"The ways that people have dressed and adorned themselves provide fascinating insights into human history--revealing personality, wealth, religion, social status, occupation, nationality, and much more. Characterized by specific fabrics, materials, jewelry, cosmetics, and hairstyles, an endless succession of styles and fashions has paraded through time. 20,000 Years of Fashion is a definitive study of mankind's efforts to cover, decorate, and improve the appearance of the human body. The book is divided into historical and regional sections: prehistory; the ancient civilizations of the Near East, Egypt, Crete, Greece, and Rome; and finally the Western nations as we know them today. France, the first modern center of fashion and possibly still the most important source of style today, is the pivot on which much of this history revolves. Fashion is much more than the result of the need to adapt to the requirements of climate and daily life. The nearly 1,200 illustrations, including over 350 in full color, depict military uniforms and religious vestments, civil and court dress, costumes for the theater and fancy-dress spectacles, along with untold variations of everyday clothing and accessories. The superb illustrations are all drawn from examples contemporaneous to the period under discussion; hundreds of engravings, paintings, drawings, manuscript illuminations, sculptures, tapestries, and photographs provide a vivid accompaniment to the text." -- Jacket
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