A History of Costume in the West

Originally published in 1966, this paperback edition of the 1987 revised History of Costume in the West has an additional chapter by Yvonne Deslandres updating this scholarly survey to 1983. Although this book claims not to be an exhaustive history of all periods of costume, it is a most thorough and comprehensive study of the history of costume in the Western world.

One of the problems in studying costume beyond the last two centuries is the lack of primary sources, i.e. the garments themselves. With the exception of a few seventeenth century specimens in England and the Nordic countries, the...