Book Review: Children’s Costume by John Peacock

(Please note: I just finished a new pink dress for the 13″ Little Darlings and you can go straight to the auction on Ebay by clicking the pink dress at the right side bar. It’s my birthday today and Janie and I both will be going to parties!)

I don’t know if you are like me, but whenever I see a new book that I think I’d like to buy, I search every listing on Ebay and Amazon, trying to see if there are pictures of what it looks like on the inside. I want to know if it has color pictures, how the format of the book is laid out, how much information is given describing the pictures, does it have information I’m wanting to know, etc.

I thought I’d give a book review every so often of some books I own, so you can see if you might like to buy them for your own personal library.

The book I’ll be reviewing today is called “Children’s Costume – The Complete Historical Sourcebook” by John Peacock.
Peacock was a senior costume designer in London for BBC Television, and has been a fashion designer and lecturer on fashion history. He has written 6 other books on Fashions:

* The Complete Fashion Sourcebook
* Costume 1066 to the present
* Fashion Accessories
* Fashion Since 1900
* Shoes
* The Story of Costume

(If you click on any picture, it will enlarge for you to see the details better…)

The first thing you’ll notice about his book, “Children’s Costume” is how pretty it is! The salmon/peachy color of the dust jacket is very appealing and wonderful to look at. The book is a hardback book and has a glossy cover underneath the dust jacket in pretty diagonal stripes.

It is quite heavy and has 159 colorful and thick pages. The format is laid out in chronological sections from 1500 BC to 2000 and covers about 4000 years including several cultures. It’s really more of a picture “look-book” than an informational book, but I like to see color pictures and try to copy them myself, figuring out how to draft a pattern for it.

Each color plate also has a line drawing explaining what each costume is and most tell the age it was appropriate for.

This book really gives lots of ideas for you to springboard from for your own designs. Use several ideas from one page and see what you come up with. I think the pictures will speak for themselves. If you have any questions about it, please send them to me.

I give this book two thumbs up and hope you enjoyed this review.

See you tomorrow,
Blessings, Jeanne