Kristina Harris Knihy

If you love the designs, fabrics, and sheer beauty of 19th and early 20th century women's fashions, this book will be your guide and time machine. It presents over 450 enchanting color photographs of modern-day models wearing the dresses, waists, undergarments, and accessories of this elegant era, including daywear, sportswear, and formalwear. Unusual items such as fancy dress, aesthetic garments, and reform styles are explained and illustrated. This book will help both novice and expert collectors accurately identify and date their collections by evaluating the silhouette, construction, style, and details of fashionable garments. Sound advice for maintaining, laundering, and repairing them is also provided, as is an updated price guide.

At the turn of the century, ladies of privilege could easily afford their own dressmakers, and even middle-class housewives occasionally employed competent seamstresses. But many women did their own sewing, often relying on Dressmaking, Up to Date, a how-to book published by the Butterick Publishing Company. First published in 1905 and widely considered the first modern American sewing book, this extremely rare volume is published here complete and unabridged.This Butterick manual provides clear and concise instructions for altering patterns, hand-sewing stitches, and creating shirt-blouses, skirts, wedding and evening gowns, coats, jackets, maternity wear, undergarments, bathrobes, children's clothing, and many other articles of apparel. Today's costume historians and sewing enthusiasts will find fascinating instruction in such long-lost arts as boning a bodice perfectly, creating skirt sweepers and bust enhancers, concealing hooks and eyes, and other vintage dressmaking techniques.An indispensable archive of information on late-Victorian and turn-of-the-century clothing, this volume will be of immense interest to anyone fascinated by the fashion and costume of the period. It will also be of value to needleworkers wanting to create accurate reproductions of Victorian-era costume, or to anyone interested in applying time-honored sewing techniques to a modern wardrobe.

The dressmaker's patterns for the more than 50 different garments included in this volume first appeared in the 1890s in issues of the quarterly The Voice of Fashion . Most of the patterns are for stylish daywear for women, but there are house dresses and nightwear as well, along with a selection of suits and dresses for young boys and girls and several garments for men.Reproduced from rare original issues of The Voice of Fashion , these patterns show that although most ladies' fashions of the 1890s were designed to conceal the body behind high necks, long sleeves, and full, floor-length skirts, a lively interest in revealing the female figure persisted. Elegant hand craftsmanship and the luxuriant draping of rich fabric further enhanced this statuesque idealization of femininity.An informational general introduction to dressmaker's patterns and concise instructions for using them precede this lively parade of fin-de-siècle fashions. Readers will also find over 575 patterns and illustrations detailing the various garments, with individual instructions for making them. Costume enthusiasts interested in re-creating exact copies of vintage clothing will find this book an indispensable guide; indeed, anyone interested in the history of fashion and costume will welcome this fascinating reference to late Victorian dressmaking.

Exploring the evolution of children's fashion from the 18th century to the 1920s, this book features over 440 authentic photographs alongside extensive text. It addresses intriguing questions about historical clothing practices, such as why boys wore dresses and girls donned corsets, as well as the custom of swaddling infants. By intertwining fashion history with insights into childhood, it offers a comprehensive understanding of how societal values shaped children's clothing across different eras.

There is always another old dress lurking around the corner, waiting to be "rescued", says Kristina Harris. A cornucopia of 403 full-color photographs, of fun, sophisticated, frivolous, and glamorous fashions on live models include rich satin evening gowns, fun flapperish beaded dresses, sleek and classic suits, knickered and skirted bathing suits, distinctive cloche hats, beaded bags, elaborate shoes, and a splendid host of accessory items. From whimsical anecdotes to wonderful historical details that help bring the era alive, this book conveys a vivid picture of the women of Jazz and Big Band era. Garnish this with specific and sound advice on using style, construction, and other details to value, identify, date, and further enhance items in your collection. A value guide is included to help experienced collectors and novices alike as they search for new discoveries. For everyone who has admired the fashions of the 20s, 30s and 40s, this book will be treasured possession.