The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish - Softcover

Przybyszewski, Linda

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9780465066865: The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish

Synopsis

A New York Times Bestseller

From an award-winning historian, the fascinating tale of the 20th-century women who taught America how to dress

“A tribute to a time when style—and maybe even life—felt more straightforward, and however arbitrary, there were definitive answers.” —Paris Review


As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and beautifully. In The Lost Art of Dress, historian and skilled dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals that this wasn't always true.

In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women—the so-called Dress Doctors—taught American women that knowledge, not money, was key to a beautiful wardrobe. They empowered women to design, make, and choose clothing for both the workplace and the home. Armed with the Dress Doctors' simple design principles—harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, emphasis—modern American women from all classes learned to dress for all occasions in ways that made them confident, engaged members of society.

A captivating and beautifully illustrated look at the world of the Dress Doctors, The Lost Art of Dress introduces a new audience to their timeless rules of fashion and beauty—rules which, with a little help, we can certainly learn again.

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About the Author

Linda Przybyszewski is an associate professor of history at the University of Notre Dame. The author of The Republic According to John Marshall Harlan, the editor of Some Memories of a Long Life, 1854-1911, as well as a prize-winning dressmaker, she lives in South Bend, Indiana.

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Other Popular Editions of the Same Title

9780465036714: The Lost Art of Dress: The Women Who Once Made America Stylish

Featured Edition

ISBN 10:  0465036716 ISBN 13:  9780465036714
Publisher: Basic Books, 2014
Hardcover