Victorian Costumes Reference

After the Civil War the upper middle class in America expanded and became increasingly style-conscious. Visiting European royalty as well as American women returning from the International Exhibition in Paris in 1867 stimulated fashion awareness — and it was in this climate that the magazine Harper's Bazar flowered. Dedicated to being "A repository of Fashion, Pleasure, and Instruction," it brought to American women inside glimpses of the very latest European and American fashions, all in care... [Read More]

Imported custom-made clothes were usually beyond the financial reach of the average middle-class American woman of a century ago; and store-bought garments were often of inferior quality. This left many women with the options of making their own clothes or hiring a seamstress.While a number of economy-minded women did sew simple housedresses, and clothing for their children, many took favorite fashion plates to a dressmaker who would often consult patterns in a magazine such as The Voice of Fash... [Read More]

Deluxe Elite Woman's Costume

The dressmaker's patterns for the more than 50 different garments included in this volume first appeared in the 1890s in issues of the quarterly The Voice of Fashion. Most of the patterns are for stylish daywear for women, but there are house dresses and nightwear as well, along with a selection of suits and dresses for young boys and girls and several garments for men.Reproduced from rare original issues of The Voice of Fashion, these patterns show that although most ladies' fashions of the 189... [Read More]

Includes Ghost Town Black Widow Costume, Grey, with Top, Skirt, Hat. Please note that all our Smiffys products will always come in full Smiffys branded packaging.

Assembled from vintage issues of Peterson's Magazine, a popular nineteenth-century "ladies" periodical that premiered in 1842, here is an authentic gallery of Civil War-era clothing patterns for women, children, and men. The author of many books on historic fashion, Seleshanko has compiled this new, original volume of wonderfully usable antique garment designs to delight costume designers, historians, Civil War reconstructionists, and antiques collectors alike!During the 1860s, the Civil War lef... [Read More]

Tattered grey wedding dress and veil

Riffling through the wardrobes of years gone by, costume historian Lucy Adlington reveals the rich stories underlying the clothes we wear in this stylish tour of the most important developments in the history of fashion, from ancient times to the present day. Starting with underwear – did you know Elizabeth I owned just one pair of drawers, worn only after her death? – she moves garment by garment through Western attire, exploring both the items we still wear every day and those that have go... [Read More]

Describes and illustrates the clothing and accessories of English men, women, and children of all classes from Roman and Saxon times to the twentieth century