Bridal Fashions
Pauline Stevenson
Ian Allan 1st 1978

All brides, we know, are beautiful ...
In this book Pauline Stevenson looks at the evolution of bridal adornment through the ages and the many quaint customs that have been associated with the wedding ceremony, both in the church and after it. She spans in text and pictures the great gulf in time, outlook and behaviour between the shrinking medieval 'bride of convenience' to the emancipated marriage partner of today. She looks too at rings and cakes and trousseaux, and what used to be called bottom drawers — 'six flannel pairs (if these be worn)'.
This beautifully illustrated book will prove a delight to those who still look on weddings as a happy and civilised means of adapting the human condition.

4to. Very, very slight discolouration to page edges otherwise the book is in VG++condition in a /VG++ wrapper. 805 gms £25.00

Fashion in the Sixties
Barbara Bernard
Academy Editions 1st 1978

This book traces the development of the Sixties through its fashion in the work of designers such as Mary Quant, Barbara Hulanicki, John Bates and Ossie Clark. 'The Look' is fully illustrated with original fashion photographs by some of the top photographers of the Sixties. The shape of the decade, from Sassoon top to white booted toe, is documented in the introduction which takes a broad view of fashion within the context of the cultural upheaval of the time.

8vo paperback 87pages. Very, very minor wear to the edges of the covers, otherwise the book is in VG++ condition. 160 gms £50.00

The Style of the Century 1900-1980
Bevis Hillier
Herbert Press 1st 1983

Bevis Hillier was the first to anatomize Art Deco, and the first to write on the decorative arts of the 194os and 1950s.
In this ambitious new book he cuts a great swathe through social and decorative history and gives a far-ranging view of the twentieth century so far, from Edwardiana and Art Nouveau to the Swinging Sixties, the Cynical Seventies and beyond. The book is about lifestyle as well as about art styles and taste. It roves freely over architecture, fashion, automobile design, social conditions, ideas, pop music and the whole gamut of the decorative arts. It is presented with Bevis Hillier's usual wit, panache and ability to pick out the most salient and revealing aspects of each period.
It was these very qualities that caused Studio International to comment about his Art Deco (1968) : `It's so elegant, so intelligent. It's the cat's whiskers'. It became a cult book and did much to bring about the big Deco revival of the late sixties and early seventies.
In 1975 Hillier led the way with the first book on the decorative arts of the forties and fifties — Austerity/ Binge. Quentin Crisp, reviewing it in Punch, wrote: `I advise — nay, I implore — the younger readers of Punch to pulverize all the flabby milk bottles on which they can lay their hands, to melt down all lapel badges proclaiming the wearer's sexual and political intentions, and, if possible, to burn all copies of Mr Russell's movie Tommy. This operation should begin today before Mr Hillier has time to focus upon the present his not merely observant but perceptive eye.'
The advice came too late: Hillier was already training his eye on the sixties and seventies; and the result is what he has deliberately made the longest section in this book, full of original insights into the recent history which has only just begun to be `recycled' as nostalgia.

4to. Fine in a VG++ wrapper. 910 gms £17.00

Revolutionary Costume - Soviet clothing and textiles of the 1920s
Lidya Zaletova et al

"Today's clothing is the workman's overall," declared the Constuctivist Varvara Stepanova in 1923. This statement did not predict a world of automatons; rather the Soviet state planned to set about creating a new society that would introduce itself in "new clothes," and whereas "bourgeois" fashion dressed the showy woman, Soviet costume represented freedom for a strong and harmonious body.

The decoration of fabrics was also a field of action for figurative renewal and the application of agitational art. Soviet textiles in the 1920s thus combined the whole repertoire of industrial imagery —pulleys and cogs, blast furnaces and construction sites —with the subjects of the new daily reality — tractors, airplanes, radios, cars and political and sporting events. All were reminiscent of conventional attractions using a language that echoed the stylistic elements of the historical avant-garde. Consequently, it is possible to now rediscover Cubist, Cubo-Futurist, Supremist and Expressionist fabrics.

This volume documents the powerful contribution of Soviet clothing of the 1920s to the birth of new aesthetic of dressing.

4to paperback 193 pages. Very, very minor wear to edges of the covers, small neat name to front free endpaper, otherwise the book is in VG++ condition. 845 gms £25.00