The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Clothing through World History

There are those of us who tend to take clothing for granted, whether in everyday life or in more imaginative pursuits, except, of course, when something is glaringly wrong (such as a rare obviously anachronous error in film or television) or when clothing is significant to an event or to a plot or description in an artistic work. Yet clothing is an essential element of material culture at more or less any epoch and has been the subject of much comment and depiction, ranging from admiration to ridicule, throughout history. It stands equally with other manifestations of both material culture...