Patterns of Fashion 4: The cut and const

No one interested in the history of dress, from art historians to
stage designers, from museum curators to teachers of fashion and
costume, can function effectively without Janet Arnold's Patterns
of Fashion series, published by Macmillan since 1964. Since her
untimely death in 1998, admirers of her work have been waiting,
with increasing impatience, for the promised volume devoted to the
linen clothes of the Elizabethan and early Stuart periods, a
companion to her previous volume on tailored clothes of the same
era. Planned and partly prepared by Janet herself, and completed by
Jenny Tiramani, Janet's last pupil, no other book exists that is
dedicated to the linen clothes that covered the body from the skin
outwards. It contains full colour portraits and photographs of
details of garments in the explanatory section as well as patterns
for 86 items of linen clothing which range from men's shirts and
women's smocks, from superb ruffs and collars to boot hose and
children's stomachers. Beautifully produced, it is an invaluable
guide to both the history and the recreation of these wonderful
garments.