Fashion, Italian Style

Rating:
Summary: Good text, disappointing photos
Review: As usual, Valerie Steele's prose is lucid and her text based on thorough research and considerable experience. If you are buying this book for the information in it, you're likely to be pleased with it.

If, like me, you're buying the book for photographs of garment details you can use in your own sewing, you may be as disappointed as I was. My impression was that photograph selection was turned over to a layout artist with little or no interest in the subject. Many of the garments were pointlessly shown in more than one photo, some photos were exactly duplicated on other pages, and of all the close-up shots, only one revealed details that were not perfectly obvious in the long shot. Some of the garments were nothing to look at (v-necked blackish thing on top with a black skirt-shape), a number were of extreme fashions (a skirt made of black bras), and too few showed the fascinating, intricate design that has is found many sophisticated Italian fashions. I found fewer than half a dozen women's outfits with details I wanted to remember. There were also some atmospheric shots and a few photos of tailors at work that took up space and weren't particularly interesting.

To be fair, some of book's pages given over to photos of menswear, handbags, and knit garments, which did belong there but weren't what I wanted to see. Metaphorically speaking, I felt as if I'd found a lot of air in the photo package and very little substance.

I have other books of Valerie Steele that have much better photographs--and I'm willing to absolve her of blame for this photo selection. And the scholarship and writing ARE good.