Susan North - Böcker

Sweet and Clean? challenges the widely held beliefs on bathing and cleanliness in the past. For over thirty years, the work of the French historian, George Vigarello, has been hugely influential on early modern European social history, describing an aversion to water and bathing, and the use of linen underwear as the sole cleaning agent for the body. However, these concepts do not apply to early modern England. Sweet and Clean? analyses etiquette and medical literature, revealing repeated recommendations to wash or bathe in order to clean the skin. Clean linen was essential for propriety but advice from medical experts was contradictory. Many doctors were convinced that it prevented the spread of contagious diseases, but others recommended flannel for undergarments, and a few thought changing a fever patient's linens was dangerous. The methodology of material culture helps determine if and how this advice was practiced. Evidence from inventories, household accounts and manuals, and surviving linen garments tracks underwear through its life-cycle of production, making, wearing, laundering, and final recycling. Although the material culture of washing bodies is much sparser, other sources, such as the Old Bailey records, paint a more accurate picture of cleanliness in early modern England than has been previously described. The contrasting analyses of linen and bodies reveal what histories material culture best serves. Finally, what of the diseases-plague, smallpox, and typhus-that cleanliness of body and clothes were thought to prevent? Did following early modern medical advice protect people from these illnesses?

This beautifully illustrated book reveals the sharp pleats, high collars, gleaming pastes, colourful beads, elaborate buttons and intricate lacework that make up some of the garments in the Victoria and Albert Museum’s extensive fashion collection. With an expertly written text by one of the museum’s fashion curators and exquisite colour photography of garment details, complemented by line drawings and photographs, the reader has the unique opportunity to examine up close historical clothing that is often too fragile to be on display. It is an inspirational resource for students, collectors, designers and anyone who is fascinated by fashion and costume. This new edition features an updated design, fresh content and new research, and an introduction that focuses on the makers and processes involved in producing 18th-century fashion.

This breathtakingly detailed book presents dress patterns, construction details, embroidery and making instructions for fifteen garments and accessories from a seventeenth-century woman's wardrobe. Full step-by-step drawings of the construction sequence are given for each garment alongside photographs of the objects and the ground-breaking use of x-ray photography revealing the hidden elements of the clothes, the precise number of layers and the stitches used inside.