eishiya reviewed Victorian and Edwardian fashion by Alison Gernsheim
Invaluable but inconvenient
4 stars
While dated 19th century fashion plates are plentiful online and in books, they don't represent what people would've actually worn at the time. Alison Gernsheim's "Victorian and Edwardian Fashion" is a history of 1840-1913 fashion illustrated in period photographs, showing clothing as it was worn by real people. The text provides context for the fashions and details their evolution over the decades.
I consider this book a must-have for anyone depicting Victorian and Edwardian people of leisure.
Be prepared for some frustration as you read it, however. The photos are on pages of plates, but rather than being in one block, they're in groups throughout the book. A single passage in the text may refer to photos from several groups, requiring quite a bit of flipping through to find them. Worse, due to limited space, the captions with each photo are very brief, and more detailed notes are at the …
While dated 19th century fashion plates are plentiful online and in books, they don't represent what people would've actually worn at the time. Alison Gernsheim's "Victorian and Edwardian Fashion" is a history of 1840-1913 fashion illustrated in period photographs, showing clothing as it was worn by real people. The text provides context for the fashions and details their evolution over the decades.
I consider this book a must-have for anyone depicting Victorian and Edwardian people of leisure.
Be prepared for some frustration as you read it, however. The photos are on pages of plates, but rather than being in one block, they're in groups throughout the book. A single passage in the text may refer to photos from several groups, requiring quite a bit of flipping through to find them. Worse, due to limited space, the captions with each photo are very brief, and more detailed notes are at the start of the book, requiring even more flipping back and forth. Bookmarking all the photo sections ahead of time might help.