Contini Mila. Fashion: From Ancient Egypt to the Present Day

Odyssey Press, 1965. — 326 p.The history of fashion is the history of life. For fashion is far more than the wearing of clothes; the primitive caveman with his blue paint, the Cretan ladies who left their bosoms bare, the hair styles on Roman statues, the social life of the Renaissance courts, even the slim-hipped, boyish figures of twentieth-century women, are but a few of the by products of fashion.
Since earliest times a person's clothes have reflected his status, taste, profession, and the history and climate of the country he inhabits. So much is the character of man expressed in his clothes that a book such as this, which shows changing fashions from the earliest to the most recent times, is a history book of a peculiarly fascinating kind.
Nearly 550 illustrations, all but a few in colour, trace the history of clothes since the dawn of civilisation in Egypt. There is no guesswork—the eras are illustrated from art contemporary with the period ; drawings, basrelief carvings, statues, ancient manuscripts, great paintings ofthe Renaissance and Baroque periods, engravings, and clothes and accessories now preserved in museums, all can be found in this absorbing book.
Everything is here—the flounced skirt of Cretan women, Roman togas, military uniforms of Crusader times, the extraordinary hennin of the Middle Ages, the sumptuous velvets and brocades of the Renaissance, the formal elegance of the eighteenth century, the crinolines of the nineteenth and the casualness of the twentieth, all find their place. Nor is the scope limited to women's fashions; the styles ofmen are faithfully depicted. The book is completely up to date, with a special section on the kooky and boutique clothes of today and the influence of Mary Quant, Bonnie Cashin and Courreges.