Traditional clothing is essentially haute couture. Made with high quality fabrics and elaborate workmanship, it embodies cultural heritage and style. Encompassing a surprising variety of garments, it represents premium handcraft, an awareness of tradition, a sense of belonging, and an affinity to one's homeland. At the same time, folkloric clothing is inspiring some of today and tomorrow's most ambitious and radical fashion designers. In 'Traditional Couture,' photographer Gregor Hohenberg succeeds in building a visual bridge between the outmoded and the avant-garde in German folkloric fashion. He portrays the individuals, young and old alike, who wear traditional attire in all the regions of his homeland, as well as their surroundings.

This captivating book reproduces arguably the most extraordinary primary source documents in fashion history. Providing a revealing window onto the Renaissance, they chronicle how style-conscious accountant Matthäus Schwarz and his son Veit Konrad experienced life through clothes, and climbed the social ladder through fastidious management of self-image. These bourgeois dandies' agenda resonates as powerfully today as it did in the sixteenth century: one has to dress to impress, and dress to impress they did. The Schwarzes recorded their sartorial triumphs as well as failures in life in a series of portraits by illuminists over 60 years, which have been comprehensively reproduced in full color for the first time. These exquisite illustrations are accompanied by the Schwarzes' fashion-focussed yet at times deeply personal captions, which render the pair the world's first fashion bloggers and pioneers of everyday portraiture. The First Book of Fashion demonstrates how dress – seemingly both ephemeral and trivial – is a potent tool in the right hands. Beyond this, it colorfully recaptures the experience of Renaissance life and reveals the importance of clothing to the aesthetics and every day culture of the period. Historians Ulinka Rublack's and Maria Hayward's insightful commentaries create an unparalleled portrait of sixteenth-century dress that is both strikingly modern and thorough in its description of a true Renaissance fashionista's wardrobe. This first English translation also includes a bespoke pattern by TONY award-winning costume designer and dress historian Jenny Tiramani, from which readers can recreate one of Schwarz's most elaborate and politically significant outfits.

For many months, the young Berlin photographer Gregor Hohenberg travelled the German countryside with his camera, from west to east, from Bavaria to the islands of the North Sea. Everywhere he went, he met enthusiasts, often in the local "Trachtenverein" (regional costume association), who carefully preserve these clothes and accessories, keeping them in pristine condition. Because they view them as what they truly are: invaluable cultural artifacts whose colorful splendor reminds one of Spain, Mexico, or even Asia--a couture of the people in which traditional craft techniques have survived.

Describes the original costumes of a variety of antique dolls and offers advice on making authentic reproductions of doll clothes

A fascinating narrative... Great stories, remarkable acts of patriotism...mark the indomitable spirit of humanity.--Booklist

"In the second half of the nineteenth century, the influence of missionaries, traders and immigrants in what became German South-West Africa led to the adoption by the Herero of the European dress of the day: floor-length gowns, Western-style suits and hats, and military uniforms. Following the terrible German-Herero war of 1904-08 and the end of German colonial rule in 1915, the dresses and uniforms - including those of killed or departed German soldiers - became central to the rebuilding of Herero cultural identity. In Conflict and Costume, acclaimed photographer Jim Naughten captures the colourful Herero attire in a series of spectacular portraits set against the Namibian landscape." -- Inside dust jacket.