Product Details
Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Fashion in Detail

Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century Fashion in Detail
By Avril Hart, Susan North

List Price: $39.95
Price: $26.37 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details

Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com

37 new or used available from $21.33

Average customer review:

Product Description

Now available from Abrams, this popular book offers a rare, close-up look at the exquisite, labor-intensive details seen in fine historical clothing. Perfect decorative seams, minute stitching, knife-sharp pleats, and voluptuous drapery-all are here, alongside more unusual techniques such as stamping, pinking, and slashing. Most of these effects cannot be replicated by machine, yet many of today's fashion designers take their inspiration from the past, adapting these details to a more contemporary idiom, and to the realities of modern manufacturing. Drawing from the Victoria and Albert Museum's world-famous collections, the book contains a gallery of exquisite photographs, accompanied by clear line drawings showing the construction of the complete garment and a text that sets each in the context of its time. This book will appeal to anyone interested in fashion, historical costume, or textile history, from cut and construction to fabric and trimmings.

Product Details

  • Amazon Sales Rank: #20247 in Books
  • Published on: 2009-04-01
  • Original language: English
  • Number of items: 1
  • Binding: Paperback
  • 224 pages

Features

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Avril Hart is an expert in historical dress. Her published work includes Englishmen's Fashionable Dress: 1600-1799, Ties, and Fans. Susan North is Curator, Department of Furniture, Textiles and Fashion, at the V&A.

Customer Reviews

Beautiful and worth every penny5
I have a copy of the book. I love the photos with every page close up detail.

Biggest and only complaint I have is that the book has images of garments clumped in each chapter, like "Stitching, Seams, Quilting and Cording", Buttons, Trimmings, "Applied Decoration", etc. What bothers me is that you don't get the overall image of a garment, but a lot of close up fragments of a garment. It would have been nice to see an overall image as well.

The book also provides a basic sketch of each garment, even if the original garment is missing a section.

This is not my time period for historical garments as a costumer, but the details just get me drooling every time I look at the book. Close ups of the embroideries are just to die for. All in wonderful full color large images the size of the book itself. The left page has the description, and the right page has the full image, and it is larger than 8.5" x 11". I don't have my ruler handy or I would measure it right now.

Anyway, I think it was worth the full price I paid when it first came out in hb. I love it.

Gorgeous5
The historical detail of pieces from the Victoria and Albert Museum costume collections is incredible. The photography does justice to the intricate embellishment and contemporary textiles.

The only things missing are diagrams of the patterns from the various items represented, but the line drawings are precise enough to provide plenty of information on pattern and construction.

With only a couple of editorial errors, the writing is interesting and informative, adding to the detail of the photography and line drawings. This book and it's companion, Dress In Detail (also from V&A Publications), are a good combination to add to a costume or fashion library.

Visual Feast5
I can not find a better expression to describe this book than this one: a real visual feast for readers.

I am amazed by the intricacies and delicate details of those fashions dating 300 years ago. And I am fascinated with the fine quality of the silk fabrics reflecting the elegance of that time.

Highly recommend to anyone who loves fashion.