Medieval Costume and Fashion

by Herbert Norris

Book Overview

A?superb panoramic study of clothing worn in the Middle Ages. A meticulously researched text is enhanced with nearly 700 illustrations depicting all manner of apparel - from fur-trimmed cloaks and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0486404862
• ISBN13: 9780486404868
• Release Date: November 1998
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Length: 528 Pages
• Weight: 1.75 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Incredible book on the subject !

This is an excellent book with incredible artwork describing what people wore in the Middle ages from the Dark Ages to the Enlightenment. It breaks down each period by chapter and describes everything from shoes all the way up to headdresses worn by the ladies of court. Jewelry,clothing, cloaks, boots, hats, swordbelts, styles in each period and terminology. This is a must have book for stage costumers artists and writers. I love this book.

Do yourself a favour, wordsmith

Several reviewers have reported Norris's work as containing many inaccuracies. Be that as it may (and I don't have the time or inclination to research this, especially given the dearth of available clothing from this period), this book is an excellent source of inspiration for the fantasy writer. "Fashion" may be in its title, however the book contains far more than that - lots of interesting tidbits such as heraldic devices, horse "furniture" (saddlery), information on various guilds through the centuries, types of fabrics used, names of colours, shoe sole patterns and jewellery - as well as a brief history on each century and those in power. The list could go on. The book is set out in chronological order, and looks at all classes, from royalty down to the poor. The emphasis on royalty and noble is greater, but that is to be expected since much of fashion flowed down from these people - and the lower classes certainly didn't wear such elaborate garments or ornamentation. There are two indexes: a general index and an index of names (though these are of course influential nobles and royals rather than their subjects). So, IMHO, don't sit down to write your epic without this book to hand.

Wonderful book, excellent resource

The pictures are beautiful! the historical descriptions are detailed and informative with good representations of materials used and the purpose of each item/article of clothing.

A GREAT resource!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This book is a fountain of knowledge! The pictures and text are easy to understand. I found that this book made clear subjects which other resources assumed you already knew and glanced through. This book has been reviewed as being for the advanced costumer, but I think that it is also a good source of information for novices, since I am one. A must have for someone in the SCA!!!!!

Yes, this is "the" Norris resource, finally reprinted!

Mr. Herbert Norris's work has long been a staple for members of the SCA and anyone else who may be interested in costume history to one degree or another. Anyone with a complete set of the original books could count themselves fortunate indeed as they were nigh upon unobtainable, until now. This book has many pen and ink illustrations of everything from shoes to jewelry to decoration and also many good drawings of construction for various types of garb--male and female. This is a book that the experienced seamstress can make use of, it does not go into construction details, it generally just shows you where the seams were! For a book originally published in 1927, line drawings were the norm (approximately 16 glossy color drawings are included in the center of this book--many apparently drawn by Norris himself--I don't recall if these appeared in the original work). If you are looking for hard historical fact--you may find this work a bit lacking. It's a quick reference work--use pictures of original sources to back it up, but I've always found Norris's drawings to be quite reasonable fascimilies. Dover claims that this is an unabridged text, however, at my first quick glance through this rather fat paperback, I have my doubts that all of the illustrations were included that are in the original volumes. This book is the original volume two of the series according to the cover text. If there's anyone out there with an original set I'd love to see a write up to see if you believe it's really unabridged here!