The Vogue History of 20th-Century Fashion [Hardcover]

Jan Mulvagh (Author), Valerie Mendes (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 13, 1989

This is an illustrated book offering a journey through the wardrobes of the twentieth-century's best dressed women. Fashion is approached season by season describing with detail the evolution of style, illustrating how fashion can act as a barometer of social change. Why did Edwardian women change six times a day? Why did flappers mimic adolescent boys? How did The Great Depression affect hemlines? Why did women retreat back into corsets after the war? Were London's punks using dress as a language of rebellion? The author contends that answers to these questions contribute to historians understanding of a period.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In staggering detail, this coffee-table album proceeds year by year, from 1909 to 1986, recording shifting styles in dresses, coats and blouses, fluctuating hemlines, changing hues. In a book packed with hundreds of black-and-white photographs and drawings from Vogue , Mulvagh ( Costume Jewelry in Vogue ) lamely attempts to treat fashion as a barometer of social change. Thus we hop from the Edwardians' movement-restricting gowns to the "sober, adaptable" styles necessitated by WW I, to late '50s defiance embodied in the miniskirt, then on to the Japanese influx of the '70s, punk, New Romanticism, and so forth. But this showcase, garbed in promotional brochure lingo ("Hats made a comeback"; " . . . the silhouette took a soft turn") succeeds mainly as a visual repository festooned with slender Vogue models with pouts and turned-up noses. All the big names and many lesser lights of haute couture are here.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

That this detailed year-by-year survey is based on Vogue is both its strength and its weakness. Because Vogue has been at the center of 20th-century fashion, the myriad photographs selected from its pages--and spanning the years 1909 to 1989--are an invaluable chronicle. The magazine also provides a solid historic base for the text. Yet like Vogue, this book covers only women's fashion and views it only from the Vogue viewpoint, which is not necessarily that of the average person. In contrast, Elizabeth Ewing's History of Twentieth Century Fashion (Barnes & Noble, 1986) offers a broader perspective by including inexpensive, ready-to-wear fashions. Nevertheless, the use of diaries, memoirs, and historical documents combine with the author's able analysis to create an impressive work valuable to social historians, costume designers, and other followers of high fashion.
- Daniel J. Lombardo, Jones Lib., Inc., Amherst, Mass.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 416 pages
• Publisher: Viking Adult (April 13, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0670801720
• ISBN-13: 978-0670801725
• Product Dimensions: 20 x 20 x 20 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,545,158 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars excellent for students, August 25, 2004

By 

Kristin Eckland "K. Eckland" (Caribbean) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Vogue History of 20th-Century Fashion (Hardcover)

This is a great book for students or anyone interested in 20th century costume. I found it to be a wonderful reference, with lots of photographs to illustrate the fashions of the times. I used several of the photographs to design clothing when patterns were otherwise unavailable.