Ladies Dress Accesories
Ladies Dress Accessories. Soft back, 56 pages, Illustrated colour, 15cm x 21cm.
A fascinating guide to the many dress accessories and what you may be digging up. This book may also be of interest to a collector of ladies dress accessories.
Contents:
- The dressing table and dressing accessories
- Scent bottles
- Jewellery
- Buttons and buckles
- Buttonhooks and shoehorns
- Hatpins and hatpin holders
- Gloves, glove stretchers, powdering flasks and glove boxes
- Skirt lifters
- Handbags, purses and chatelaines
- Spectacles, quizzing glasses and lorgnettes
- Card cases, aides-memoire and notebooks
- Posy holders fans
- Parasols
- Further reading
- Places to visit.
On the back cover:
As human societies evolved, so clothing became more than just a basic necessity to protect the body from the cold. Both men and women used their costume to display their status and wealth and also to enhance their physical attractions. This additional function of dress was from the beginning accompanied by the appearance of a wide variety of complimentary accessories. In the nineteenth century fashions in dress began to develop much more rapidly than hitherto, and from the Victorian period and into the twentieth century increasing affluence radically changed many people's lifestyles. Customs and conventions dictated to a large extent what should be worn, when and how, and women were judged by their appearance, by the clothes they wore and by how they wore them. Accessories proliferated , including perfume and scent bottles, jewellery, buttons, buckles, buttonhooks, hat pins, gloves, handbags, purses, fans, parasols and many other attractive items, and to these have been added since the first world war objects associated with make up and smoking . All these developments have continued through the twentieth century and on to the present day, although ladies dress accessories have tended to become simpler and more basic, while even more varied. This wide range of items provides great scope and interest for collectors and in this book Elanor Johnson describes and illustrates many of the objects that they may find.
