No comments about The Visual History of Costume.

No comments about Visionaire No. 39: Play.

4 comments about Accessorizing The Bride: Vintage Wedding Finery Through The Decades.

1. Accessorizing the Bride is one of the most detailed and comprehensive coffee-table books I have ever seen. The author is meticulous in her description of each garment and article. The top-notch photography brings detail to life. This book is a must read for collectors, historians, or anyone interested in the evolution of wedding apparel.



2. Norma Shephard's book is a beautifully nostalgic tribute to the wedding fashions and trends of generations past and present. It is as delightful as it is informative.



3. Sentimental,enlightening and gorgeous. I especially liked the non-traditional wedding gowns and bridal stories.



4. Readers may find it difficult to believe that author Norma Shephard has such a magnificent collection of wedding accessories. And then to see them photographed so beautifully is almost beyond the realm of imagination. But it is true. Most artifacts exhibited in Accessorizing the Bride, Vintage Wedding Finery Through the Decades are part of the Mobile Millinery Museum's Wedding Collection and yes, she did all the photography in her tiny Burlington, Ontario studio.
   What makes this coffee table book so fascinating? It may be the detailed pictures of fabrics, styles, hues, beads, sequins and lace. Or it may be the memories and dreams that it ignites as we flip from era to era and maybe for the first time experience what grandmother or greatgran or even her mother may have worn on her wedding day.
   If a bride-to-be is lucky enough to view this book before she's selected her gown and accessories, it may help her decide about a veil, train, headpiece, waistline or hemline.
   And for the many ladies who donated or loaned gowns to the Mobile Millinery Museum's Wedding Collection, the book takes on a magical quality of pride and appreciation to know that their wedding finery is being admired all around the world.
   What Shephard shows she also tells and her apparent wealth of knowledge goes beyond fashion. Between the lines of real-life stories, anecdotes and progression of style, she subtly integrates the social history of women's movements, traditions, issues and advancements.
   Collectors, historians, curators and fashion aficionados will devour this tome of information and illustration, but Accessorizing the Bride, Vintage Wedding Finery Through the Decades offers more than that. While many wedding books feature gowns of celebrities, this issue credits everyday women like you and me with the ability to select, design or create that special gown for that very special day.
   Whether chosen as a reference or as a keepsake, this is one high quality coffee table book that will be opened over and over for second, third, fourth and more perusals.

3 comments about Mardi Gras Treasures: Costume Designs of the Golden Age.

1. I DESIGN MARDI GRAS COSTUMES. THIS BOOK HAS BEEN EVERY USEFUL FOR IDEAS



2. If you wish to view the real New Orleans carnival celebration, take a look through this window opened by its legendary artist/historian, Henri Schindler. Schindler is a local icon, the touchstone of this unique cultural expression. Students of cultural and social history as well as art lovers and designers will share delight in Schindler's masterful recreation, through well-researched and entertaining text and beautiful color plates, of the "golden age" of the celebration--an oeuvre to which Schindler adds annually through his own designs for several of the old-line carnival organizations, thus keeping alive the artistic and cultural tradition of which he writes in this and his previous books. The reader comes to know, through the insights of a true "insider", the meaning and spirit of the "real" Carnival.



3. This book is exquisite.
   In New Orleans, Mardi Gras as practiced by the faithfull is the high holy event of the year. Mr. Schindler has documented the aesthetic traditions of the rites in a series of beautiful books- this is the lastest and focuses on costume designs from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The plates are all original drawings by the great designers of Carnivals' past (Mr. Schindler is the great designer of Carnivals present). New Orleans Mardi Gras is rooted in the aesthetic of 19th century Italian opera and this book has some truly surreal illustrations. Any Carnival faithfull, opera fan, theatre designer or just folks who love costume parties should love this book. It also stands as a serious work of art history- the talent and effort that go into mounting parades and tableaux balls in New Orleans get overlooked and all of Mr. Schindlers books on the subject document a rich history of artists and artisans who worked in the city and built its most revered tradition.

No comments about All About Wearing High Heels.

No comments about Dress, Gender and Cultural Change: Asian American and African American Rites of Passage (Dress, Body, Culture).

No comments about Antique Needlework Tools and Embroideries.

No comments about Alaia (Fashion Memoire).

No comments about Soul Style : Black Women Redefining the Color of Fashion.

No comments about Czech Theatre Design in the Twentieth Century: Metaphor and Irony Revisited (Studies Theatre Hist & Culture).