Vintage Fashion: Collecting and Wearing Designer Classics

An exquisite journey through the fashion of the decades, Vintage Fashion explores the key designers, silhouettes and shapes, prints and fabrics, and other details and characteristics that define influential vintage garments from the twentieth century. Providing background on the fashion movements of the time, as well as offering an awareness of the skills and techniques of the past, the book enables the reader to distinguish original and rare vintage clothing from later reproductions.
Whether it is a 1950s’ Christian Dior dress or a 1970s’ Emilio Pucci shirt, period pieces by famous designers are greatly sought after, and early-century pieces are particularly beautiful and hand-crafted. From Edwardian lace dresses to a Vivienne Westwood mini-crini, vintage items are shown in the context of the time in which they were made and worn, in order to chart the influence fashion had on women’s lives. For those interested in collecting and wearing vintage, as well as for anyone fascinated by looking at past influences for inspiration when developing their own individual look, this book will enable you to consolidate, understand and develop your intrinsic tastes and fashion sensibilities as well as choose a well-made garment that suits your shape and style. Vintage Fashion includes a shopping guide, which offers pointers on sourcing and caring for original vintage pieces, along with a glossary of fashion terms and designers.
Archive illustrations and fashion photography by the most lauded photographers of the time lends background to each decade, while specially commissioned photographs of rare period pieces show the forms and details to look for in authentic vintage garments.