(Part 2) Reddit mentions: The best fashion history books

I'm not SCA either, I'm an English early medieval re-enactor, but dodgy shoes seem to be a constant in all forms of recreational medievalism. I've been making shoes and other period leatherwork for about 15 years. A good shoemaker will always be popular, but personally I only make them for family and a couple of close friends, because they are about my least favourite bit of leatherwork to actually do. If you enjoy shoemaking, then even if you're "half-skilled" now, you'll get enough work that you'll soon be a master cobbler.

Please bear in mind that everything below is written from the perspective of someone who thinks history ended at about 2pm on 14 October 1066, Haroldus Rex interfectus est and everything after that is just modern :).

Be prepared to waste a lot of leather, especially when you're starting out. Remember that most people have slightly different sized feet, a left shoe is not simply a mirror image of a right shoe, especially in period shoes, always get measurements/patterns for both feet. A last is not a model of a foot, it is a model of the inside of a shoe. Learn to sew really well, I always use saddle stitch but it's not essential, and knot the thread every 4-5 stitches to minimise the risk of the shoe falling apart as soon as the thread wears through, which it will. Use the best quality waxed linen thread you can get, I'd compromise on quality of leather before buying cheap thread. The leather probably doesn't need to be as thick as you think, this may just be me, but the number of shoes I've made and then realised they would have been better, and easier to make, with slightly thinner leather. A shoe that is slightly too small for comfort can often be stretched to fit by putting it on and sitting with your foot in a bowl of water for a couple of hours.

Finally, a lot of people, especially the beer and bash brigade, will tell you medieval shoes don't have enough grip and want modern soles. Don't give in to them, wet grass on a steep slope can be challenging, but apart from that I've never had any real difficulty walking, running or fighting in authentic shoes. There are special cases, such as people with disabilities or people planning on walking a very long way on modern road surfaces, but in general medieval shoes are as comfortable and effective as modern shoes. If you really want to improve the grip, hobnails or strips of leather glued on to make a tread are reasonable compromises.

Resources:

The most comprehensive online resource: http://www.personal.utulsa.edu/~marc-carlson/shoe/SHOEHOME.HTM
I printed out the entire site several years ago, and still refer to it frequently.

Two pages with shoes good for novices to make:

A nice guide to making simple early medieval shoes:
http://dineidyn.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/a-beginners-guide-to-turnshoes.pdf

Very very simple, but authentic early medieval shoes (without hurrying I can knock out a shoe in 2 hours using this method), a bit wasteful of leather but the offcuts can used for toggles, etc:
http://www.vikingsonline.org.uk/resources/authenticity/basickit/basickit15.html#frontseam

From the same site, a guide to early medieval shoe fastenings:
http://www.vikingsonline.org.uk/resources/authenticity/basickit/annex11.html
(Ignore what it says about bone/horn/wood toggles, there is virtually no evidence for them in the archaeological record. Admittedly they wouldn't survive well in the ground, but their total absence, as compared to other small items of the same materials, suggests they weren't used. The leather toggles it shows are far more likely to be authentic.)

This looks like a possibly useful Facebook group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/periodshoes/?fref=ts
I only found it while I was writing this, but it looks promising.

If you're interested in early medieval shoes this Facebook group may be useful (both for research and selling):
https://www.facebook.com/groups/624164817603195/?fref=ts

A word of warning about Facebook groups - be wary of posting to groups that are not explicitly SCA-oriented. The SCA has a very different approach to authenticity to that of most European re-enactors, and SCAdians can be subjected to very unpleasant levels of mockery and vitriol.

Printed resources:

If you're seriously interested in historical shoes, this is just about essential:
http://www.amazon.com/Archaeological-Footwear-Development-Patterns-Prehistory/dp/9089321179/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421324590&sr=1-1
Vast selection of shoes, with (very small) cutting patterns.

