The magnificent story of fashion, in pictures and text, is the most up-to-date available today.  Rich and rewarding in colour and design, Costumes and Styles shows the clothes of the different periods as they were worn.  It is an art gallery of the fashion world, at once essential to the trade and fascinating to the style conscious.  These hundreds of illustrations in full and accurate colour, plus the illuminating text, tell the complete story of the evolution of fashion.  They clarify the similarities within a period and the marked differences between style eras, and, in many cases, show the reasons for these differences.  This is an invaluable reference book for anyone needing accurate information on costume—whether it be in clothes, painting, advertising, the theatre, or any other creative field—from the simple garments of Egypt, through the magnificent draping of the Middle Ages, the baroque extremes of the 17th century, the Victorian distortions, the pinched waists of the fin de siecle, and the adolescent exaggerations of the Twenties, to our own casual functional costumes.  As age superceded age, it shows how minor details from one period have been used in others, and can be again.

The illustrations for the periods prior to the 18th century, when fashion pictures began to appear, have been adapted form contemporary works of art.  They come from many sources—the grave paintings of Ancient Egypt, Greek vases, the illuminated scripts of the Middle ages, early Italian and Flemish paintings, and masterpieces of the Renaissance.  They are not literal reproductions, but composites, designed to emphasize drape, detail, and style.  The list of colour illustrations gives the period or the artist when known, and the pictures themselves supply an almost endless source of variations in the dress of any period and the possibilities of present adaptation. 

Mrs. Henny Harald Hansen is in charge of the costumes at the Danish National Museum, Copenhagen.  She brings to Costumes and Styles, a broad knowledge of the arts and years of devoted research.

From the dust jacket