Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

This is the third book in a new series of Batsford fashion guides, which together cover the period 1860 to 1940. High quality studio portraits are accompanied by detailed, analytical commentaries written by experienced costume historians.

The photographic archive of London's National Portrait Gallery is a vast collection (more than 100,000 images) of work by both well-known and unknown photographers, depicting world-famous and obscure personalities dating from the earliest days of photography to the present day. There is no better source for a history of fashion from the mid-nineteenth century onwards.

Shown here are royalty (Queen Alexandra), sportsmen (W.G. Grace), statesmen, academics (Edward Carpenter), actors, artists (Augustus John), philanthropists (William Booth), poets (Rupert Brooke) and othersócelebrities and unknowns. Although many of the people illustrated were leaders of fashion (such as the American beauty Consuelo Vanderbilt), the book moves beyond high fashion into the broader importance of personal appearance, the etiquette of dress, how it was bought and cared for, and what it actually felt like to wear it. The photographs are not all individual portraitsóthere are group photographs, both formal and informal, showing much fascinating social detail. Men, women and children, all are featured.

The text is written by two highly qualified dress historians (and outside contributors), and consists of a detailed introduction (covering technical and social themes), followed by 150 photographs with detailed commentaries.

This book will be important in the fields of both fashion and photography history; and its detailed evocation of a social world on the very edge of living memory will appeal to a broader readership. Designers in fashion and the performing arts, and writers and social historians, will find the series an invaluable source of reliable visual information and informed comment.