This is also very good, has a different selection of shoes. I would strongly recommend both books but if you have to choose this would be my second choice:
http://www.amazon.com/Stepping-Through-Time-Archaeological-Prehistoric/dp/9089320024/ref=la_B001KCUT80_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421324595&sr=1-2

Much less comprehensive, and less useful for reconstructing, but well worth a read and half the price of the other two:
http://www.amazon.com/Shoes-Pattens-Medieval-Excavations-London/dp/1843832380/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1421324583&sr=1-1

These are my absolute favorite books about fashion history/the industry:

• The End of Fashion: The Mass Marketing of the Clothing Business Forever by Teri Agins. Honestly the best book for understanding changes in the contemporary fashion space, from "why is fast fashion so shitty?" to "why is it hard to avoid sweatshops?" to "why do trends change so quickly?" to "why don't they make clothes like they used to?"…essentially, 50% of all the big existential-angst questions I see on FFA about The Mysterious Foibles of the Fashion Industry are addressed by this book. It takes on so many angles—how the industry has changed in terms of manufacturing process, marketing process, the press process…from here, I'd also recommend Deluxe: How Luxury Lost Its Luster and Overdressed: The Shockingly High Cost of Cheap Fashion, but the Teri Agins book is, imo, the most comprehensive for an industry overview.
  
• Fashion: 150 Years of Couturiers, Designers, Labels by Charlotte Seeling. Excellent overview of the most influential and frequently mentioned designers, brands, personalities in fashion; also tremendously useful for a decade-by-decade overview of major fashion influences and themes. It's also a great jumping-off point into other areas of interest! For example, if you fall in love with Dior, The Met has a list of downloadable books about fashion, and you can read a whole book discussing every single couture collection by Christian Dior and how that shaped the house. When I first started posting on FFA, this was the first book I read, and it gave me a deep reverence and appreciation for small details of construction (where a button is placed, how a seam is shaped) and how that produces so much character in a brand. It's been very lovely since then to watch various designers (e.g. Raf Simons) operate at Dior, and see how they reinterpret the earliest Christian Dior designs into something new. And The Met has quite a few other books!
  
• Fashion Theory: A Reader, edited by Malcolm Bernard. A dense but wonderful read if you're interested in more theoretical/academic discussions of fashion x imperialism (there's a wonderful piece about Western imperialism as manifested by the men's suit, and how it's overtaken many traditional men's outfits in other countries), fashion x gender (normative gender expression, non-normative gender expression). Really, really wonderful if you are interested in how fashion can shed light on greater trends about globalization, gender, race, class…

There are a lot of great suggestions here already, but I'd like to add fashion books. I'm talking like those big coffee table books on historical fashion or specific designers. Stuff like 19th Centry Fashion in Detail or Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty. They can get a little pricey but I've found that there's a fair selection of those sorts of books at my local library.

For inspiration on trends, I like to go to fast fashion websites (large inventory, often refreshed) that do more full-outfit styling on their stock photos like ASOS and see what sorts of elements are recurring and how I feel about the styling.

As many people have mentioned already, Pinterest isn't great for up-to-date trend inspiration but I like to use it for more mood-based or non-fashion-based inspiration like botanical inspired fashion. I recommend keeping an entirely separate pinterest account for fashion stuff and using it frequently to get better recommendations. I also make sure to add my own pins to boards periodically from shop photos or instagram and that seems to help with getting more recent-looking pins.

For direct outfit inspiration on instagram I mostly just follow the #redditffa tag. I've yet to find any larger tags that are not completely polluted with referral links and shops.

Here goes the dump:

On perfume industry:

Chandler Burr - The Perfect Scent: A Year Inside the Perfume Industry in Paris and New York - the book that originally got me into fragrances. It is exactly what it says on the cover: an inside look at how mainstream fragrances (specifically Jardin Sur Le Nil by Hermes and Lovely by S J Parker) are developed.

