The Renaissance spread across western Europe, but the main centers of activity lay in the rich states of northern and central Italy, particularly Florence, Rome, and Venice, and in Flanders which became an important center for trade and the arts.

The period between 1484 and 1520 is known as the High Renaissance. It was during this era that the cultural, artistic, and scientific advances made in the early Renaissance were understood and accepted.

Portraits of King Henry VIII and Queen Elizabeth, depicted in Renaissance attire

Continue reading

Background
On the surface, the China of five or six thousand years ago bears little resemblance to the present-day nation remade by its 20th-century revolution. However, from China’s beginning certain institutions and attitudes have repeatedly reappeared throughout the millennia. Even during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, China was home to much that is characteristic of the Chinese tradition. Such luxury items as silk, jade, bronze and lacquer were already being refined. Silk, particularly, exerted a profound influence on what came to characterize Chinese aristocratic society. By the end of the 3rd millennium B.C., silk was established as a prerogative of rank and was linked to a ruling elite that first emerged in China: the Bronze Age Shang.

Continue reading

The dramatic nature of Northwest Coast culture matched the grandeur of its setting, a narrow, island-fringed coastal strip stretching from southern Alaska to northern California. To the west, a rugged range of precipitous mountains plunges almost directly into the Pacific where cold Arctic waters mix with the warm Japanese current to produce a mild but damp climate.  From earliest times native peoples drew their subsistence from both sea and forest.

Lewis and Clark on the Lower Columbia, Charles M. Russell (1864–1926)

Continue reading

Nothing epitomizes American style more than jeans. They are comfortable, uncontrived, casual and oh-so-sexy. No matter how many designer dresses and fabulous accessories you might have, your best fitting pair of jeans is quite often the item you treasure (and wear) more than anything else you have stashed in your closet.

A denim, hand painted handbag by Adriana Allen LLC

Continue reading

When it comes to selecting a garment for a day at the pool or beach, you’ve got options. These core swimwear styles offer a wide array of cuts and coverage.

One-piece/ maillot: The suit with the most coverage, it can have high-to low-cut leg openings and different styles of tops, including bandeau and halter, or just regular straps.

Bikini: Originally created in the 1940s but not a mainstay on U.S. beaches until the 1960s, this is a two-piece style with panty-like bottoms and a bra-like top. (Bottoms can be cut like boy shorts, a skirt suit, briefs or a bikini.)

One-piece swimsuit and bikini

Continue reading

Paul Poiret’s first contact with the world of fashion occured during his apprenticeship at a Parisian umbrella manufacturer where he worked as a delivery boy.  The young Frenchman was introduced to a parallel dimension of luxury, extravagance, and luscious fabrics that lie but at a hand distance at stores such as Le Bon Marché and Grands Magasins du Louvre.  The alluring world of fashion captured the boy’s heart and imagination which found an outlet in the sketchbooks of dress designs he supplied as a freelancer to couturiers as Madeleine Chéruit, Maggy Rouff, Jeanne Paquin, Jacques Doucet, and Charles Frederick Worth. It was Jacques Doucet who offered him his first permanent position as an assistant in the tailoring workrooms. 

An illustration of Paul Poiret’s designs. In 1908 and 1911, Poiret commissioned respectively the graphic artists Paul Iribe and Georges Lepape to create illustrations of his dresses that were put together in catalogues offered to Poiret’s clients.The idea was part of the new methods of marketing and promotion adopted by Poiret.

Continue reading

Beautiful Paris, the world capital of fashion of the 19^th and 20^thcentury. It would make perfect sense if haute couture had been born here. Yet, not quite. For the one credited with being the father of French Couture was not French at all. Born in 1825 to a family of Lincolnshire solicitors, Charles Frederick Worth was an Englishman whose career in fashion started not on rue Saint-Honoré or the Palais Royal, the Parisian fashion cradles, but on Piccadilly Circus, London. It was in the British capital that Worth, only a young boy of 13, became an apprentice at the drapery shop Swan & Edgar in 1838.

The empress Eugénie surrounded by her ladies-in-waiting, Franz Xavier Winterhalter, 1855. Dressed in Charles Worth’s gowns.Worth’s style emphasized sculptural effects over peripheral decoration. He aimed at refining the body's proportions through pattern-cutting that was more a form of engineering than a synthesis of existing elements.

Continue reading

With a little help of our friends…! This is what the Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion has to say on handbags.

Accordion bag:  Bag made like an expandable filing envelope that is narrow at the top and pleated at sides and bottom. Usually made with a handle and frequently with a zipper compartment in the center. Der. From resemblance to pleats on the musical instrument of this name.

Aulmoniere (all-mon-yehr’):  Medieval pouch of silk or leather suspended from girdle worn by nobles from the 13th century until the Reformation to carry alms. Also used by women in 14^th century to carry mirrors and tweezers for their hair.

Continue reading

The disco fashion appeared, as it so often happens, as a statement of youth and rebellion. It was meant to draw the line  of distinction between  the disco movement and all other styles. It was the dress code of the ‘now’ generation of the 70’s. Today, the disco fashion is not remembered so much for what it was than for it was not, and that is neither a great fashion idea nor aesthetically pleasing.

Continue reading

One day France would become Haute Couture’s homeland and Paris – the capital of world fashion, but at the time of the Merovingian dynasty, clothing was not the pinnacle of style. The fitted tunic was the ubiquitous garment and clothing was similar for both sexes. Men and women wore a tunic, an under tunic known as the camisia, the outer tunic dalmatic, the colobium or sleeveless tunic worn by peasants, the  rectangular cloack - pallium or the circular one - casula.

Continue reading