Hats: A History of Fashion in Headwear Reviews
Hats: A History of Fashion in Headwear
An illustrated view of 2,000 years of head coverings, this engaging and literate survey features over 800 drawings depicting the headgear of both genders, all classes, and many nationalities. Its interpretive text documents the development of styles, their changes with the passage of time, and the influences that created and altered them. 800 black-and-white illustrations.
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Hats in History,
This is a rather scholarly work on the history of hats covering the past two thousand years. The arrangement is chronological, by century. If one’s interest is identifying or organizing headdress by country of origin, this book is particularly useful as the illustrations include the country where the hat was worn along with the drawing. I am always impressed when the same author does a book’s text and illustrations, as is the case with this work (see Sibley’s bird book if you really want to be blown away).
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|gives some overwiev but is not for the serious student,
This book may give some overwiev of the history of hats but it is not to be recomended for serious studies of costume history.
The illustrations are drawn after works of art and other sources. In the cases where I’m quite certain which work of art it is drawn from I must say that the drawings are often more or less inaccurate. As for the text, I’m from Scandinavia and familliar with the custom “Lucia” on the 13th of december. Reading Amphletts explanation accompanying the illustration of a Lucia crown from Norway I’m amased as it’s total nonsense! Belive me, fertility rituals and witches was not the explanation given when i read cultural history at university! [It is a mix of seweral older customs among them serwing an extra breakfast as this was belived to bee the longest and darkest night of the year,and youngsters dressing up and going around singing and begging for food contributions to either their studies or a party. One of the dress up costumes being the christ child with a halo of candlelight around the head. Nowadays (and since about a 100 years ago) the lucia crown on a girl or woman serving ginger snaps and saffron bread together with coffee as she and her followers sings!} If the rest of the text has some more faults as big as this i don’t know but it certainly makes me very suspicuios.
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|Headwear history,
This book has alot of printed information in it. A great deal of history. If you are looking for a book to teach you how to make head wear and hats then this isn’t the book you need. However for a historical aspect I reccomend it, as long as you can visualise the written word. Its an ok book, not great but not the worst either. I bought it expecting it to contain more practical information, so from that point of view I was disapointed.
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