Historic Costume in Pictures

Read: 10 October, 2007

Put out by Braun and Schneider. This is a picture book (the only text being the copyright notice, a publisher's note, and a table of contents). It details a wide range of traditional and historic costumes from Europe, as well as Indian and Asian costumes from the last century or two.

I have no idea how accurate the images are, but they seem fairly consistent with images I've seen in the past. The images are in black and white and seem to have been redrawn from statues or paintings. A fun game was trying to identify where the images were redrawn from (some being famous enough that I could place them).

Because of the dubious accuracy and the lack of explanation, I wouldn't recommend this book for research. However, if, like me, you just want inspiration for designing your own clothes, this is perfect. It covers enough breadth that it should provide all sorts of ideas.