ART / COSTUME

CLOTHES AND THE CHILD

A Handbook of Children's Dress in England, 1500–1900

In this extensively illustrated reference book Anne Buck delivers to the reader a fresh understanding of four centuries' worth of customs and mores and rather arcane insights, such as those related to the construction of clothing. Clothes and the Child will prove not only invaluable to the scholar, the collector, and the costumier but also enlightening and entertaining to the casual reader.

Anne Buck, an international authority on costume history, identifies trends in children's clothing as they pertain to the evolution, in England, of adult attitudes toward children and child care. These ideas, and the clothing they engendered, as the author makes clear, were all part of a broader sweep of new social values and new technologies that altered society.

Furthermore, the author analyzes the changing relationship between children and adult dress throughout the centuries. Buck divides the book into three periods: Infancy, Childhood, and Adolescence, and proceeds chronologically within each section. She analyzes existing antique garments, and gleans evidence from the written material that has survived: letters, journals, and various public accounts; as well as from the visual record in paintings, sculptures, and drawings. In this way she provides a rich description that accounts for the lives of and attitudes toward children from various strata of society.

"Rich not only in descriptions of of specific clothing worn by known individuals, but a wonderful guide to the wide-ranging possible sources for costume research ... A welcome addition to the literature on children's clothing [and] dress in general."
—Dress

"Anne Buck's knowledge of historic letters, account books, and newspapers is daunting ... A valuable addition to the literature on a too-little studied aspect of costume history."
—Costume