Jean Claude Ellena - Diary of a Nose J-C Ellena is the head perfumer at Hermes and a part time writer (and a hero of the previous book). This book is more about his personal reminiscences and thoughts about perfumes. He also gives an interesting list of cool fragrance recipes (accords) in the appendix

Jean Claude Ellena - Perfume: The Alchemy of Scent - by the same author. This book is mostly about the industry.

Denyse Beaulieu - The Perfume Lover: A Personal History of Scent This is an autobiographic book from a woman who reeeealy loves perfumes and managed to convinced a famous perfumer Bertrand Duchafour to make a perfume for her. Sometimes reads more like an erotic novel but a good book.

Perfume guides:

Luca Turin, Tania Sanchez - Perfumes: The A-Z Guide - a famous guide, very quirky and opinionated but their perfume descriptions are great fun to read.

Luca Turin's blog Turin is a famous perfume freak and olfaction scientist, he stopped writing, but the blog posts are available for download.

Chandler Burr - articles Burr is a self-styled perfume art critic, who writes for major newspaper and magazines. His articles make a good intro for a layman.

Barbara Herman - Scent and Subversion: Decoding a Century of Provocative Perfume This is about collecting antique perfumes. Reads a like a slightly edited collection of blog posts (which I think it indeed is).

Tessa Williams - Cult Perfumes A guide to niche perfumes. I suspect most of the text was written by the brands themselves, because sometimes it has a marketing blurb feel to it. Nevertheless it gives a good overview of major players.

The H&R Books (4 Volume Set) Book of Perfume, Fragrance Guide , Feminine Notes, Fragrance Guide, Masculine Notes, Guide to Fragrance Ingredients It doesn't say all that much about each perfumes, just the notes, but what it lacks in depth it makes up in breadth.

Michael Edwards - Fragrances of The World - another huge compendium. Don't have it myself, but looks very solid.

On general olfaction:

Chandler Burr - Emperor of Scent - it's about Luca Turin and his new theory of olfaction. I get the feeling that the technicalities are over the author's head but it's a fun read. Has a lot about fragrances as well.

Luca Turin - The Secret of Scent: Adventures in Perfume and the Science of Smell the book by the man himself. Fun popular science.

Avery Gilbert - What the Nose Knows: The Science of Scent in Everyday Life A collection of popular sketches about olfaction, from Smell-o-vision to the way they train police dogs

Gunter Ohloff, Wilhelm Pickenhagen, Philip Kraft - Scent and Chemistry - I havent read it yet, but it comes with high recommendations.

I also have a bunch of books on perfume making, but these probably should go into a separate topic

Okay, if your friend loves fashion and coffee table books, have I got a gift for you!

Charles James: Behind the Fashion (Metropolitan Museum of Art) $35.49 on Amazon.

My friend got the above book for her sister for Christmas and she was raving about it. Just stunning photos and dresses and interesting information.

>Charles James, often considered to be America’s first couturier, was renowned in the 1940s and 1950s as a master at sculpting fabric for the female form and creating fashions that defined mid-century glamour. Although James had no formal training as a dressmaker, he created strikingly original and complex designs, including intricate ball gowns worn by members of high society in New York and Europe. This lavishly illustrated book offers a comprehensive study of James’ life and work, highlighting his virtuosity and inventiveness as well as his influence on subsequent fashion designers.

>Featuring exciting new photography of the spectacular evening dresses James produced between 1947 and 1955, this publication includes enlightening details of these intricate creations alongside vintage photographs and rarely seen archival items, such as patterns, muslins, dress forms, and sketches. A detailed and illustrated chronology of James’ life describes his magnetic personality, his unorthodox design processes, his colorful supporters—such as Salvador Dalí, Elsa Schiaparelli, Christian Dior, and Cristobal Balenciaga—and profiles of a number of his famous clients, such as Gypsy Rose Lee. With flair and style echoing that of its subject, Charles James brings to life one of the most fascinating and creative figures in American fashion.


I also saw this book: Vogue and The Metropolitan Museum of Art Costume Institute: Parties, Exhibitions, People $36.97 on amazon.

I'm back!

