I used the James Laver book last semester to teach a general Western
European/American clothing history class. It was cheap, which is always
good for the students, but it's very much a brief history and has about
five pages on the entire middle ages. It was extremely lacking in
details, and you can certainly tell when it was written. Laver likes to
put in his own opinions on how unlovely past fashions were.
I would love to have used Boucher, but it went out of print, and I hate
to ask students to search around for OOP books at who knows what price.
The text in Boucher is pretty iffy in places, but the images are great
and plentiful.
In the end, I supplemented with lots of readings from other sources. I
don't think there's really a good textbook out there right now for this.
Melanie Schuessler
Eastern Michigan University
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