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Title: Victorian and Edwardian Fashion: A Photographic Survey
ISBN: 0486242056
Author:
Alison Gernsheim
Publicate Date: 1982-01-01
Publish: 1982-01-01
List Price: $14.95
Average Customer Rating: 5.0
Format: Paperback
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $9.42
Amazon Lowest Used Price: $8.34
Amazon Merchant Price: $10.17
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Fabulous English fashion
This is one of the first books in a long list of fashion books that I own. It is one of my favorites. It is a bit academic as another reviewer mentioned, but I feel that's an important part of what makes this book a keeper. It covers European, mostly English fashion of the aristocracy. There are some great historical anecdotes. My favorites involve Empress Eugenie lounging audaciously around in her red knickers, and some about the rare daring lady to show up to the Ascott races in "pants". The writing isn't as witty as other books, but the historical detail is fantastic. There are quite a few pictures as well. The arrangement of the pictures and text is chronological and very easy to follow. The only drawback is that the pages are matte and not glossy. And the spine falls apart after a few years of hard labor.
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2: Excellent resource, lovely photos, thorough text
It is a rare opportunity to see how people dressed in reality so far in the past. By contrast, fashion plates always show the garment in its perfect form, portraits are idealized, and original illustrations change the proportions, whether purposefully or not, to fit the times of the artist, not that of the garment. Photos do not lie.
The pictures feature mostly upper-class people in attractive poses, and the reader can enjoy seeing these people in their clothes, in a variety of settings, in the middle of different activities (cycling, skating, boating, traveling through snowy mountains, playing tennis...). The people sitting for portraits are looking their very best, trying out different positions, picking their finest clothes. As for the garments themselves, the pictures are clear and attractive, and the details are so telling!
The text dissects the pictures and explains costume of the era in detail, discussing the general trends, exceptions, class distinctions, and how the people in these old photos relate to all this. A Very good book for a costume historian.
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3: Great Book!
A good and informative book. Just looking through it I learned a few things that I hadn't ever heard or noticed before, such as the way that tightlacing of corsets doesn't seem to have been too common before the late 1860s.
The book is very reasonably priced. The only trouble, which probably, were it to be fixed, would make the book cost a lot more, is that I often wish the photographs were printed in better quality.
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4: Nice paperback, full of great photos!
This compact book is full of photos and it has great explanations from beginning to end. The author explains carefully every photograph, and also each of the fashions worn by the subjects.
If you love old photos of Victorian and Edwardian fashions, then this is a nice book to own for your library. (Also, the price is reasonable).
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5: You've seen the fashion-plate books, now look at how the clothes were really worn!
Dover Publications, monarchs of 19th-century fashion surveys, have hit another one clean out of the park with this superb examination of Victorian and Edwardian fashion from the coronation of Victoria to the early 1900's. Originally published in England in the early 1960's as "The Mirror of Reality", this book was acquired and republished by Dover in a handy paperback edition up to their usual high physical standards (Dover is well-known for the high quality of its paperback books). Alison Gernsheim delves into every single aspect of costume in the period, from buttons to boots, and the accompanying B&W photos, well over a hundred of them, are worth even more words. The fashion-plate books such as Stella Blum's "Harper's Bazar 1867-1898" and Joanne Olian's "Victorian and Edwardian Fashions from La Mode Illustree" are absolutely indispensable for showing the fashions of the era as their designers conceived them, but you need - I say again, _need_ - this book to see how those dresses looked in the real world.
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