"A tribute to a time when style — and maybe even life — felt more straightforward, and however arbitrary, there were definitive answers." — Sadie Stein,
Paris Review
As a glance down any street in America quickly reveals, American women have forgotten how to dress. We lack the fashion know-how we need to dress professionally and beautifully. In
The Lost Art of Dress
, historian and dressmaker Linda Przybyszewski reveals that this wasn't always true.
In the first half of the twentieth century, a remarkable group of women — the so-called Dress Doctors — taught American women that knowledge, not money, was key to a beautiful wardrobe. They empowered women to design, make, and choose clothing for both the workplace and the home. Armed with the Dress Doctors' simple design principles — harmony, proportion, balance, rhythm, emphasis — modern American women from all classes learned to dress for all occasions in ways that made them confident, engaged members of society.
A captivating and beautifully illustrated look at the world of the Dress Doctors,
introduces a new audience to their timeless rules of fashion and beauty — rules which, with a little help, we can certainly learn again.