Dressing the Past

Quentin Bell unveils deeper meanings from the ever-evolving history of fashion and fancy dress.

"The proper length for little girls' skirts at various ages", from Harper's Bazaar, showing an 1868 idea of how the hemline should descend towards the ankle as a girl got olderWe do not see our neighbours in the street; we see their clothes. Even their hands and faces are trimmed, veiled, gloved or painted to a pattern. In the mind’s eye modern man is a tweeded biped; modern woman, albeit a more protean creature, is a skirt.

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