From Library Journal
An experienced costume and fashion designer, as well as a lecturer and author on fashion history, Peacock has meticulously created a visually rich sourcebook illustrating 90 years in the development of women's fashions. Each division, representing a decade, begins with his choice of the "ideal" work of leading couturiers, followed by sketches of leisure, day, evening, and bridal wear, as well as underwear and accessories. Principal changes for five-year periods are depicted through a fashionable silhouetted outline, with notes on various modifications. Brief biographical data are included for selected designers, though birth/death dates are not provided for all entries. For deeper insight into the social and economic factors influencing the evolution of style, see Lew Hall's Common Threads ( LJ 1/93). Recommended as a valuable source of inspiration and a visual history for the fashion enthusiast, historian, designer, and theater arts students and to libraries serving those patrons.- Vicki Gadberry, Mars Hill Coll. Lib., N.C.Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Here, in more than 1100 full-color illustrations, is the most comprehensive and detailed history and sourcebook of 20th-century fashion ever published. From the styles of the early 1900s to those of today, John Peacock charts the development of women's fashion in all its aspects: couture wear, day wear, underwear, leisure wear, evening wear, bridal wear and accessories. Fashion's greatest international designers and designs are all found here: Worth's visiting dresses, Poiret and Chanel's suits, Balenciaga's classic gowns, Dior's New Look, Courreges' space-age creations and Mary Quant's minidresses, up to recent designs from the collections of Kenzo, Vivienne Westwood, Christian Lacroix, Calvin Klein and others. Photography could never capture so faithfully the dazzling variety of these designs: indeed, many which predate the advent of color photography have never before been shown in their original colors. John Peacock's wide-ranging research, using not only paintings and photographs but also the garments themselves, has allowed him to reproduce in true and meticulous detail their lines, shapes, weaves, patterns and colors. Arranged decade by decade, the pictures are accompanied by complete descriptions of each garment and accessory, including the fabric, cut and pattern. Every detail - collars, cuffs, pockets, buttons and trimmings - is noted. The exhaustive reference section includes a time-chart summarizing the development of fashion and dress-shapes, biographies of individual couturiers and designers, and a concise bibliography. Following the author's hugely successful Chronicle of Western Costume, this volume too is destined to become the unrivaled reference work in its field, indispensable to any fashion enthusiast, historian or collector, and to any designer or student working in the performing arts.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal