How to Read a Dress Review

While I get photographs done of my first few projects for the year, I figured I would get my book review up. I have tendency to peruse Amazon excessivily for books because I don't mind a cheap, used copy of some things. How to Read a Dress by Lydia Edwards showed up in my "You may also be interested in" feed and thankfully the library had a copy available.

Amazon.com

The book looks very promising from the cover. It has a lovely 18th Century dress with historical features pointed out. A quick flip through shows lots of pretty dress pictures from the 1500s to modern day with similar analysis. Not to drop the bad news right away, but I'm glad I only borrowed a copy. 

As I started reading, only a few pages in I found a historically inaccurate fact. Now whether this is an error that was corrected in later printings, or an editor who meant well but wasn't sure about the history, or just a simple typing error, I have no idea. Either way, it was a bit jarring. Especially since I didn't even need to Google my fact check.

Elizabeth I ruled for SIXTY YEARS? Wow, she really was an old bird when she died.

I may have overlooked this, but there a few other editing flukes throughout the book as well. Repeated sentences, a section of text printed twice on the same page, descriptions of pictures that are 1-2 pages further in the book, were just some of the things I noticed. I will not vouch for being a professional editor, but as a reader I felt it gave the book an unscholarly feel despite the contents.

The other downside is the book doesn't really tell you how to "read a dress." Each chapter focuses on a certain point of historical costume (there's 11 chapters altogether), and several pages of dresses to help illustrate this period. For example, Chapter 4 spans 1790-1837 and the selected dresses show how fashion moved from the neo-classical look to the Romantic. With each dress, certain features are pointed out and a small explanation provided of the evolving style. 

However, if a person who has no background in historical costume were to pick up this book and try to use it to identify a dress, they would probably be able to get approximate date, but little else in terms of picking out a popular style, material, event, etc.

As for the historical costuming enthusiast. Yes, there are lots of pretty pictures of dresses, especially some well-known ones from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Bath Fashion Museum, and other locations like the McCord Museum in Montreal and the Swan Guildford Historical Society in Australia, which I was unfamiliar with. In looking at the LACMA pieces though, the pictures look like they were taken straight from the online catalogue since they are the exact same, just cropped for publication purposes. I don't know if this is the same for the other pieces selected, but for someone who might be looking at the book as a source for new material or detail shots of existing dresses, it does not provide any of these.

The material given is also very broad spectrum and covers only basic information of each time period. Instead, it almost has the feel of a basic primer. So definitely not a book for if you're looking to do an in-depth analysis of any of the time periods. 

So final verdict. If you're just delving into historical costume for the first time, this is a good book to whet your initial foray into the subject and get a broad but basic overview of everything. As for the historical costuming enthusiast. If possible, borrow the book and look through it before deciding if it's something you want to add to your regular reference collection. The pictures are great to look at, but it seems like they are nothing new. 

Review - 3 out of 5, for some of the pictures from museums that I'd never heard of before. I'll have to go investigate now.