In this week's blog, Costume Editors Alexandra Kim and Christine Stevens introduce Costume volume 55 issue 2.
Now moving into our second year of a global pandemic, we are very glad to be able to present another varied group of articles to the Costume Society membership. We must thank all of our authors and contributors for their persistence in coping with closed museum collections and libraries, and also, especially, members of our editorial board and other colleagues who have stepped up to support the editors with peer reviews and advice when many others have been out of contact.
Thanks to research begun prior to the last year of closed collections, three of the articles in this issue highlight objects in public collections, once again in a worldwide context. The fourth uses archival and iconographic collections to bring to light the wearing of bifurcated garments by women in early modern Europe; Valerio Zanetti’s article examines women’s equestrian clothing, in particular red riding breeches, in Europe in general, then more closely at their use in France in the late seventeenth century. Carolyn Dowdell has contributed a widely sourced and detailed article, examining eighteenth-century English garment construction practices and the skills and techniques employed, from a maker’s perspective. David Wilcox brings us part one of a study of the dress of Lord Byron, with a detailed examination of surviving garments as well as archival sources including tailor’s accounts, from Byron’s early life prior to his years of exile in Europe. Finally, an unusual and interesting study arising from the survival of a single garment, and the incredible journey of ship-wrecked Japanese fisherman in the early nineteenth century from Tyler Putman and Matthew Brenckle.
Charlotte Nicklas has brought together the book review section in very difficult circumstances, and Anna Buruma has provided a list of new books which once again demonstrates the vast number of publications now available in our area of study.
Finally, this issue once again sadly contains an obituary, compiled by Valerie Cumming, for one another of our founder members, Zillah Halls, one of the early specialist curators, who worked in some of the pioneering collections dedicated to the history of dress.
We would also like to remind readers that electronic access to the journal is through Edinburgh University Press. Potential authors considering submission of an article to Costume will also find here guidelines for authors. Members of the Costume Society receive copies of the journal as part of their membership, and access to the online archive of Costume by logging on to the Costume Society website.
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