The Lost Art of Clothes: The Women Who Once Made America Fashionable by Linda Przybyszewski

I finished a not-sound book! My first i for 2019! I have a decently-sized, heavily-referenced collection of what I call "picture books" on topics like fashion history & patternmaking, but a number of years ago I realized that I prefer to absorb via audio anything that is primarily text (instead of pictures). I gave away nearly all my fiction books a few years back to a teacher friend for her classroom, because I had already replaced most of them with audio versions!

But even with the recent rise in popularity of audiobooks, not quite everything is available as ane, specially for the esoteric mode texts that I'm interested in. So in comes my resolution to read paper books this year! I've never felt like I was "cheating" with audio, but I know I've been missing out on some content that I would otherwise enjoy. (Plus, I do love to marking upward the margins of non-fiction books, a pleasure which I've long missed.)

The starting time paper book I picked up for this was The Lost Fine art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Fashionable by Linda Przybyszewski, which had been languishing on my bookshelf for several years. I started reading it when I starting time purchased it, simply I simply didn't accept the mental focus at that time to get through it (oh hai low! thanks for making my brain not piece of work correct in lots of dissimilar ways!). Just I'm almost glad that I waited to read it until now – you know that erstwhile saying "When the student is ready, the teacher appears"? That's EXACTLY what happened.

Obsessed with the Women's Constitute!

The last several months I've go pretty obsessed with 1920s fashion, and in detail the work of Mary Brooks Picken through the Women'south Institute. When I get-go bought The Lost Art of Wearing apparel, I had no idea who she was, and then a lot of the insights in this volume went straight over my head! The Women's Institute published books and postal service-club correspondence courses on subjects like dressmaking and cooking, and the materials published on dressmaking are pretty darn awesome. Many are now in the public domain and can be found for free online, or as very cheap PDF downloads from vintage design sellers.

The Lost Art of Dress doesn't only focus on Picken and the WI, however. It gives a broad overview of the role that Dwelling house Economics played in the Usa during the early 20th Century. Women were not welcomed in many academic departments during this period, so they used Home Ec departments as a mode to apply their scientific and artistic proclivities in a practical setting. They earned their ain agency in the USDA, where female scientists could notice employment working on subjects such as Nutritional Wellness and Textiles.

For better and worse, these and so-chosen "Dress Doctors" were products of their time, and little attention was paid to non-white, non-European standards of beauty. The Lost Art of Clothes does a decent task of exploring that, just now I'grand interested in finding another volume that goes deeply in to this topic. If you lot have whatsoever suggestions, please let me know!

Przybyszewski lays out many of the ideals promoted in designing an appropriate wardrobe in the kickoff one-half of the 20th century, and I'1000 planning to reference her distillation as I piece of work on my 1920s capsule wardrobe this year.

Perhaps best of all, this book is written in an engaging tone and is FUNNY, which is rare for academic texts. I call up Przybyszewski understands the strange juxtaposition of the serious and frivolous nature of fashion, and that is non lost in her writing.