Containing 2,729 entries, Kevin L. Seligman’s bibliography concentrates on books, manuals, journals, and catalogs covering a wide range of sartorial approaches over nearly five hundred years. After a historical overview, Seligman approaches his subject chronologically, listing items by century through 1799, then by decade. In this section, he deals with works on flat patterning, draping, grading, and tailoring techniques as well as on such related topics as accessories, armor, civil costumes, clerical costumes, dressmakers’ systems, fur, gloves, leather, military uniforms, and undergarments. Seligman then devotes a section to those American and English journals published for the professional tailor and dressmaker. Here, too, he includes the related areas of fur and undergarments. A section devoted to journal articles features selected articles from costume- and noncostumerelated professional journals and periodicals. The author breaks these articles down into three categories: American, English, and other. Seligman then devotes separate sections to other related areas, providing alphabetical listings of books and professional journals for costume and dance, dolls, folk and national dress, footwear, millinery, and wigmaking and hair. A section devoted to commercial pattern companies, periodicals, and catalogs is followed by an appendix covering pattern companies, publishers, and publications. In addition to full bibliographic notation, Seligman provides a library call number and library location if that information is available. The majority of the listings are annotated. Each listing is coded for identification and cross-referencing. An author index, a title index, a subject index, and a chronological index will guide readers to the material they want. Seligman’s historical review of the development of publications on the sartorial arts, professional journals, and the commercial paper pattern industry puts the bibliographical material into context. An appendix provides a cross-reference guide for research on American and English pattern companies, publishers, and publications. Given the size and scope of the bibliography, there is no other reference work even remotely like it.

A pioneering study of the importance of dress to the collective and individual identities of the nineteenth-century English poor.

Shirts, Shifts and Sheets of Fine Linen explores how the jobs of the 'seamstress' evolved in scope, and status, between 1600-1900. In the 17th and early 18th centuries, seamstressing was a trade for women who worked in linen and cotton, making men's shirts, women's chemises, underwear and baby linen; some of these seamstresses were consummate craftswomen, able to sew with stitches almost invisible to the naked eye. Few examples of their work survive, but those that do attest to their skill. However, as the ready-to-wear trade expanded in the 18th century, women who assembled these garments were also known as seamstresses, and by the 1840s, most seamstresses were outworkers for companies or entrepreneurs, paid unbelievably low rates per dozen for the garments they produced, notorious examples of downtrodden, exploited womenfolk. Drawing on a range of original and hitherto unpublished sources, including business diaries, letters and bills, Shirts, Shifts and Sheets of Fine Linen explores the seamstress's change of status in the 19th century and the reasons for it, hinting at the resurgence of the trade today given so few women today are skilled at repairing and altering clothes. Illustrated with 60 images, the book brings seamstresses into focus as real people, granting new insights into working class life in 18th- and 19th-century Britain.

This book fills a significant gap in the literature on eighteenth-century social and cultural history. Starting with their production and trade, Sorge-English looks at the intricacies of the staymaker’s craft, the role of gender in the design and manufacture of stays and the changing shape of stays over time.

Illustrated with more than 300 color photographs, including many details and back views, What Clothes Reveal treats not only elegant, high-style clothing in colonial America but also garments for everyday and work, the clothing of slaves, and maternity and nursing apparel.".

This beautifully illustrated book explores the rich complexity of Regency clothing through the lens of the collected writings of Jane Austen.