Pictorial Encyclopedia of Historic Costume: 1200 Full-Color Figures (Dover Fashion and Costumes)

This is a really really cool book. I love looking at all the pictures of all the figures and all the different attire throughout the ages. It must have taken an incredible amount of research to put it all together. The focus is definitely on Europe (France, Italy, Germany, England), but there are a lot of cool pages on ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome as well. I think this book is most appropriate for people who are interested in fashion and/or history. I could see it working perfectly for someone who is looking for inspiration designing women's dresses or even menswear. History lovers who want to picture the people they are reading about will also benefit. Highly recommend.

104 pages of full colored art, organized by time period AND region! There is practically no wasted space in this wealth of information.Excellent resource for SCA members, or anyone with interest in historic garments and accessories.

How is it possible to put 1200 pictures of people wearing cloting from different eras into 92 pages?Firstly, of course, the pages should be BIG. And this book, a Dover Books reproduction of PICTORIAL ENCYCLOPEDIA OF HISTOIRC COSTUME - 1200 FULL-COLOUR FIGURES, by Albert Kretchmer and Karl Rohrbach, certainly is oversized. If it were thicker, it would be called a "coffee-table book"....but as it is, it is easily carried in one hand.I recognize the title type-style on the cover as "CASTELLER" -- but no mention of this, and/or the other fonts used in this book is given. This is not unusual today --but one DOES wish it was. I'm sure I'm not the only "fontaholic" who also likes historic costuming! Font names of the typestyles used, were often given with books in the past. That it was not given in THIS book from the past, (and hence is not reporduced by ever-exacting Dover), is understandable.But I think that more modern books should go back to this practice. Especially if their company, or one affiliated with them -- sells fonts to the public!The drawings in this book are equisite, and remind me of some of the drawings in an old copy of the works of French dramatist Corneille, I once found in the Queens Borough Public Library. Looking at these drawings is, in itself, an art lesson, as the poses run the gamet from front to three-quarters to profile to three-quarters backview, to, in some cases, full backview.All are in colour, and the facial expressions run the gamit of human emotions, from thoughtful, inscrutible, determined, prideful, enquiring, prayerful, bashful and wary, to just about any other human facial expression of which one might think. The expressions are mever exaggerated, though, as they are shown, only as part of the general costuming -- for it IS the costumes that are the main focus of this book.On the cover is an ancient Greek maiden, and she DOES look, to me, like one of the statues adorning the Parthenon and other ancient Greek buildings. This leads me to believe that most -- if not all -- of the drawings were drawn representations of earlier historic images, now all grouped together for perhaps the first time....Yes, the drawings here ARE a wonderful sight to behold.But again, the question from the beginning of my review -- how is it possible to put 1200 pictures of people wearing clothing of different eras into 92 pages -- arises. The answer is, as well as making the book a large-format book -- TO MAKE SOME OF THE DRAWINGS SMALLER THAN THE OTHERS!Therefore each page has a section of from 1/3 to 1/4 on top, which is smaller than the remaining bottom part. taking correct proportion into account, more figures can obviously be fitted into the smaller, upper part of the page, than the larger, lower part of the page. This really is too bad, as details of clothing are often lost in the more numerous, smaller pictures, and the drawings themselves are somewhat more difficult to view. Moreover, each personage, in their costumes, is assigned a number for that page, with the description of the person and their costuming(noble, nobleman's wife, soldier, peasant, etc.), at the bottom of both top and bottom plates. But thesenumbers are lightly drawn and difficult to discern. Yes, Dover takes great pride having all of its reproductions to be EXACT COPIES of the original workswhich are copied....but here, a slight darkening of the numbers underneath each person would have been deeply appreciated. As also would have been to enlarge both top and bottom plates, into one page / plate each, the better to be able to see each drawing.Included in this book are several plates which are NOT of costumed people, but which comprise a collection of furniture, and household and other important implements of each general period. It's good to have these "background" pictures, too. They show not only what people USED at various times, but what was IMPORTANT to them. For instance, the first such plate, (of Ancient Egyptian "props"), shows mostly fans, baskets, musical instruments, jewellery, and a few pieces of furniture. (As this book was originally published LONG before the 1922 discovery of King Tutankamon's tomb, these drawings are especially interesting.) The last such "accessory" plate, showing what was important to people in 1770, consists almost enirely of furniture. Interesting.....For some strange reason, a book with the SAME cover, the SAME title, the SAME authors, the SAME publisher, and the SAME publication date, is also selling on Amazon -- for $42.50. It may be that this book containis more pages, (the number of pages is not given for this other edition), and that "my" idea, of having each group of people, (plate), both top and bottom, to be enlarged to one plate per page, has been adopted here. I have NO idea if it has been, of course, because NO description of this book is even given, and there are NO reviews of it. But this would seem to me to be the only reason for charging more for this other edition. Then again, both editions COULD easily be exactly the same. It truly is maddening that there is NO description of the other edition....so that people could more easily make a choice between the two.So this (edition of) this Dover book has both pluses and minuses. Since it is inexpensive, full of great line drawings, and much inspiration for artists of all types -- and for those who just want to look at beautiful costumes -- I'd say that the pluses far outweigh the minuses, here. If you want one handy volume, with many colour costume illustations in it, from Ancient Egypt to the year 1881 -- THIS is definitely your book!

If you're looking for strictly pictures this is the book for you! If you were hoping for a breakdown in the actual wardrobe elements i.e. their names so you could use this as a costuming reference then this is not the book for you. This could only have less detail if the descriptions were reduced to "man" and woman". Seriously.

Loved it, very colorful, just what I wanted.

I teach a costuming class where sometimes students struggle with the subtlties of period costume changes. This is a great pictorial reference to help guide student and teacher alike.

It has colorful illustrations for period costumes. Easy to understand.

This opens with ancient Egyptian dress and continues to 1881, male and female, various ranks (royal, commoner, etc.) Several cultures are included, and are sorted according to time frame/era, making it pretty easy to find what I'm looking for. The pictures are carefully drawn and colored, and each costume is identified for it's appropriate wearer. The book itself is about the size of an extra large magazine, but it is pretty comprehensive. If you want to know what the folks of long ago wore, this is a very good start.