Fashion A-Z, An Illustrated Dictionary

My very talented sister is in the middle of doing an illustrated alphabet of microbes, but was having trouble coming up with species for J, Q, and X, understandably. When I was doing an A-Z series on famous chemists/scientists for my AP class, I thankfully had Joule, but faltered after van der Waals. So I'm always impressed when alphabets related to a certain topic actually have representatives for the less common letters. The Fashion A-Z: An Illustrated Dictionary, is only missing entries for X, but frankly, I can't think of anything to go in that section, so they get a gold star from me.

Even wondered what a jemmy, qiviut, or zori are? Now you can look it up even when the system is down!

I received this book to review from Laurence King Publishing; it's a mini version of the (presumably) more extensive full-size dictionary. For someone like me, who's a voracious reader and trivia collector, this dictionary is a delight -- it's everything I didn't realize I wanted to know about not just fashion, but also fabric types and sewing terms. Even better, it's helpful for reading historical fiction! When Ida Brown gives Laura Ingalls a triangular fichu as a wedding gift, elementary school me always imagined a tissue. What can I say -- the words rhyme, and that logic made sense at the time! Now, though, I know that a fichu is "...worn by women during the 18th and 19th c.'s as a neckerchief or shawl...made of fine lightweight fabrics such as lace or linen." When Scarlett O'Hara contemplates and then dismisses the idea of the black bombazine dress for the barbecue at Twelve Oaks, I no longer have to try to imagine a combination-bomb-and-magazine in dress form; instead, I know bombazine is "a twill or plain weave fabric...originated in ancient China and is one of the oldest known fabrics...it began, almost exclusively, to be dyed black due to its popularity as mourningwear." And when Meg March laments her dowdy tarlatan at Annie Moffat's party, I can correct my mental picture of her in a tartan dress (because I totally didn't realize I was confusing the two words!) and put her in a dress of "coarse, sheer, gauze-like cotton fabric woven in an open plain weave and typically stiffened with size." In other words, a giant cheesecloth-esque dress. 

A tarlatan dress, from the Kyoto Costume Institute, from around the same era as Little Women. 

I also really appreciate that this dictionary not only has descriptions of types of fabric (polyamide? sarcenet? drugget, anyone?) and clothing (toga, anorak, even power dressing!), it also has quite a few "ethnic" entries as well. From the Chinese cheongsam to the Russian ushanka to the South Asian kurta to the Native American bietle, it's a good "Huh, so that's what it's called!" reference book. It might seem like this kind of book is rendered obsolete by the availability of information on teh interwebs, but let me tell you why I still love this: I'm all about maximizing reading/learning time (this is why I love listening to podcasts while sewing!), so this dictionary has been my toothbrushing-time reading. It's perfect because the entries are nice and short and obviously it's not the kind of book one sits and reads through from beginning to end, but I always learn something new in the two minutes before my Sonicare buzzes to let me know that time is up.

I love that the giant letter illustrations that open each new section are actually thoughtfully designed: a herringbone weave H, a striped S, a dotted D, etc.  And oh hey look, it's a deerstalker cap and mine looks just like the illustration!

My only gripes with this dictionary are that 1) the illustrations are frequently for entries that seem more "common", whereas I would prefer to have an illustration of one of the more rare terms (I mean, I know what a lapel looks like; could you illustrate a larrigan instead?), and 2) they don't have an entry for justaucorps. Why does #2, matter, you ask? Because that's what I was working on all last week, and I would've loved to be like, don't know what the heck that is? Then enter the giveaway and find out when you finally get to look it up in the dictionary! Or, you know, just wait until I post about it and just look at my photos. I guess you could also click on the link and find out now, but if you don't, it'll be more surprising when I finally get around to taking and posting photos of my justaucorps.

But hey, did you catch that? LK Publishing is sponsoring a giveaway of this book here at Cation Designs! Leave a comment below telling me what your favorite "obscure" sewing term is for a chance to win your own copy of this fantastic little dictionary. I'll close the giveaway on Friday, June 28 at 11:59 pm PST. And if you haven't entered the other giveaway for an interfacing swatch set, go do it!