From the headgear of the ancient Greeks and Etruscans to Elizabethan farthingales and modern footwear, this authoritative resource presents a comprehensive history of clothing and accessories. It covers every world culture with 650-plus entries in alphabetical order that define and describe designs, materials, accessories, and manufacturing techniques, placing them in historical perspective and tracing the development of tastes and the recurrence of motifs.
More than 2,100 black-and-white drawings include 110 full-page plates of costume drawings, in addition to eight pages of color illustrations. "Amazingly enough, there is an illustration for almost every item," noted Choice magazine, adding, "the text is a model for this type of reference work, a good summary for the knowledgeable and a mine of information for the novice." A detailed index makes it easy to locate garments from any era.