DAME FASHION, 1786 TO 1912.
Dame Fashion, 1786 to 1912. By Julius M. Price. (Sampson Low, Marston and Co. .£3 3s. net.)—Those who desire to study pictures of female fashions from 1825 to 1875 could hardly find a more delightful book than the present volume. The illustrations of gowns, shawls, and bonnets for 1840-45, for instance—taken, as are all the illustrations, from contemporary fashion plates—are the most elegantly simpering reproductions of modes that can be imagined, and the reader, if not already a convert to Early Victorianism, will certainly be immediately subjugated by the ringletted charms of these "sweet creatures" in tarlatan. The book itself is quite pleasant reading, but we wish that the author, instead of devoting almost his whole space to vague generalities about the trend of fashion or to gossip about Madame Recamier or Lady Blessington, had given a few more descriptions of the fascinating crinolines and tippets which he illustrates. We have deliberately spoken above of the book affording ground for the
study of the period from 1825 to 1875, as neither the classical dress of the early Empire nor the modern dress of this century is nearly as well represented as the Early Victorian. The pictures of the latter are, we repeat, among the most delightful fashion plates that we have ever seen.
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