Comments | ritaxis: I have come to loathe online histories of fashion

ritaxis

I have come to loathe online histories of fashion

Feb 08, 2012 08:01

It only took me half an hour of fruitless reading in wikipedia and beyond to realize that the people who write about the history of clothes online have no idea what they're talking about and don't care ( Read more... )

drummer boy, writing, wikipedia, clothes, my research let me show you it, not-poland

Comments 6

pantryslut February 8 2012, 17:08:00 UTC

I hear you on this one, oh.

frogs_of_war February 8 2012, 17:41:37 UTC

I totally agree. It makes you wonder if some of them ever wear clothes.

I did my History of Clothing self study several years ago, so I've forgotten the books that were the most helpful. But for Victorian, Edwardian (even if you are doing Eastern Europe, it would at least get you closer) you might try reading book written by people that study that era. I remember a book, by a man who studies Victorian literature, about odd things that didn't make since in the stories (plot holes, etc.) and I remember bits about what people were wearing.

Looked him up. John Sutherland. The titles are like Is Heathcliff a Murderer?, Can Jane Eyre be Happy?, etc. Each has 'puzzles in classic fiction' from several books ( ... )

del_c February 8 2012, 18:01:10 UTC

I googled "clerk european 1900" in Google Images and got Albert Einstein, rocking the houndstooth check as a patent clerk, and when I entered "minister european 1900" I got someone called Graf von Bulow, who was a Prussian Secretary of State. Does that help? I don't think the minister's clerk would dress like Albert, though, more like a less colourful version of his boss.

ritaxis February 9 2012, 01:49:43 UTC

Del, I don't know why I didn't think of that instead of trying to discover what I wanted in "fashion." Thank you, and Albert Einstein is probably an excellent example.

del_c February 9 2012, 07:41:15 UTC

Thinking about it later, I realised that restricting to "black&white" helps (as what use would the colour photos be?) and "Face" helped a bit also, although you lose the full body photos. Then I tried "Prussian" as being the sort of European keyword you don't get today, whereas "European" is too broad. And changing "1900" to "1890" helped weed out some modern pictures.

Sadly Google images doesn't support the Year1..Year2 syntax for ranges of time.

heleninwales February 8 2012, 20:46:44 UTC

My only suggestion was to see if you could find illustrations from novels of the period. Or paintings, though that's more likely to get you the upper classes again, unless you can find someone who painted or photographed working people.