Fashion is important to certain scholars - or should be. What follows is an excerpt from a review by Starleen K. Meyer, Bagatti Valsecchi Museum, Milan, Italy. In part it discusses the book: Accessories Of Dress  "An Illustrated History of those Frills & Furbelows of Fashion Which Have Come to be known as: ACCESSORIES OF DRESS" by Katherine Morris Lester and Bess Viola Oerke.

Two Modes of (Ad)Dressing Fashion

(Excerpted by Books Uncommon.)

Fashion is important to us, as scholars. Or, it should be. Whatever the field of historic inquiry, from socio-economics and liturgy to diplomacy and art history, modes of dressing were significant and signifying to the people whose lives wove the history under our scrutiny. The importance of fashion to the study of portraiture is obvious, but also subtle, and fashion-related inquiries spin out endlessly. Like the warp and woof of cloth, they intersect other disciplines studying craft-made and industrial materials, production, commerce, transport, distribution, marketing, acquisition, consumerism, and use of goods, even when "only" in a comparative role. Similarly, the central place of clothing as a signifier in international, local, professional, and personal exchanges broadens the range of historical inquiry to which the study of fashion may provide profound illumination.

Two works in question (one by Phyllis Tortora and the other by Katherine Lester and Bess Viola Oerke), both in traditional book format, are similar in content, focusing on fashion's sub-discipline of accessories, and both (apparently) are encyclopedic in scope, yet they provide very different results for very different audiences.

Originally titled Accessories of Dress: An Illustrated History of the Frills and Furbelows of Fashion, Katherine Morris Lester and Bess Viola Oerke's 1940 work has been republished as Accessories of Dress: An Illustrated Encyclopedia by Dover Publications.

Compiled principally from renowned secondary sources available at that time, the work did not claim, even then, to contribute much new to the field, but rather, to offer a "consecutive story of each accessory, thus giving the student a comprehensive view of the particular ornament or detail of costume and its place in fashion history" (p. vi). As to be expected of a reprint from that period, the methodology is traditional, principally driven by stylistic and personality arguments, set within a vague historical context. As is to be expected of Dover publications, the work has been republished in unabridged fashion.

The work is divided into six main sections following, according to the authors, the time-honored sequence of going from head to foot, then arms-hands and, finally, things attached to the clothes. All sections are subdivided thematically before presenting the material in chrono-geographical order, and each begins with a literary snippet, which the authors may have thought added a poetic touch to the work, but from which today's attentive reader may profit as examples of the importance of the subject-in-hand to then-contemporary consumers.

A brief bibliography, obviously no longer up-to-date, concludes each section, and is supplemented by occasional footnotes. The table of contents is well articulated, and a general bibliography is followed by an index to the illustrations and to the text, and a long list of other Dover publications.

The visual presentation of the text and numerous black-and-white photographic and line drawing illustrations is a bit crowded, as is typical of the period, but clear, nonetheless. The new cover, reproducing a detail of an (unfortunately unidentified) painting of an aristocratic woman holding a fan and wearing elaborate eighteenth-century dress, seems a good balance of needs - to attract the eye, yet to convey scholarly legitimacy of content. Stated prospective audiences are "teachers of home economics, homemakers, club women, students of the theater, students of costume, and all others historically minded" (p. v).

The work suffers, if only a little, from two inherent and unavoidable characteristics: being dated and brevity. Obviously, a work published in 1940, and not updated since then, displays points of view and methodologies no longer upheld. For example, male gender is given to generic human subjects; vanity is attributed to the feminine world; little, if any attention, is given to the less wealthy classes; and the taint of necessary evolution possible in the chronological approach, as helpful as it may be to place issues in context, is not questioned.

Because of the original publication date, however, the work cannot be expected to take into account issues which have emerged as important since then (environment, gender, class, production, and so forth). On the other hand, a work of that period offers richness in stylistic comment that may be slighted by a work published for the first time today, and the book does offer occasional tantalizing, but unexplained, hints at avenues of current methodological interest, as found, for example, in the notation that tall "butterfly" headdresses of handmade lace for women were denounced by preachers, and banned by Louis XIV, as costly, although without mentioning sumptuary laws, or lace production, which also might involve gender issues (pp. 18, 34).

Next, a single-volume work, particularly one that does not purport to be encyclopedic, even if focused on a particular topic and consisting of 575 pages, cannot be expected to set out at length all concerns related to the subject at hand. Indeed, even Levi Pisetzky's five- volume work (cited in the endnote) and dedicated only to Italian post-antique dress, often seems too brief. Nevertheless, the broad and ample historical context of this book, even if brief and limited in scope, offers a sufficient initial backdrop for a discussion of the subject at hand. A discussion, however, which must be supplemented by up-to-date methodological treatments. Finally, the greatest disservice to the book was the change in title. The word "encyclopedia" conjures up a whole other set of expectations dashed by the book, innocent of any such pretensions.

Even keeping in mind the goals and original period of the book, what else should have been added? An initial comment by Dover, calling to the attention of the not always attentive reader the necessarily dated nature of the book, not necessarily a fault, should have been included. Further, the work would have been greatly improved, but perhaps also greatly increased in price, by an updated adjunct to the bibliography. These two suggestions, however, could apply to any similar publication by Dover, and, as such, frankly are worth little. Dover's apparent goal of republishing "classics as-is" as inexpensively as possible already is a great service to the general and scholarly public, and, once acquainted with this approach, the reader is forewarned.

