Rating: 
Summary: Excellent resource for SCA personae
Review: A wealth of information in regard to Western Medieval costume, especially English and French, including hairstyles, headdressses, footwear, even table settings. Not much detail in regard to Italy, Russian, or Middle Eastern garb, and there could always be more visuals. Overall, an excellent reference for costuming-- Authentically presented and researched.
Rating:
Summary: The best medival costume book yet! (that I know of, anyway)
Review: I feel quite strongly that of all the literature that is currently circulating for this genre of period dress,this is the most informative and accurate, not to mention interesting. A must for anyone with a scholarly bent or invloved in historical reenactment!
Rating:
Summary: A beginning
Review: I too am always looking for the one book that does it for me. This was my 1st Norris and it was hard to read, didn't have the info i needed and did'nt sight references but it must have done something right. It got me started researching, reading and experimenting. Norris sights Norris. He has the expert at the time the books were written. If you keep that in mind and love history, you can see how we got off base and why. It is a beginning book on basic costuming history. It is repeatative and rambling but valuable for values sake. If it's all you can afford go for it,you will be entertained and inspired. If you need to be exact. Go for something else
Rating: 
Summary: Not annotated
Review: I was very disappointed when I ran across this book - although it looks like it has lots of really great and hard-to-find information, there are no sources credited for where the info came from, where the drawings are from or anything. Sadly that makes it useless to me in pursuit of replication of authentic medival clothing. If only the author had annotated it...
Rating:
Summary: Use With Caution
Review: Like his "Tudor Costume and Fashion," Herbert Norris's "Medieval Costume and Fashion" has wonderfully clear illustrations and virtually no attribution of illustrations or facts to sources. This volume does have the virtue of containing fewer irrelevant, discursive historical ramblings and of being more focused. However, I would still check Mr. Norris's assertions against Mary Houston, Stella Mary Newton, and other period and scholarly sources before accepting them.
Rating:
Summary: A beginning
Review: Look to other sources for SCA Arts & Sciences documentation. This book is only useful as a good first place for beginner costumers to look for ideas. Norris doesn't list his sources and redrawings cannot be used for costuming documentation. Save your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Look elsewhere for primary documentation
Review: Look to other sources for SCA Arts & Sciences documentation. This book is only useful as a good first place for beginner costumers to look for ideas. Norris doesn't list his sources and redrawings cannot be used for costuming documentation. Save your money.
Rating: 
Summary: Yes, this is "the" Norris resource, finally reprinted!
Review: Mr. Herbert Norris's work has long been a staple for members of the SCA and anyone else who may be interested in costume history to one degree or another. Anyone with a complete set of the original books could count themselves fortunate indeed as they were nigh upon unobtainable, until now. This book has many pen and ink illustrations of everything from shoes to jewelry to decoration and also many good drawings of construction for various types of garb--male and female. This is a book that the experienced seamstress can make use of, it does not go into construction details, it generally just shows you where the seams were! For a book originally published in 1927, line drawings were the norm (approximately 16 glossy color drawings are included in the center of this book--many apparently drawn by Norris himself--I don't recall if these appeared in the original work). If you are looking for hard historical fact--you may find this work a bit lacking. It's a quick reference work--use pictures of original sources to back it up, but I've always found Norris's drawings to be quite reasonable fascimilies. Dover claims that this is an unabridged text, however, at my first quick glance through this rather fat paperback, I have my doubts that all of the illustrations were included that are in the original volumes. This book is the original volume two of the series according to the cover text. If there's anyone out there with an original set I'd love to see a write up to see if you believe it's really unabridged here!
Rating:
Summary: Yes, this is the Norris Resource finally reprinted!!!!!!!!!!
Review: Mr. Norris in his time created a groundbreaking resource for costumers. The original set of books was broken down into time periods, this reprint claims to be unabridged for the medieval period, however, just from an initial glance it would seem to me that some of the b/w hand drawn illustrations are not present in this reprint. I'd love to hear from someone with the original set of books to see if they agree with me. The Norris book set has been a staple resource in the SCA for years. Mr. Norris is great with the drawings but documentation of the original resources he drew from is often somewhat lacking. This is a book for the experienced costumer, he does nice layouts but they are not to scale so you must have a pretty good idea of shapes and cuts before you try to make anything pictured in here. He does an excellent job of showing trims and jewelry and shoes and accessories, for the price of this book it is fantastic but it should only be used as an addition to a resource showing original sources. Many thanks to the publisher for finally reprinting this excellent resource (now how about a hardback version for us hard core costumers that will kill this paperback in 6 months!)
Rating:
Summary: Lots of great information, but scanty sources
Review: Norris has given us an amazing amount of information here. It's not just what people were wearing at the time; there are additional sections on heraldry, chivalry, the arts, and historical events. There are lots of line drawings (all modern drawings, not original medieval art) and a section of color plates (all modern as well, even a couple that look at first glance to be older). There is so much more here for this time period than in many other costuming books that it's worth overlooking the book's main flaw, which is that Norris is not very good at giving us sources, and he sometimes seems to include things in his illustrations that can't be backed up in period documents. Still, this is a wealth of information that any medieval costumer should enjoy, and as such it's a good value.
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