The Worldwide History of Dress: Arabic Edition

From Upper Paleolithic plant-fibre skirts, Ancient Egyptian linen shifts and Roman togas, through Mongolian shamanic robes, Japanese kimonos and Indian saris, to nineteenth-century Tyrolean dirndls, African ceremonial attire and Middle Eastern burqas, this remarkable book covers every notable geographical region, historical period and style of costume worldwide. All aspects of dress and accessories are discussed: basic men's and women's clothing, footwear, headgear, outerwear, jewelry, armour, special costumes, garment decoration, and face and body modification. More than one thousand illustrations reveal the sheer range of global clothing traditions, using an astonishing variety of sources: vintage and modern-day photographs of people in local apparel, colour plates of museum-quality artifacts on display or posed on mannequins, historical paintings, miniatures, woodblock prints, statues, stone plaques, monumental carvings, friezes, murals, mosaics and pottery. There are diagrams that explain how garments are worn, line drawings that illustrate traditional motifs and designs, and over fifty specially commissioned maps. Brilliantly tracing influences from culture to culture, this tour-de-force journey across the globe includes descriptions of each region's population, geography and climate, allowing the reader to understand the development of an area's clothing customs. Complete with an extensive reference section, this treasure trove of information is a glorious celebration of ethnographic clothing, and has become the standard reference work on the subject.