Recreating Historic Dress

Recreating Historic Dress: Clothing Gems from the Hereford Museum Clothing Collection, with Patterns compiles patterns and information for 25 never-before-published garments from the historic clothing collection at the Hereford Museum and Art Gallery Resource Centre, Hereford, UK.

An accurate study of dress is dependent on the very close and careful examination of existing garments. Nancy Hills has conducted a detailed analysis of a range of garments, spanning the years 1755 through to 1954, carefully exploring what they can tell us and translating them into paper patterns. Each featured garment contains a detailed description, the pattern, historical context, and images of the full article of clothing and construction details from inside the garment. This book features an eclectic selection of clothing, including a comfortable 18th-century cotton caraco often worn for work, leisure, travel, or pregnancy, a simple cotton print dress worn in 1834 as a wedding dress, and two dresses, one from 1936 and one from 1954, that show a more elite pedigree, with their labels of popular London designers.

This book will be of interest to experienced costume designers and technicians, cutters and drapers, intermediate students of theatrical costume design, and historical reenactors.