Usually the info about beauty, makeup, and hairstyles, are found in fashion history books, so here a couple of general fashion history:

• Auguste Racinet. Complete Costume History, is like THE fashion history book. Published in the 19th century, includes info not only about fashion, but beauty, hairstyles, interior design, fabrics, prints, etc. If you want to buy it, take the version of the link. There is a cheaper edition, but it is smaller, and the point of this book is the amount of detail in the illustrations, so go for the big one.
  
• Pictorial Encyclopedia of Historic Costume: 1200 Full-Color Figures, by Karl Rohrbach
  
• A Pictorial History of Costume From Ancient Times to the Nineteenth Century: With Over 1900 Illustrated Costumes, Including 1000 in Full Color, by Wolfgang Bruhn & Max Tilke.
  
  Some books about beauty:
  
  
• The book Facing Beauty:  Painted Women and Cosmetic Art analyses the beauty and makeup through the eyes of art, from the Renaissance to the early 20th century.
  
• Face Paint: The History of Makeup by Lisa Eldridge, she is a makeup artists for celebrities and fashion editorials, and she has a YouTube channel with videos that are a nice complement to the book.
  
• Beauty and Cosmetics 1550–1950, by Sarah Jane Downing.
  
• If you're more like a experimentation person, take a look at The American Duchess Guide to 18th Century Beauty, which ahs tutorials for hair and makeup.
  
• Classic Beauty: The History of Makeup, by Gabriela Hernández.
  
• This edition of Arqueología Mexicana (E37) is all about body modification in the prehispanic cultures: face an body paint, tattoos, ear, mouth, and nose piercings.... It is sadly not available to read online, BUT you can buy it and they send it anywhere in the world. It is a bilingual edition.
  
  Here some online resources:
  
  
• On this site there's a compilation of articles about makeup through the ages.
  
• Here's another cosmetics site with more resources from ancient times to the 2000s.
  
• A little bit about Victorian Makeup and beauty.
  
• A paper published on a dermatology journal, COSMETICS AND SKIN CARE PRODUCTS: A Historical Perspective, by ZoeDiana Draelos MD.
  
• Silvousplaits on YouTube reproduces historical hairstyles.
  
• Also on YouTube, Janet Stephens is my favourite with the most accurate historical hairstyles, and a ton of research behind. She does not upload so often, but you can follow her on Facebook too.
  
• If you're fluent in Spanish, you can download this paper about body modification in the prehispanic Mexico.
  
• A little bit about tattoos in Ancient Egypt.
  
• A LOT of downloadable papers about body modification in Ancient cultures.
  
  And finally, not a resource, but LBCC Historical sells beauty products from historical recipes of different centuries, but you know, without lead and stuff XD
  
  Yeah, I'm a fashion history nerd, in case you haven't noticed.

My several month old list: Fashion Podcasts and Interviews

-----------------

I've been collecting a few podcasts to listen to in my spare time and came across an enormous amount when searching both on /r/malefashionadvice, /r/malefashion and /r/femalefashionadvice.

I thought it'd be nice to share a few I've found which were interesting and which other people can enjoy.

I know my fashion interests can definitely skew to the boring, so if you have any more suggestions please comment below!

Podcasts & Youtube:

• Dressed podcast run by two fashion historians this weekly podcast explores the incredibly rich and complex history behind the clothes we wear.
  
  
• Stuff you Missed in History Class which is part of the HowStuffWorks podcast network has some great episodes on fashion history, Marie-Antoinette and the first fashion designer Rose Betin. Search 'fashion' for some good hits.
  
  
• The Ultimate Fashion History is run by another fashion historian who produces great original content.
  
  
• Loose Threads this fashion intelligence and analyst company also has a nice podcast which talks about power suiting to product manufacturer.
  
  
• Unravel is done by three alumni of the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) graduate program who take a fresh and more modern approach to their topics. They go in-depth with their podcasts and have nice light hearted tone.
  
