Costume at my college. Background - this class is considered a "multi-cultural" course which is transferable for university credit. So it must cover social and historical aspects of the different epochs of Western Costume that are covered in this text. Having said that, there is a lot of social/political history between these covers, and surprisingly, not as many images as I'd hoped for in a book of this density.

I have a pretty extensive collection of books on clothing/costuming from different time periods, and this text pretty much skims the surface. The good is that they use artifacts from the different time periods, so you can see how people of that culture saw themselves in their clothing. The author has also included diagrams in some of the early sections, showing how different scholars have hypothesized how earlier cultures draped their garments around the human body. So that is also interesting. The bibliographies at the end of each chapter are pretty good, and I noticed some books referenced here that I already have in my collection. But really, for the amount of money charged for this oversized doorstop, I'm really disappointed in the number of images included.

Considering the constraints for the multicultural requirement, I suppose this book was created with that end purpose in mind. For instance I would have rather have seen some photographs of extant Georgean garments in good condition than contemporary engravings of what slaves wore in the period. Sorry. It's like People magazine - I want to see what Sandra Bullock wears to the Oscars - not what Jane Doe wears when she goes shopping at Wal-Mart. I also found it amusing that the authors deemed it necessary to create categories for "fashion tribes" when they reached the contemporary chapter. See if that inclusion doesn't date this book sooner than necessary.

As I said, I found this text to be a disappointment overall. Would I buy it if the professor didn't require it? Nope. There are much better history of fashion books out there (a lot of different Dover or Tacshen publications for example) that are better value and have more images for the serious student of fashion/costume design.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A little bit fooled, March 10, 2010

By 

Kara R. Pratt - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Survey of Historic Costume (Hardcover)

This book isn't as cool as the cover makes it look. A lot fewer good pictures than I expected (I'm a very visual learner), but the content is good and covers a lot of material. I did learn some great stuff.