Customer Reviews

What People Wore When: A Complete Illustrated History of Costume from Ancient Times to the Nineteenth Century for Every Level of Society

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
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What People Wore When is a rather recent addition to this particular genre. I am a very visual person and an individual who reads quite a lot of history and biography. I own several books addressing and covering the different clothing worn by different cultures throughout history, and have assess to quite a number of others. I find these books add much spice to my reading and certainly help me visualize those people about whom I am reading. This goes for fiction as well. I am currently reading Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility and it is easier for me to see Marianne, Elinor and the others in my mind's eye as I read if I can view their clothing. This edition is one of the better works out at the present time and it is not only a tremendous help but an absolute delight reading.

As the publication descriptions note, this work features the art of Fredrich Hottenroth aned Auguste Rucinte, or is at least based upon their technique and style. These are two of the best of the classic illustrators of the nineteenth-century and their work appears in quite a number of publications, even to this date. Most readers of history will recognize their style when they first open this work. The clothing shown in this book is extremely detailed, both in style and in color. (More about this later).

This book starts with ancient times, beginning with the Egyptians, Assyrians, Etruscans and other civilizations, and goes through the nineteenth century. The clothing features represent each class of society, from the lowest to the highest; military, civilian and religious. Each illustration, and there are hundreds upon hundreds of them, and are accompanied by very insightful explanations and comments. As has been noted, the book is broken down into various sections, i.e. chronology, geographic, and specific era. All are well cross referenced. This work also has sections devoted to accessories such as head gear, hairstyles, footwear, belts, bags, neck wear and more. Both male and female clothing are well represented. All entries are dated as precisely as possible; something I find quite helpful. All sections of the book begin with a brief explanation and a brief history lesson.

While the main emphasis of this work is more or less Euro-centric, most of the other parts of the world are well represented as are specific, little known tribes and cultures. As an example, India is well represented, but not to the depth as say France or Germany. The Native American portion of the book is probably the weakest.

As to what I do not like about the book (which by the way, is not much) starts with the fact that I am quite unfamiliar with clothing jargon, and even though the Editor Melissa Leventon has given us a very nice Glossary to work with, I am still so uneducated in this area that I found even that somewhat wanting. Secondly, the illustrations could quite possibly be a little too stylized, a little too perfect. I have been fortunate enough to have visited many museums in my life, all over the world, and have had the pleasure of seeing many of the items illustrated here. I can assure you that reality can be a bit of a disappointment at times. These small points should not really even be considered as they are more "opinions of taste," i.e. mine, and an obvious gap in my education.

This is an extremely useful book, for my purposes, and it is quite fun to just leaf through it. So many times I caught myself wondering "what were those people thinking," when I viewed some of the fantastic, and I must say, ridiculous items of clothing; but then I would always stop and think about some of the things we have worn in my life time, both men and women, and feel a bit embarrassed for casting mental stones. Gosh, I wonder if I still have my polyester leisure suit with bell-bottoms and orange double knit polyester shirt stashed in the attic somewhere?

Don Blankenship
The Ozarks

This is the best one-volume illustrated history of costume and dress I've ever seen. An invaluable resource for writers, historians, actors, directors, and anyone trying to get a sense of what people wore when. Beautifully produced and incredibly useful.

this book is much better organized than the older historical costume books that I have. The drawn lines are clearer, plus there are explainations of the different parts of the clothes rather than just the illustrations. I'm glad i found this!

I have purchased this book with other publications covering the same topic. Among them this is the best, providing good illustrations, some in great colors and specifics. I can still think of improvements, but I guess this is not a very popular subject and not many collective sources exist, specially in English. I would hope the publication will get an upgrade in the near future to include further discoveries in recent times about what and how people wore in the past centuries and where. There is a great lack of material covering the VII - XI. Centuries in Europe and Asia.

This book has pictures and descriptions of costume from Anatolia to South America - it's really worldwide. Unfortunately, the major focus is on Europe, since it's based on two classical european illustrators. But it's a good choice for those who want to have an idea of different and non-european's costume through the ages.

This book is a great buy at around 20$. The pages include lots of color picture/illustrations of clothing from all over the world throughout history. It also details clothing of tribes and smaller cultures that other books do not even touch on. I love this book for it's wide range of inspiration and the visual pleasure I receive when browsing through it.

Hello, I purchased this book to round out a home school curriculum on world history with my high school aged daughters. I think that the drawings in the book are wonderful, but having text that indicates confusion concerning the accuracy of the drawings as they relate to the actual garments worn in the time period makes me wonder if I am teaching incorrect facts. Why would the author state "The source for this figure is unknown, but there are some features that suggest artistic license."? If the drawing may be inaccurate, why use it?

As an illustrator and comic artist, my favorite subject matter is period settings and fantasy, so I bought this book to act as reference and inspiration for character and costume designs. In that respect, it's a great reference, because it explains about what time period certain articles of clothing started appearing, and what they generally looked like, and who wore what, and it provides just enough information for me to either be accurate to real world history, or create other styles based off this or that time period or culture.

At first I was disappointed in the artwork, because it helps to see true-to-life examples, which is why I say this is more supplementary reference than the panacea for all your costume design questions. However, it's stated in the text that the illustrations are based off artwork, prints, and plates from those time periods (which would've been done through observation) and that many of them were not in color, so some liberties had to be taken in order to show the different pieces of the costume. So the illustrations in the book are no longer an issue for me, since that's what I'm doing anyway.

I do wish that there was more break-down between the time periods, and a more even amount of detail spent in all the cultures that are covered. I also wish there had been some time spent discussing middle to low class clothing. Most of what is here covers uppder-middle to upper class, and military, but again, given the time period, I can't imagine there had been much need to record peasant dress, or that they had much variety in their clothes anyway. Lower classes of people are mentioned, but you have to really hunt for it.

TLDR; It's a good reference if you're totally confused about what era a style of dress started, but recommended to do some other research on the side and find some photos of surviving period clothes to put everything into perspective for you.

I am 100% satisfied with this book, great history, really complete, with illustrations and key pieces. This book is a must!

this is a great book on the history of costume; it has colorful illustrations on every page, listed by time periods and countries. I bought this book for inspiration in fashion. My only complaint about this book is that it feels like a crash course on the history of costume. there are places where it goes into detail, i.e. "France 1670-1790", but in other places it can be quite vague: "Japan 19th century". I guess you can't get everything you want from 1 book, but still a great book, nonetheless.