World Clothing and Fashion: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture, and Social Influence

It seems highly counter-intuitive that an encyclopedia of an almost purely visual phenomenon – fashion and clothing – should have an extremely limited number of illustrations, and that those few illustrations should be in black and white. This is reason enough to consider this reference work not worth purchasing.

The encyclopedia is also not extremely well written, researched or fact-checked. For example, the article on Erté attributes Cecil Beaton’s iconic My Fair Lady (1964) Ascot scene costumes to him; Erté was an influence on Beaton’s concept for the scene but not the designer. The essay on Hippie and Mod fashions...