preface I am finding it increasingly difficult to find a satisfactory annual list of books for the Costume Society. The library on this subject has changed significantly in the last fifteen years or so. Publishers such as Berg (now part of Bloomsbury) are still publishing serious books on the subject, but the majority on offer now are large glossy coffee-table books promoting the work of fashion designers. When I first started to be interested in this subject as a theatre design student, it was called costume history. There were countless complete histories of Western costume available; Millia Davenport’s The Book of Costume and Francois Boucher’s A History of Costume in the West were favourites of mine. I slowly acquired all the Cunnington books on English costume, as well as others such as the ones on occupational dress, birth, marriage and death, and so on. As students we needed the classics on costume construction, Max Tilke, Norah Waugh and Janet Arnold. Once I had turned professional as a costume designer, my book buying became more focused on particular subjects I needed help with: Lou Taylor’s Mourning Dress, for example, or books on working dress, ecclesiastical dress, men’s dress; also Margaret Scott’s Late Gothic Europe and Stella Mary Newton’s The Dress of the Venetians 1495–1525. I do not think I noticed at the time that the word costume had been replaced by dress. I was certainly made aware of this when I studied History of Dress at the Courtauld Institute of Art, where I read more theoretical works, such as Flugel’s Psychology of Dress, Konig’s A Restless Image, Aileen Ribeiro’s Dress and Morality, Valerie Steele’s Fashion & Eroticism, Elizabeth Wilson’s Adorned in Dreams, and Roland Barthes’ The Fashion System. Today, as you can see below, serious work is still being done on the subject, but sadly many bookshop shelves do not always reflect this range.
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Sep 1, 2021
Karen Depauw + 6
Open Access