Arts of Costume & Personal Appearance

By Grace Margaret Morton

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471618454
• ISBN13: 9780471618454
• Release Date: December 1964
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc
• Length: 319 Pages
• Weight: 3.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 7.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

perfect gift for a bridal shower gift or fashion student

What a fantastic book, if you can read with a sense of humour about the restrictions on women in the past. This book was a text book for many university level courses on home science and dressmaking etc. Students were advised to remember, however, that "there are very few normal young women who do not look forward to marriage as the culmination to whatever career they may engage in for a time" (p. 3). The book contains such useful academic activities as lining all the blond women in your class up against the wall, in order of darkness to fairness of skin. Then get them all to face the wall and rearrange in terms of darkness to fairness of hair.(p.327). Of course, thanks for that great learning experience! There is a discussion on the unfortunate fact that "college training ...has a significantly masculinizing influence" (p.269) and that "a man cannot accept a woman who rejects her own feminine nature" (p.280), and offers suggestions on how to dress in order to bring out the "warmth and feeling quality" and "feminine arts of grace and charm" (p. 281)that are our true value. We are also advised to develop a skill in "some feminine handcraft" (p.283), but I'm worried that won't leave me time to take up the scary suggestion to use sandpaper to remove superfluous hair ("a mark of careless grooming") from my arms and legs (p.32). My favourites, however, are the pages of pictures of female university students, in their swimwear or underwear, with faces blacked out, titled "typical figure irregularities of college women" (p.236). and "typical posture and other irregularities of college women" (p.19). Other irregularities? They don't balance their checkbooks? I really feel for girl d. on page 19. After being rounded up, marched into the college auditorium in her swimsuit, ordered around by some photographer and assistants, and preserved for posterity, she is told she has poor posture, stiff knees, a prominant abdomen, a flat chest, and bad shoulder blades. BAD shoulder blades - get down I say, down!!! There are a lot of copies of this book floating around in second hand shops, and if you see one I suggest you buy it and preserve it so our daughters and our grand-daughters and their grand-daughters know how hard we all worked to change the world. My copy cost about US $5, and is well worth every cent. It is sizeable - 400 pages with a hardcover binding, and would make a great present for fashion students, or a humerous gift for bridal showers (for the right socially-conscious bride of course) when you just don't want to buy another set of champagne flutes.