  
• The Talks has a wealth of good interviews with people in all walks of life, and there’s a good chunk of interviews of people in fashion. Here are a few selected ones: Tom Ford, Rick Owens, Thom Browne and Craig Green.
  
  
• Blamo! is a podcast by Jeremy Kirkland who talks to various people in the fashion world, from designers to GQ editors to street photographers. Notable episodes include: Robert Geller and Lawrence Schlossman of Four Pins fame.
  
  
• Business of Fashion has their own podcast section which takes fashion from a business perspective. The website as a whole is great. Original articles are informative and they have an indispensible Daily Digest worth going through. Site has a soft paywall.
  
  

  Others:
  

  
  

• Racked even though they have a lot of fluff articles and have to pull a lot of clickbait stunts the writers over at Racked occasionally write some really insightful articles on topics about garments, the industry or the politics of clothing and fashion.
  
  
• Google: We Wear Culture has a project centered around 'Fashion' titled "the stories behind what we wear". It has a lot of fascinating text and articles accompanied with beautiful images. They collaborate with notable several museums and brands.
  
  -----------
  
  Sources and thanks to:
  
  
• Early Morning Thursdays: Podcasts and Interviews by /u/setfiretoflames
  
• /r/AskHistorians flaired users' pages and sidebar
  
• An amazing amount of discussions and recommendations on /r/malefashionadvice, /r/malefashion and /r/femalefashionadvice
  
  -----------------------
  
  /u/setfiretoflames booklist Well Regarded Fashion Books: A Community List
  
  ----------------------
  
  Hey, want to get a nice coffee table book? Let’s make a list of some of our favorites.
  
  Note: I don’t own all of these, some are off friends’ recommendations, and some are for books that haven’t even come out yet. They are mostly in Amazon links for ease of use, but none of the links are affiliate ones (and any that are found in the thread will be removed).
  
  Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty
  
  Ametora: How Japan Saved American Style
  
  Ann Demeulemeester
  
  Blue Blooded
  
  BEAMS: Beyond Tokyo
  
  The Carhartt WIP Archives
  
  Dries Van Noten 1-100
  
  Hiroshi Fujiwara: Fragment
  
  Maison Martin Margiela
  
  Margiela: The Hermès Years
  
  Martin Margiela: The Women’s Collections 1989-2009
  
  Rei Kawakubo
  
  Rick Owens
  
  Rick Owens: Furniture
  
  Take Ivy
  
  Undercover
  
  Vintage Menswear
  
  Yamamoto & Yohji
  
  Yohji Yamamoto

The photographer is Kwame Brathwaite, and a book of his 1960s photography was just released yesterday!

From this article:

> Brathwaite was inspired by the Pan-African philosophy of Marcus Garvey and with his brother, Elombe, a political activist, he helped to create a new hub of creativity in Harlem – the African Jazz-Art Society and Studios (AJASS) – a radical collection of artists, playwrights and dancers to celebrate the African roots of black American culture. Part of that celebration was a new ideal of black female fashion and beauty that rejected the dominant culture of straightened hair and “candy lipstick” of what was called “hot pants blackness” and embraced natural Afro hairstyles and bold African inspired clothes. Brathwaite and AJASS developed the idea for an arts festival called Naturally ’66 with these new “Grandassa” models.

Ok well for general books I'd really recommend "100 designers 10 curators" as it helps flesh out a lot of different brands. (Most you will never see ever again)

As far as some of the bigger ones

i know there are more undercover books but i think they're pretty much impossible to find for a decent price so you're going to have to PDF find them.

this dries one looked really interesting if it's the same one i remember seeing in person.

rick has an absolute ton of books and magazines about him.

the terry jones id one are generally the cheapest but never have too much meat. they're pretty though and make for good decorations.

I actually completely forgot it was Valentine’s Day tomorrow. Whoops!

I’d like to enter for my boyfriend. He’s been off sick from work nearly 3 weeks now because of stress - so it would be great to cheer him up before he goes back to work.

