Clothes of the Early Modern World for Young adults

The Art of Dress : Fashion in England and France 1750 to 1820 Good big coffee table book.  Has lots of illustrations one doesn't often see in other books, but not as many are in color as one might wish.  Very good for showing the differences between French and English Styles in the period.

Fitting & Proper has numerous patterns, B&W photos and detailed information on late 18th Century Pennsylvania clothing in The Chester County Historical Society.  It includes many Quaker items.  

Costume Close Up : Clothing Construction and Pattern, 1750-1790 by Baumgarten, Similar pattern book to the above, but with some color photos, and with clothing from Colonial Williamsburg.

What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America by Baumgarten. I got this book for my Birthday recently and it is a real costumer Lust Object.  It has some of the clothes seen in the pattern book by the same author above, but goes into details of sewing, cultural context, and similar items in the collection.  

Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe 1715-1789 (Revised Edition) another great coffee table lust object book, with lots of pictures, many in color, and highly researched text.

European Costume and Fashion 1490-1790

French Baroque and Rococo Fashions

  Costume History

A History of Costume, Karl Kohler.  My all time favorite bargain, this book has patterns, photos of antique garments, and intelligent text, all at one of the lowest prices for a costume book on the market. It covers Western costume from the age of the Bog People to about 1850, with very strong sections on Renaissance and Late 18th Century dress.  The book has B&W versions of the pictures on Color plates of original 18th Century costumes from Karl Kohler's Kostumekunde along with patterns of several of these costumes, plus others in various eras.

Full-Color Sourcebook of French Fashion : 15th to 19th Centuries

Cut of Men's Clothes : 1600-1900, Norah Waugh (The pre-Janet Arnold historic pattern goddess, Waugh made triple duty books that included 1/3 patterns from antiques, 1/3 patterns from historic books, and 1/3 writing from contemporary sources on clothing at the time. Despite their expense, these books are really must-haves, especially this one that has the best patterns for men's clothing during the period covered).

The Cut of Women's Clothes, 1600-1930, Norah Waugh (ditto what I said above, save only that Janet Arnold has superceded this book's preeminence with her own.)

American Family of the Colonial Era Paper Dolls in Full Color Nice cheap reference, accurately researched.

Little Colonial Girl Paper Doll Good for children working on class projects, very inexpensive, small full color booklet.

Dress in France in the Eighteenth Century Heavy on the research, this book is much more than just pretty pictures.

Federalist & Regency Costume : 1790-1819 Reprints of rare source material from the period, compiled, sensibly edited, and printed in cheap paperback form.

  The Funeral Effigies of Westminster Abbey a series of articles on the costumes and waxworks of the 16th-18th century effigies of notable figures preserved at the Abbey.  Includes a section written by Janet Arnold.

The Clothes That Wear Us : Essays on Dressing and Transgressing in Eighteenth-Century Culture

Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500-1800 (Abridged, no footnotes)

Clothes in Colonial America (Welcome Books: Colonial America) for kids.

The Colonial Williamsburg Tavern Cookbook

Costume in Detail : 1730-1930 detailed drawings of women's costumes in English museums, showing details of construction, both internal and external.

Dress in Eighteenth Century Europe, 1715-1789

 

Colonial and Early American Fashions

British Redcoat

What People Wore in Colonial America (Draper, Allison Stark. Clothing, Costumes, and Uniforms Throughout American History.)

 

Everyday Dress of the American Colonial Period Coloring Book

 

Eighteenth Century French Fashion Plates in Full Color Reproduced Fashion plates of high fashion of the 1770s and 1780s including a few men's fashions.

 

What People Wore During the American Revolution

English Costume from the Seventeenth Through the Nineteenth Centuries

Marie Antoinette Paper Dolls

So, Ye Want to be a Reenactor? A Living History Handbook

Market a LA Mode : Fashion, Commodity, and Gender in the Tatler and the Spectator

Past into Present : Effective Techniques for First-Person Historical Interpretation 

Making Antique Furniture Reproductions: Instructions and Measured Drawings for 40 Classic Projects

Making Early American and Country Furniture

  Colonial Fashions Paper Dolls

The Milliner (Colonial People) for young readers.

  An Elegant Art : Fashion and Fantasy in the Eighteenth Century

 

Eighteenth-Century Clothing at Williamsburg (Williamsburg Decorative Arts Series)

 

The Culture of Clothing : Dress and Fashion in the 'Ancien Regime' (Past and Present Publications)

Masterpieces of Women's Costume of the 18th and 19th Centuries detail drawings and some diagram patterns.

550 Authentic Rococo Designs and Motifs for Artists and Craftspeople (Dover Pictorial Archive Series)

Fashion in Detail : From the 17th and 18th Centuries close up photos of garments in the Victoria and Albert Museum, showing details of stitching, fabric and trim.

Revolution in Fashion : European Clothing, 1715-1815

Everyday Dress of Rural America 1783-1800 : With Instructions and Patterns

Ladies of the Grand Tour: British Women in Pursuit of Enlightenment and Adventure in Eighteenth-Century Europe

Patterns in a Revolution : French Printed Textiles, 1759-1821

  Fashion at the time of Figaro (paper dolls)

Tidings from the 18th Century

Textiles for Colonial Clothing

Historic Colonial French Dress : A Guide to Re-Creating North American French Clothing

Costume in New France from 1740 to 1760 : a visual dictionary

 

Eighteenth Century French Fashion Plates in Full Color

 

Eighteenth-Century Clothing at Williamsburg (Williamsburg Decorative Arts Series)

18th Century Clothing (Historic Communities) Quality children's book on historic dress. 18th Century Clothing (Historic Communities) (Paper)

 

A Day in the Life of a Colonial Wigmaker (The Library of Living and Working in Colonial Times)

 

Thomas Jefferson and His Family : Paper Dolls in Full Color

 

The Milliner (Colonial People)

 

Colonial Williamsburg

Caesar's Story: 1759 (Young Americans: Colonial Williamsburg) for young readers.

  Mozart at Versailles: Scale Architectural Paper Model

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This Page is part of The Costumer's Manifesto by Tara Maginnis, Ph.D.  Copyright 1996-2010.   You may print out any of these pages for non-profit educational use such as school papers, teacher handouts, or wall displays.  You may link to any page in my site.

This page last edited on 12/06/2006