1940s Fashion is an essential sourcebook for fashion designers, students, vintage and retro collectors, and any self-respecting fashionista. Featuring 600 totally original, never-seen-before photographs and illustrations - completely redefining the appraisal of 1940s fashion.
1930s Fashion documents the season-by-season fashions of this remarkable decade with a selection of over 600 original photographs, sketches and prints.
Wartime fashion is perhaps more popular now than it ever was in the 1940s, with thousands regularly recreating the look. This is the perfect introduction to ’40s fashion for anyone interested in the decade of make do and mend.
This book reveals the impact of wartime and austerity on British fashion and tells the story of how a spirit of patriotism and make-do-and-mend unleashed a wave of new creativity among women who were starved of high fashion by shortages and rationing. Many home dressmakers copied the high-end looks, and women involved in war work created a whole new aesthetic of less formal street wear. Fashion in the 1940s also shows how the Second World War shifted the centre of the international couture scene away from Paris, allowing British designers to influence Home Front style. Afterwards Paris fashion was re-born with Dior's extravagant New Look, while casual American trends were widely adopted by young British women and men.
What American men, women and children wore in the 1940s, shown in 122 fully illustrated and captioned pages selected from rare copies of Sears catalogs, reproduced in large format on high-quality glossy stock. Hundreds of detailed drawings depict hats, overcoats and shoes, suits and dresses, sportswear, undergarments, corsetry, neckties, rainwear, and personal accessories.
Whereas the 1970s opened with a fashion hangover from the 1960s, with looks such as mini skirts, bell-bottom trousers and the hippie look still enduring, the decade soon took on its own sartorial identity. The most prominent trends were the peasant look, glam (influenced by glam rock) and disco, popularised by the 1977 film 'Saturday Night Fever'. Many other individual fashion items went mainstream, none more so than platform shoes, flared trousers and the wrap dress. All of these styles and more are included in 1970s 'Fashion: the definitive sourcebook'. The historicism that had started in fashion in the 1960s continued in the Seventies with Art Nouveau and Art Deco-inspired styles championed by Biba, but the Laura Ashley pastoral style was also popular. Finally, the emergence of punk fashion towards the closing years of the decade paved the way for a new aesthetic that rejected traditional gender, beauty and fashion roles and paved the way for alternative fashions since.
Illustrates the fashion of the 1930s and '40s, discussing fabrics, colors, and prices from each era, and outlines what fashion changes have occurred since the 1950s