By Erika Stalder
This is pretty much an illustrated encyclopedia of different types of classic garments. Everthing from the little black dress, to cargo pants is included in this book. I flipped through here, and got many ideas of how to do fusion, and who created these designs. The garments are divided by type (dress, shoes, pants, jewelery etc), illustrated, and then have blurbs titled: "What they look like," "Who made them," "Who made them hot," and "How to Rock Them."
I learned a lot about the names of these classic cuts, and could thus explain my ideas more clearly. For example, for my cowl dress, I wanted an A-Line skirt, which was first showed in public by Christian Dior in 1955, and was made popular by the fashionable London girls in the 1960s.
The book also contains small blurbs on certain periods and revolutions of fashion. For example, "The Shake of Youthquake," which talks about the 1960s fashion revolution in coralation to the women's liberation movement, civil rights, and protest on the Vietnam war. Instead of following the adult's fashion trends, the youth started their own lines, and created the mini-skirt.
Speaking of the Miniskirt
It was designed by Mary Quant and Andre Courreges separately (much like Newton and Leibnitz arguement over calculus, except less argued)
Made popular by British stars
I focused mainly on dresses, since they were the most fun for me to look at.
Some of my favorites:
Bubble Dress
Created in 1957 by Pierre Cardin
Worn by many stars, including Jessica Alba
Should be made of material that holds its shape
Cheongsam (after which my shirt is inspired)
Traditional Chinese dress made from brocade
First worn by Chines men in a loose-fitting version
Westerners adopted the style for women and made it tight-fitting in the 1950s
Calendar girls of the 1930s first introduced the dress to Westerners
Little Black Dress
Coco Chanel coined the term in 1926
Meant to be adaptable to flatter any body
Black previously meant for mourning- cuased an uproar, but became popular easy coctail dress
First commonly seen on Betty Boop. Most famous one is seen in Breakfast at Tiffany's
This book is so interesting, I would love to write a summary of the whole thing, leaving out no detail for you all, since history is something that truly fascinates me, however, I will now end with the blurb "Defining Dresses of the Decades," which had a chart stating which style and body type was popular during which time period
1950s- shirt style, hourglass figure
1960s- shift style, all body types
1970s- wrap style, curvy figure
1980s- pouf style, slender figure
1990s- slip style, waif figure
This book dates itself- it doesn't have the 2000s, but I would say mini style and thin and tall figure for today's dress code
Wait!!! There's also a page on necklines! there's the boat, cowl, crew, keyhole/cutout, mock, plunging, scoop, slit, square, sweetheart, V, butterfly, convertible, Peter Pan, and mandarin
Sleeves: Cap sleeve (I used this on my shirt!), doble cuff, french cuff, kimono sleeve, knit cuff, puff sleeve (on the design for the nest dress), single cuff, and three-quarter sleeve.
In short, a recommended read!
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