The Worldwide History of Dress

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Review

The author of this imposing tome, the founder and Director of the Center for the Study of Regional Dress, Fowler Museum, University of California Los Angeles (UCLA), USA, specialises in Aztec clothing and has spent years studying Spanish influences on the dress of the indigeneous population of Mexico. She draws similar comparisons for other regions of the world. In her very first chapter on the Middle East, the cradle of civilisation, she compares Egyptian, Sumerian and Assyrian headgear. This throws new light on the history of dress, inspiring future generations to study the many historic illustrations in much greater detail.
The publication distinguishes 32 world regions from the Arctic to Oceania. The author is constantly on the lookout for evidence of trans-cultural influences, and this makes her book especially exciting.
Naturally, Anawalt is most brilliant where she is most at home, with the cultures of the Americas! However, the reader can be taken aback to find that she holds with the traditional school of thought, which considers textile culture to have begun no earlier than ca. 3,000 BC, disregarding the excavations of Çatal Hüyük, Anatolia (from 8,000 AD), and the discoveries in what is now Czech (from 25,000 AD). On the other hand, the author is aware of recent findings with regard to the Mother Goddess cultures, and the latest insights provided by textile finds in Urumchi, Central Asia.
With the exception of the summary of archaeological textiles, which probably requires a discussion all its own, this new publication is testimony to a far-reaching science-based vision. Moreover, the text is written in a language that is easy to follow so it is recommend to every textile library as a standard reference book in its field. The subject matter is made more accessible by a comprehensive bibliography organised by region, and a glossary explaining many of the terms used in the text, which invite further reading.

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