The Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century [Paperback]

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Quite Specific Media Group
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713468289
• ISBN-13: 978-0713468281
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,236,797 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A superb, extraordinarily detailed fashion history, April 27, 2006

By 

Elizabeth A. Root (Laurel, MD USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century (Paperback)

The books that I have from this series are some of the most informative costume histories that I have ever seen. Although they are not particularly long, they are carefully and clearly written. They should be models for other writers. Rather than simply throwing a lot of terms at the reader and leaving them to match them up to the details of the pictures, the author very carefully describes what each shows.

The descriptions are wonderfully detailed, including comments on class and details of fashion at particular times. The author, for example, distinguishes between the two types of French hoods, one worn in the 1530s and the other in the 1540s. (Now you too can wince when you see Anne Boleyn shown wearing the wrong style.) I usually prefer line drawings of fashions rather than photographs of contemporary portrayals, but these photographs are clear and well annotated.

The one thing that I would have liked to seen is a little more of the clothing of middle- and lower-class people, but there are some illustrations, which is more than many books provide.

There are a number of books in the series (A Visual History of Costume ... ) covering the whole history of Western fashion, as well as one "condensed" volume that includes samples from all periods.

Ashelford also did a book, separate from this series, called Dress in the Age of Elizabeth I. This is about the same size as this volume. but naturally focusses on clothing from 1558-1603, examining the social significance of aristocratic and courtier fashions.