Costuming

This fully updated and expanded second edition of Costume Since 1945 brings this period to life through accessible, lively text and over 100 illustrations. From the austerity of the utility years to punk and protest to 21st century fast fashion and vintage style, the volume captures changes the mood and style of each era across street fashion, sportswear, formal wear from suits to couture gowns, underwear and nightclothes. Based on a wide range of sources, the author's illustrations offer engaging insights on fashion history as well as design inspiration.

Surveys the fads, fashions, trends, and cultural and intellectual preoccupations of the comfortable, high-living 1920s.

Chronicles trends in 1930s styles such as lower hemlines and broader shoulders; the introduction of synthetic fabrics; and new views of fitness, health, and personal beauty.

Traces the mobilization of clothing trends as they marched across the war-ravaged world. This volume offers a reflection on the role fashion has played throughout the period of 1940s. It serves as a useful reference for those students or general readers who are interested in how history and culture has affected fashion through the years.

Clothing has been a consistent recorder of history through the years, documenting the heights of fashion as it threaded its way through post-war society. This work traces this intricate history, from nylon stockings and stiletto heels to full skirts and slim-fitting bodices to Baby Doll nightwear and textured leisure suits.

Delves into the free-spirited clothing trends of 1960s, exploring history from a social and cultural angle.

From platform shoes and bell-bottoms to miniskirts and hot pants, to Afghans and cheesecloth fabrics, the seventies remains one of the most diverse decades in clothing history. This volume explores the many facets of this exciting topic.

From the designer suits of yuppie men and women to ripped jeans to the mini-crinoline craze to the eloquent fashion sense of Princess Diana, the 1980s encapsulates a time when it became fashionable to make money and dress well. This work explores the enthralling history of fashion as it recreated itself through the popular trends of the eighties.

From silk walking shorts to bike leathers to layered minidresses to stretch-velvet jump suits, the 1990s represented a period of fun, innovative clothing styles that could be sold at affordable prices for the average person. This volume recounts the history of fashion as it threaded its way through this exciting era.

The Roaring Twenties, age of jazz and flappers, Model T Fords and Hollywood movie stars, was also a time when for millions the bulky catalogs of Montgomery Ward or Sears, Roebuck were a substitute for the window displays of Paris or New York fashion shops. Buying clothing through the mails had become an American institution, and entire families were often dressed via the U.S. Post Office. More conservative than the up-to-the-minute fashion shops, mail-order catalogs nevertheless offered surprisingly much of the haute couture. But, above all, they accurately record what men, women, and children were actually wearing in the 1920s. Now Stella Blum (Curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York) has distilled into this volume the essence of the fashion pages of the Sears, Roebuck and other mail-order catalogs of the Twenties. Her informative text and selection of over 150 representative catalog pages -- comprising over 750 illustrations with original captions -- gradually trace the evolution of dress modes from the vogue of stodgy postwar fashions to the impact on costume of the crash of '29. In a year-by-year survey, Mrs. Blum's introductory texts relate the trends in fashion to the social changes of the dynamic and restless era, assessing the influence of war and technological developments on the high hemlines, flattened busts and hips, geometric patterns and "bobbed" hairstyles of the boyish flapper look. And as she notes, it was through the Sears catalogs that Parisian designers like Coco Chanel, Jeanne Lanvin, and Madeleine Vionnet made their influence felt on Midwestern farms and in urban ghettos. You'll find here a marvelous panorama of "smart," "modish," "chic," "stylish," and "ultra fashionable" apparel, as well as more traditional garments: for women and "misses" there are Middy blouses, Russian boots modeled by Gloria Swanson, "Bob" hats modeled by Clara Bow and Joan Crawford; coats, suits, dresses (including the first maternity dresses), sweaters, capes; silk and rayon stockings, corsets, chemises, camisoles, negligees; and accessories like necklaces, belts, combs, headbands, umbrellas, gloves, compacts, hand bags, wristwatches, and powderpuff cases. You'll see slower-to-change men's fashions -- shirts, ties, suits, sweaters, and sports clothes -- become trimmer, brighter, smarter. And you can follow the trends in children's fashions as well. For historians of costume, nostalgia buffs, and casual browsers, these pages afford a rare picture -- unspoiled by recent myths about the Roaring Twenties -- of how average people really dressed in the jazz age.

For thousands of women across America, hard hit when the frivolity of the twenties ended so resoundingly with the Crash of '29, the pages of the Sears catalog became an essential resource in maintaining a wardrobe. An ambitious marketing operation, it could not afford to take chances on haute couture; its fashions were geared as closely as possible to the prevailing tastes of the American people. For this historically accurate sampling of authentic 1930s fashion, Stella Blum, former Curator of the Costume Institute at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, selected for reproduction 133 representative pages from rare Sears catalogs of the period (fall and spring catalog for each year from 1930 to 1939). Hundreds of illustrations record what men, women, and children were actually wearing in the 1930s when, as a copyline from the Fall 1930 catalog proclaimed: "Thrift is the spirit of the day. Reckless spending is a thing of the past." You'll see here how simpler women's fashion designs -- of more traditional, affordable material -- recaptured the feminine form with a more natural waistline and lower hemlines than seen in the twenties. For evening wear, longer dresses replaced flamboyant beaded short gowns while cloche hats, another twenties trademark, were replaced by berets, pillboxes, and turbans. The seriousness of the accessories and dresses endorsed by such Hollywood legends as Loretta Young, Claudette Colbert, and Fay Wray. For historians of costume, nostalgia buffs and casual browsers, these pages afford a rare picture of how the average American really dressed during the thirties. It is an essential resource for study of the clothing of an important era which designers cannot afford to be without.

Few publications illustrate so comprehensively what American men, women, and children wore in the 1940s than the Sears catalogs of those years, when the company's fashions typified the tastes of the American mainstream. This book is a compilation of 122 fully illustrated and captioned pages selected and reproduced from rare copies of Sears catalogs of the World War II era. Over 120 large-format pages have been carefully reprinted on high-quality glossy stock. They reveal in sharp detail the broad range of clothing fashions available during a period when wartime gasoline rationing made mail-order shopping reach new heights of popularity. Hundreds of accurately detailed drawings depict articles of clothing and personal accessories, including hats, overcoats, shoes, dresses, sportswear, undergarments, neckties, and more. Styles for children range from play clothes to "Sunday best." Men's clothing reflects the conservativism in male fashions during the period. Women's wear ranges from slacks, newly popular with women in the workforce, to dresses with plenty of "Oomph." Here is a richly revealing document that historians of costume and readers interested in fashion, social history, and Americana will find endlessly fascinating. JoAnne Olian, curator of the Costume Collection at the Museum of the City of New York, has written an introduction that appraises the fashions of the 1940s and the many ways in which they reflected the times.

This scrupulously researched, meticulously rendered collection spotlights multiple generations of a family for each decade of the twentieth century. Apparel includes everything from ankle-length tennis outfits and men's formal wear of the 1910s to military outfits from both World Wars, high-fashion suits and dresses in the post WWI years, and wedding finery spanning several decades. These immediately useable illustrations have a host of applications for fashion and costume designers, fashion historians, and anyone looking for fashion images to use in art and craft projects. Informative notes on the costumes complete an outstanding collection documenting nearly 100 years of costume history.

This compilation from a style-conscious decade features scores of illustrations with their original captions specifying colors, sizes, prices. Items include apparel for men, women, and children -- from lingerie and playclothes to bridal ensembles, Madras jackets, and vinyl slicker coats. Introduction. Over 300 black-and-white illustrations.