Columbia Fancy Dress Costumes

Baskets made by the people of the mid-Columbia River are among the finest examples of Indian textile art in North America, and they are included in the collections of most major museums. The traditional designs and techniques of construction reveal a great artistic heritage that links modern basketmakers to their ancestors. Yet baskets are also everyday objects of a utilitarian nature that reveal much about mid-Columbia culture---a flat twined bag has greatest value when it is plump with dried r... [Read More]

Gloria Seaman Allen applies her formidable research and narrative skills to the fledgling District of Columbia, bringing to light heretofore unknown details and full-color images for nearly 130 samplers and pictorial embroideries stitched in the first years of the nation's capital. Columbia's Daughters examines the political, economic, and social dynamics of Alexandria, Georgetown and Washington City, the three urban centers that merged to create the District of Columbia as the nation entered th... [Read More]

Showcases the artist's designs for couture clothing and discusses his rise to design director at Christian Dior

African fashion is as diverse and dynamic as the continent and the people who live there. While experts have long recognized the importance of clothing as a marker of ethnic identity, life stages, political affiliation, and social class, they have only just begun to discover African fashion. Contemporary African Fashion puts Africa at the intersection of world cultures and globalized identities, displaying the powerful creative force and impact of newly emerging styles. Richly illustrated with c... [Read More]

Michel Pastoureau's lively study of stripes offers a unique and engaging perspective on the evolution of fashion, taste, and visual codes in Western culture. The Devil's Cloth begins with a medieval scandal. When the first Carmelites arrived in France from the Holy Land, the religious order required its members to wear striped habits, prompting turmoil and denunciations in the West that lasted fifty years until the order was forced to accept a quiet, solid color. The medieval eye found any surfa... [Read More]

The 1950s were the golden years of haute couture, captured by iconic images of glamorous models wearing dramatic clothes. Yet the real women who wore these clothes adapted them to suit their own tastes, altered them to extend their life, and often could not bear to part with them long after the dresses had outlived their use. This gorgeously illustrated book demonstrates why so many of these designs are still in existence and why we are fascinated by them fifty years later.Couture and Commerce i... [Read More]

Betty Issenman examines all aspects of winter and summer Inuit clothing, going back 4000 years, with particular emphasis on northern Canadian Inuit. She also describes the kinds of material and tools used to make the clothing. The focus is on on Inuit clothing as protection, identity, and culture bearer, roles it has played for thousands of years. No other book brings together contemporary and historical material from the circumpolar worlds with original research. Sinews of Survival is a fascina... [Read More]

Based largely on nineteenth and twentieth-century representations of Chinese dress as traditional and unchanging, historians have long regarded fashion as something peculiarly Western. But in this surprising, sumptuously illustrated book, Antonia Finnane proves that vibrant fashions were a vital part of Chinese life in the late imperial era, when well-to-do men and women showed a keen awareness of what was up-to-date. Though foreigners who traveled to China in the early decades of the twentieth ... [Read More]

Excerpt from Souvenir Number; Victoria Exhibition and Horse Races: Official ProgrammeOpposing pages wi discolourations are fil possible image I Les colorations variables filmées deux fois afin possible.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original... [Read More]