Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

The erotic potential of female hair has been acknowledged either by encouraging fantasies through elaborate coiffures and evocative silky tresses in artistic images, or by negatively adapting taboos (including religious rules) that require covering hair to prevent such fantasies. Trasko's survey of extraordinary hair includes a wide spectrum of treatment, from indigo blue royal wigs in Ancient Egypt, chained-jeweled hairdos from the Italian Renaissance, and curled and pearled wigs of 16th-century Elizabethan England, through extravagant wool-and-plastered prerevolutionary French court coiffures (some as much as three feet high) depicting sailing vessels or dangerously illuminated with burning candles, to the independence expressed in 20th-century bobs and bouffants. Like Colin McDowell's Shoes: Fashion and Fantasy (1989) and Hats, Status, Style and Glamour (1992), Trasko's book is a profusion of stunning illustrations accompanied by a modest amount of footnooted text. Most notable are the almost 200 margin and full-page color and duotone photographs, drawings, and screened images, some superimposed by text, incorporated into exquisite layout designs. Each page is individualized; every picture frame is unique (one example uses red theatrical curtains as a framing device). An elegant visual/historical resource for hairdressers, book designers, costumers, artists, and general readers. B. B. Chico Regis University