Category: 17th century

EEP!  If you loved the first Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns — okay, and even if you didn’t! — the next installment, Seventeenth-Century Women’s Dress Patterns: Book 2, comes out on May 1, and can be preordered now.

It sounds really cool, particularly all the info on stays:

Book Two in the V&A’s groundbreaking new series presents 17 patterns for garments and accessories from a 17th-century woman’s wardrobe. It includes patterns for a loose gown, a jacket, a pair of stays and a boned bodice, ivory and wooden busks, shoes, a hat, a stomacher, linen bands and supporters, a bag, and a knife case. It also features a description of the stay-making process. Full step-by-step drawings of the construction sequence are given for each garment to enable the reader to accurately reconstruct them. There are scale patterns and diagrams for making linen and metal thread laces and embroidery designs. Multiple photographs of the objects, close-up construction details and X-ray photography reveal the hidden elements of the clothes, the precise number of layers and the stitches used inside.

If it’s anything like the first book, it will be of interest to those into 16th c. costume as well!

Some interesting sounding books out now, or coming soon!

Russian Elegance: Country & City Fashion from the 15th to the Early 20th Century features examples of Russian dress from the State Historical Museum, from the 15th-20th centuries, looking at both Russian peasant dress and Western styles worn in cities.

Classic Beauty: The History of Makeup is written by the founder of Besame Cosmetics, so you know she knows what she’s talking about! Covers the 1920s-present, with over 430 photos, timelines, and color palettes.

Facing Beauty: Painted Women and Cosmetic Art is written by renowned costume historian Aileen Ribeiro so again, you know it’s going to be good. According to its description, it “discusses the shifting perceptions of female beauty, concentrating on the period from about 1540 to 1940” with lots of illustrations.

Slightly further afield… ie of interest to niche markets:

Spanish Fashion in Early Modern Europe: The Prevelance and Prestige of Spanish Attire in the Courts of the 16th and 17th Centuries could be interesting to those who geek out on this era. It looks like it’s going to be more analytical than illustrative.

And in a similar vein, Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America (Gender and American Culture) “explores how and why fashion–both as a concept and as the changing style of personal adornment–linked gender relations, social order, commerce, and political authority during a time when traditional hierarchies were in flux” — again, analytical rather than illustrative.

Happy shopping!