In conclusion, both works have been published in traditional book format; only the Tortora work, following traditional encyclopedic format, would have been assisted substantially by being completely illustrated, and released in CD format. Although the Tortora work, for the want of a few well-placed comments and sometimes slightly more complete definitions, only partially achieves its encyclopedic, even brief, goals for its intended audiences, and should be updated every so often to accommodate developing interests and methodologies, it still makes a helpful contribution to its field, and would be worth the purchase, but perhaps at less than the listed price.

The Lester and Oerke work fully achieves its goals of presenting accessories to its intended audiences in historical context. In addition, as kindly commented to me by Sandra Rosenbaum (recently retired Curator-in-charge, The Doris Stein Research Center for Costume and Textiles, Department of Costume and Textiles, Los Angeles County Museum of Art), the work also offers occasional gems of information previously hidden even to experts in the field, and so it exceeds its goals.

Note

[1]. Along the lines sketched above, some initial bibliographic suggestions for occidental ecclesiastical liturgy and garments include: Egerton Beck, "Ecclesiastical Dress in Art: Article 1: Colour (Part 1)," Burlington Magazine, 7 (July 1905): 281-288; "Ecclesiastical Dress in Art: Article 2: Colour (Part 2)," Burlington Magazine, 7 (August 1905): 373-376; "Ecclesiastical Dress in Art: Article 3: Colour (Conclusion)," Burlington Magazine, 7 (September 1905): 446-448; "Ecclesiastical Dress in Art: Article 4," Burlington Magazine, 8 (October 1905): 47-50; "Ecclesiastical Dress in Art: Article 5," Burlington Magazine, 8 (December 1905): 197-202; "Ecclesiastical Dress in Art: Article 6 (Conclusion)," Burlington Magazine, 8 (January-March 1906): 271-281; "The Ecclesiastical Hat in Heraldry and Ornament before the Beginning of the Seventeenth Century," Burlington Magazine, 22 (March 1913): 338-344; "The Mitre and Tiara in Heraldry and Ornament," Burlington Magazine, 23, no. 124 (July 1913): 221-224; "The Mitre and Tiara in Heraldry and Ornament: 1: The Mitre (Continued)," Burlington Magazine, 23, no. 125 (August 1913): 261-264; and "The Mitre and Tiara in Heraldry and Ornament: 2: The Tiara," Burlington Magazine, 23, no. 126 (September 1913): 330-332. Also see, Josef Braun, Die liturgische Gewandung im Occident und Orient, reprint (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964); Mechtild Flury-Lemberg, Textile Conservation and Research: A Documentation of the Textile Department on the Occasion of the Twentieth Anniversary of the Abegg Foundation (Bern: Schriften der Abeg-Stiftung, 1988); Pauline Johnstone, High Fashion in the Church: The Place of Church Vestments in the History of Art from the Ninth to the Nineteenth Century (Leeds: Maney Publishing, 2002); Joseph A. Jungmann, The Mass of the Roman Rite: Its Origins and Development (Missarum Sollemnia), reprint (Westminster, MA: Christian Classics, 1986); J. Legg Wickham, Notes on the History of Liturgical Colours: A Paper Read before the S. Paul's Episcopal Society, on Thursday, January 13th, 1881 (London: John S. Leslie, 1882); Christa Mayer-Thurman, Raiment for the Lord's Service: A 1000 Years of Western Vestments (Chicago: Chicago Art Institute, 1975); and Janet Mayo, A History of Ecclesiastical Dress (New York: Homes and Meier Publishers, Inc., 1984).

For historical occidental clothing and textiles, and their production and relationship to design, see: Ferruccia Cappi Bentivegna, Abbigliamento e costume nella pittura italiana: rinascimento (Rome: Carlo Bestetti, 1962); Bulletin du C.I.E.T.A.; Dress (official journal of the Costume Society of America); Giovanni e Rosalia Fanelli, Il tessuto moderno. Disegno moda architettura. 1890-1940 (Florence: Vallecchi editore, 1976); G. R. B. Richards, ed. Florentine Merchants in the Age of the Medici. Letters and Documents from the Selfridge Collection of Medici Manuscripts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932); Jacqueline Herald, Renaissance Dress in Italy: 1400-1500 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1981); Rosita Levi Pisetzky, Storia del Costume in Italia, 5 vols. (Milan: Istituto Editoriale Italiano, 1964-19690; Luca Molà , The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000); Antonino Santangelo, A Treasury of Great Italian Textiles (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers, 1964); Margaret Scott, The Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries (London: B.T. Batsford, Ltd., 1986); Margaret Scott, Late Gothic Europe: 1400-1500 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1980); and Mike Williams with D.A. Farnie, Cotton Mills in Greater Manchester (Lancaster: Carnegie Publishing Ltd., 1992).

For the interactive relationship between conceptions of body and clothing, and/or a brief introduction to the development of military clothing-armor and its interactive relationship with social, technological, and fashion developments, see Anne Hollander, Seeing Through Clothes (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993 [1975]); and Museo Stibbert, L'Abito per il corpo. Il corpo per l'abito. Islam e Occidente a confronto (Florence: Artificio Edizioni, srl, 1998).

This guide was assembled by booksuncommon.  Any errors are mine. For those I apologize.

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