Stitches in Time: The Story of the Clothes We Wear

by Lucy Adlington

Riffling through the wardrobes of years gone by, costume historian Lucy Adlington reveals the rich stories underlying the clothes we wear in this stylish tour of the most important developments in the history of fashion, from ancient times to the present day.

Starting with underwear – did you know Elizabeth I owned just one pair of drawers, worn only after her death? – she moves garment by garment through Western attire, exploring both the items we still wear every day and those that have gone the way of the dodo (sugared petticoats, farthingales and spatterdashers to name but a few).

Beautifully illustrated throughout, and crammed with fascinating and eminently quotable facts, Stitches in Time shows how the way we dress is inextricably bound up with considerations of aesthetics, sex, gender, class and lifestyle – and offers us the chance to truly appreciate the extraordinary qualities of these, our most ordinary possessions.

• ISBN10: 1847947263
• ISBN13: 9781847947260
• Publish Date: 8 October 2015
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 10 August 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Cornerstone
• Imprint: Random House Books
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 464
• Language: English

Reviews

[wyvernfriend]

Pretty good for the most part, offers titbits about a variety of clothes but sometimes forgets that there are still people who do things differently. Managed to ruffle my feathers by misquoting the much maligned J. M. Synge which is lazy. Which would make me question some of the rest of the scholarship. Extensively bibliographed though and the illustrations are quite good.

Worth a read for some bits and pieces of information and the research rabbit holes it generates.