CONTENTS

Fashion Design 1800-1940
Modeentwurfe 1800-1940
Disenos de la moda 1800-1940
Créations de mode 1800-1940
Design di moda 1800-1940

Images Fashion Design 1800-1940

List of Descriptions

This book follows the changes in fashion by means of beautiful contemporary drawings depicting dresses, coats, suits, blouses, underwear, scarves, wraps, and much more. It contains both illustrations of standard day-to-day clothing and detailed pictures of formal evening dress, shoes, bags, parasols, wedding dresses, knitwear, children's clothing, lace, pompons, sportswear, bow ties and more. These have been carefully selected, categorised and reproduced in high quality print to form a concise overview of the predominant forms of dress. Designers, students and art historians will be able to use it as reference material while everybody can revel in the nostalgic beauty and richness of this most romantic and turbulent period.

Fashion Design 1800-1940

At the turn of the 19th century, fashion had more or less recovered from the blow dealt to it by the French Revolution. Previously, European dress had been mostly regional in character, but France had already been acclaimed as the zenith of elegance and refinement. Most aristocrats and even large parts of the bourgeoisie everywhere had adopted at least a modicum of Frenchness in their style of dressing. In the France of the Ancien Regime, fashion had been largely dictated by the customs and indeed costumes of the royal court, but alter 1789 no one dared be seen in any garment associated with the ousted regime. This had resulted in some rather bizarre ways of dressing up as loud and unequivocal statements of loyalty to the new order. The wearing of sabots (clogs) and Phrygian 'liberty' hats, however, soon subsided, but the sans-culotte, the archetypal French revolutionary who wore long pantaloons instead of breeches ('culottes'), did leave his indelible mark on fashion alt the same. Periwigs and powder along with swords, breeches and silk stockings had definitely lost their sway. The new fashion was inspired by liberty and democracy, which meant for women the abandonment of corsets and adoption of loose flowing dresses vaguely reminiscent of Greek chitons, gathered not at the waist but immediately the breasts. Ancient Greece was revered as the birthplace of democracy and civic liberties. Nakedness was thought very Greek, and so décolletages were amply augmented. In the chilly northern climes however, bare arms and shoulders often had to be warmed by shawis of cashmere woot or silk, which were etegantly draped as women strove to resemble antique statues. The men began dressing more like English country gentlemen, as England was seen as the land of freedom which, compared with most other European countries, it actually was. An added incentive to adopt English dress was the sheer perfection British tailoring had attained over the years. Dandies like Beau Brummel could boast that their clothes showed not a single wrinkle or fold that wasn't supposed to be there. These dandies, as their French equivalent, the Incroyables of the Directoire period, acted as the forerunners of popular fashion. They daringty tried out new styles and although frequently mocked, set the tone for the new look and made change possible. The French conquests and the subsequent Napoleonic empire, coupled with the concerted European effort to get rid of it, for the first time forged a truly European cultural unity, which was also apparent in European fashion. From now on London and Paris were firmly established as, respectively, the male and female fashion centres of Europe. Although corsets reappeared in the 1820s and the female silhouette increasingly began to resembte the hourgtass shape that had once been so fashionable before the revolution, the same ostentatious opulence of dress was never seen again (for the moment discounting the ridiculous Napoleonic court attire, which was never followed by anyone who was not officially required to wear it). [..]