The Complete History of Costume & Fashion: From Ancient Egypt to the Present Day

Rating:
Summary: Nearly Useless as a Costume Reference
Review: Always on the lookout for any new costume reference, I was
eager to leaf through this one. Unfortunately, it was nearly
a waste of time.

I say "nearly", because Cosgrave provides quite a few helpful
illustrations, though the objects depicted are often mislabelled and period paintings are seldom fully cited.

In general, I found this volume to be shallow and badly researched. It's full of bad generalizations and misused terminology. Cosgrave makes numerous statements which are at odds with everything I've come to know about historical costume. Seldom are these bald statements backed by sources discussed in the text. She also has a 'thing' about Byzantine costume. Everything worn in any other place or time suffers in her constant comparisons.

One of my favorite absurdities is that her entire discussion of medieval jewelry is a dismissal of the same as "crude". (Though she does allow that the Irish did some nice work. And, of course, it suffers by comparison to Byzantine jewelry.)

Another example: The caption regarding a painting of people in Burgundian Court Dress urges the reader to "Note the Byzantine influences". Huh?!!

In general I'd recommend that the re-enactor or Costume History
student look at the pictures and ignore the text.

Rating:
Summary: A good general costume history
Review: This is a beautifully designed publication certain to be rewarding to someone seeking an overview of the subject. The text, while not truly in depth, is very readable and is written in a vernacular yet polished style. Customs of the various cultures and periods, along with manners and gender roles in society, are covered as well. Ancient Europe and the Mesopotamian cultures (Sumer, Babylon, and Assyria) are omitted. Some of Ms. Cosgrave's information about other early cultures - especially the Egyptians - does not totally coincide with other authors and should not be taken as gospel, but rather as a possible interpretation. In other chapters, some of the observations and conclusions are quite insightful. The illustrations are wonderful and astutely chosen (with the exception of some 19th century line drawings used to illustrate early Egyptian, Greek and Roman costume.) The illustrations are also reproduced well, and the number of color plates is quite abundant for a book of this price. The books main weakness, and this is a big weakness, is that these beautiful and well chosen illustrations are not consistently attributed with the date, name of the work, artist, or museum, and in fact some of them are incorrectly identified or dated. Also, in the sections of the book on the 19th and 20th centuries - both in the illustration placement as well as the text - the reader does not really get a clear picture of the looks of the individual decades and periods within these centuries. Given the rapid changes of silhouettes and styles that occur in these years, a more thorough and detailed account would be welcome. With these notable reservations, this publication has still achieved reasonable success, and is still a recommendable text on the subject, especially for novices. The attractive price - especially the Amazon price - makes this a good value as well and contributes to its overall rating.