I’ve been eyeing up something like this as he loves everything Japanese. There’s also this novel that he might be interested in.

Thank you for doing this. You’re going to make people feel very loved on a day that brings us together. ^_^

Generalizing grossly, for undergarments, you'll want undyed linen woven plain. For top garments, you'll want wool either natural sheep colors or dyed with madder or woad and woven in a twill pattern. Wool yarns should be worsted spun and 2-ply (I think? I want to say 3-ply happens, but isn't as common). I don't have setts in my head anymore, but they're finer than is typically used for modern weaving.

Twill patterns depend on what period you're in, to my recollection.

There are also a ton of different kinds of narrow wares (ribbons, lacing, belts, garters, etc.) which are woven using a variety of different methods, but that is an entirely different barrel of monkeys.

OK, references!

Textile Production at 16-22 Coppergate (goes to a PDF; focuses mostly on 9th-14th/15th centuries) -- Definitely, definitely read this one. It's free and covers textile production from beginning to end.

Textiles and Clothing: c.1150-c1450, vol. 4 of Medieval Finds from Excavations in London

I also want to suggest Woven into the Earth and its partner book Medieval Garments Reconstructed, which are about the medieval finds in Herjolfnes, Greenland. However, the settlement in Greenland was cut off from the rest of Europe for a long time, so the finds don't really represent what was happening on the mainland at the time. You might find the weaving patterns useful, though. Possibly the clothing patterns?

ETA: There was also a recent discovery at a castle in Austria of a bunch of linen fragments of undergarments. Beatrix Nutz is the main researcher, but I'm not sure if she's published her findings yet. I lost track of the research. Here's a blog post about it with some thread counts for the linen.

Most of the information you'll find about historical fashions online are meant to help to recreate the garments. The most popular periods to recreate tend to be those that are tied to re-enactment groups. For the 1650s, you won't find much; however, just a decade earlier was the English Civil War for which there are a lot of re-enactment groups like this one. Since it's only a decade off, members of the group may have some stuff online that may help you. Here is a good blog to get you started.

In the meantime; here are some books that will help:

17th C Women's Dress Patterns: part 1

17th C Women's Dress Patterns: part 2

17th & 18th C Fashion in Detail

Glasgow Museums 17th C Costume

Just to get started. I personally own pretty much all of these. You notice a fashion shift in the 17th C starting around the mid 1620s and continuing well until 1680s. That isn't to say you could wear the same style garment throughout that time period - just that what is worn from that point couldn't be mistaken for the century before or after. Similar to in the 20th C, no one would blink about a just below the knee skirt from the 1920s on.

AidanSN's Holiday Wish-list v.1

• Jeans of the Old West
  
  
• Rowing Blazers
  
  
• 3ds(xl?) (or should i wait for the new one?) + games
  
  
• a 60% mechanical keyboard (still figuring out which one, any suggestions?)
  
  
• dr martens 1461 in cherry
  
  
• thick, heavy, chunky, textured, wool knit sweater or cardigan, maybe a cable-knit
  
  
• dr martens 1460 mono black
  
  
• house of matriarch blackbird perfume
  
  
• nice light blue and light gray ocbd (lost my blue uniqlo one, + the 'qlo size small's sleeves are a little short, and shoulders a little tight, but fits perfect everywhere else)
  
  
• black, charcoal, and/or navy crew-neck merino sweaters
  
  obviously in it's early stages

I loved this book. Blue Blooded: Denim Hunters and Jeans Culture. Goes into the history of denim and different styles. Great photography! And has some familiar faces pop up!

There is an excellent book called Diableries: Stereoscopic Adventures in Hell - co-authored by Brian May!

If all my fashion history books were about to explode and I could only choose one, I would have to take two: Survey of Historic Costume and Evolution of Fashuion: Pattern and Cut 1066 to 1930.

The first one is a text book, but I love the history that it goes into, really linking clothing to a solid background, showing the influence it had on history and vice versa. Not to mention all the suggested resources on each topic.

