Vintage Details: A Fashion Sourcebook, by Jeffrey Mayer and Basia Szkutnicka. Lawrence King Publishing, 2016

 This is a brilliant sourcebook for anyone doing fashion design, costume design, or is just into vintage styling. There is NO TEXT in this book. It is all photographs of vintage clothing from all angles. It starts with a visual index, with items ranging from 1913 to 1995. Each item has thumbnail pictures of it front and back; then it states what sections of the book detailed photos can be found in. The sections include necklines, collars, sleeves, pockets and many more, including construction details- pictures of the insides of the clothing. It’s great fun to browse through the book and get ideas. The construction of many of the pieces is so much better than what you see in clothing today- today’s clothing seems to be styled for fast production. I see more details in my clothing in the future! 

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Creating the Illusion: A Fashionable History of Hollywood Costume Designers, by Jay Jorgensen & Donald L. Scroggins. Running Press, 2015

 

Fashion, especially Hollywood fashion, can be over the top, and this book about that subject is, fittingly, over the top. An oversized coffee table book of over 400 pages, with photos on every page, it is a treat. Each chapter is a brief biography of a designer, starting with the beginning of movies and coming up to the modern era. I was a little surprised at home many movies inspired clothing trends in real life- including the classic ‘flapper’ look of the 1920! I also learned that not being historically accurate is not a new thing (which I’d been noticing myself, watching TCM a lot), and that there was So. Much. Chiffon. used for decades. This book is a giant treat for the costume lover!

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Hollywood and History: Costume Design in Film, by Edward Maeder, Alicia Annas, & Satch Lavalley. 1987

This book is, in part, an exhibition catalog for a show mounted at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Its format is a collection of essays about the movies the stills are from, and a lot of wonderful pictures. The main areas covered are makeup, period films, and science fiction films where the costume designers have envisioned future fashion. I really enjoyed the book; my favorite section, of course, being the one historical films. I knew there were lots of costume errors in film but I’d never realized how many- and how bad- some of them were. The costumes are beautiful, but not period correct; even ‘Gone With the Wind’ had some problematical costumes and I’d never noticed them. Great fun! 

The above is an affiliate link. If you click through and buy something, Amazon will give me a few cents. This in no way affected my review