The second one is more limited in scope, but it has detailed line drawings of each trend for men and women, plus info on fabric and colour trends, accesories and undergarments, hair, even how the clothes made people carry themselves. Then there's a two page spread of the shape of each individual pattern piece that went into the outfits pictured.

After taking these two books, I would shed a single tear as this book and this one exploded into a million pieces.

Hi there, looked a bit through amazon and came up with some options with good reviews:

one

two

three

four

five

six

seven

It's hard to say without knowing the fabric or the style. On jackets, the higher and more closer fitting the sleeve the more mobility there usually is. I would research historical patterns.

It probably will not be a quick fix. You will have to re-draft the armscye and the sleeve. Sometimes a gusset can help.

Here's a video. I only watched a minute. I don't know if it will help because the change to the sleeve is not for activewear. But the pattern maker specializes in costumes.

She mentions the series Patterns of Fashion.

This book has doublets.

Three hours is nothing, btw.

https://www.amazon.com/Kwame-Brathwaite-Beautiful-Tanisha-Ford/dp/159711443X/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmrnull_1?keywords=kwame+brathwaite+black+is+beautiful&qid=1558367678&s=gateway&sprefix=Kwame+Braithwaite+&sr=8-1-fkmrnull



If you really like his work you can purchase this book about him on Amazon.

Also, in case you are interested in reading up about Japan, I highly recommend 'A Geek in Japan'. Another insightful read was 'The lady and the Monk'.

I've been reading Rowing Blazers. Makes a good coffee table book.

Brian May (yep, guitarist from Queen) did a book with Denis Pellerin called Diableries... which is about some old stereoscopic photos. I think it comes with glasses too.

Fiance hopefully has mine on order for my birthday next week.

Diableries on Amazon.co.uk

u/workweardenimhead got me this book Blue Blooded for Secret Santa, and I really enjoyed it. It has plenty of info you'll already know, but some other cool info, plus several brand/designer profiles. https://www.amazon.com/dp/3899556461/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_awdb_t1_bMEHAbAPMAY7D (Sorry for the long link - I'm on mobile and cba looking up a link shortener 😬)

It wasn't the ONLY issue, but the most frustrating one. The pieces for the arm and gores in that area didn't fit together right at all. I ended up having to redraft to make a proper fit. That was just an mild annoyance though compared to the devastation of loosing the fabric from the length issue. Of course, it wasn't devastating for me because I had another use for the wool but for somebody else it would be awful!

If you're interested in the Greenland gowns, I'm sure you already know, but if not I feel the need to point you in the direction of this and this. I haven't actually tried to use any of the patterns given in the second book but the research and photos are simply astounding.

I know by this point most people interested in the topic have heard of and seen these books but they are so interesting I always have to point them out just in case somebody hasn't seen them yet and I can blow their minds the way that lady from Smoke and Fire did for me when she showed me these books.

Check out the book called Blue Blooded - https://www.amazon.com/Blue-Blooded-Denim-Hunters-Culture/dp/3899556461/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1479742419&sr=1-1&keywords=blue+blooded+denim+hunters+and+jeans+culture

-Bahzad

Here's a link to the book on Amazon.

They're scans from this book that I cleaned up in Photoshop and had printed.

Most of these are more Image than Text.

Hedi Slimane: Anthology of a Decade

Rick Owens

Ann Demeulemeester

Dries Van Noten

Pharrell: Places and Spaces I've Been

Supreme

Raf Simons

KAWS

Hedi Slimane: Rock Diary

Undercover

Alexander McQueen: Savage Diary

Yves Saint Laurent

Vanity Fair 100 Years: From the Jazz Age to Our Age

Louis Vuitton: Art, Fashion, and Architecture

Chanel: The Vocabulary of Style

Dior Couture

Tom Ford

Unlabel: Selling You Without Selling Out by Marc Ecko

Sneaker Tokyo vol.2 'Hiroshi Fujiwara'

Bape

Hiroshi Fujiwara: Fragment