Each chapter presents social, cross-cultural, environmental, geographic, and artistic influences on clothing. With visuals, illustrated tables, and in-depth discussions, readers come to recognize recurring themes and concepts and understand the role of dress from a diverse, global perspective. This book is perfect for students, instructors, fashion industry professionals, and anyone interested in historic costume, fashion, art, and design.

    You’ll discover picturesque lanes, enjoy the best city views, and tour outlying islands in the lagoon. Dine at a romantic canal-side restaurant, or join the locals at a characteristic cicchetti bar and munch seafood-on-a-toothpick. As the stars shine over St. Mark’s Square, sway to the free music of café orchestras.Rick’s candid, humorous advice will guide you to good-value hotels and restaurants. You’ll learn how to explore Venice hassle-free and get up-to-date advice on what’s worth your time and money. More than just reviews and directions, a Rick Steves guidebook is a tour guide in your pocket.

    Whether it's Dior's New Look, Yves Saint Laurent's Le Smoking jacket or Chanel's little black dress, the masters of French fashion understand that clothing is more than a craft: it's an art form.Megan Hess's love for French style sparked her career in fashion illustration. In these pages, she unspools the threads of ten legendary designers – Chanel, Dior, Saint Laurent, Lanvin, Givenchy, Chloé, Balmain, Louis Vuitton, Hermès and Celine – to discover the origins of haute couture, prêt-à-porter and everything chic.Accompanied by Megan's exquisite illustrations of current and archival collections, Elegance: The Beauty of French Fashion tells the story of how France's iconic fashion houses have influenced the very fabric of design.

    Brande believed passionately that although people have varying amounts of talent, anyone can write. It's just a question of finding the "writer's magic"--a degree of which is in us all. She also insists that writing can be both taught and learned. So she is enraged by the pessimistic authors of so many writing books who rejoice in trying to put off the aspiring writer by constantly stressing how difficult it all is.With close reference to the great writers of her day--Wolfe, Forster, Wharton and so on--Brande gives practical but inspirational advice about finding the right time of day to write and being very self disciplined about it--"You have decided to write at four o'clock, and at four o'clock you must write." She's strong on confidence building and there's a lot about cheating your unconscious which will constantly try to stop you writing by coming up with excuses. Then there are exercises to help you get into the right frame of mind and to build up writing stamina. She also shows how to harness the unconscious, how to fall into the "artistic coma," then how to re-emerge and be your own critic.This is Dorothea Brande's legacy to all those who have ever wanted to express their ideas in written form. A sound, practical, inspirational and charming approach to writing, it fulfills on finding "the writer's magic."

    Tracing the evolution of fashion — from the early draped fabrics of ancient times to the catwalk couture of today — Fashion: The Definitive History of Costume and Style is a stunningly illustrated guide to more than three thousand years of shifting trends and innovative developments in the world of clothing.Containing everything you need to know about changing fashion and style — from ancient Egyptian dress to Space Age Fashion and Grunge — and information on icons like Marie Antoinette, Clara Bow, Jacqueline Kennedy, and Alexander McQueen, Fashion catalogs the history of what people wear, revealing how Western fashion has been influenced by design from around the world and celebrating costume and haute couture.Fashion will captivate anyone interested in style — whether it's the fashion-mad teen in Tokyo, the wannabe designer in college, or the fashionista intrigued by the violent origins of the stiletto and the birth of bling.

    Incorporating the finest elements of Scandinavian crafting traditions, inspiration is taken from a range of backgrounds including classic folk art, as well as more contemporary sources. These delightful designs, each with clear step-by-step instructions and beautiful photography, will have you itching to get stitching. Arranged into five chapters, the projects work with a wide variety of fabrics: there are adorable fleece and felt baby bootees finished with French knots, classic embroidered gingham napkins, and a striped machine-embroidered apron. A wide range of techniques are employed, including appliqué, cut work, patchwork, decorative machine stitching, shadow work, and ribbon work. Basic stitches such as herringbone, cross stitch, Danish knots, blanket stitch, and satin stitch are also used to great effect. Simplicity is always at the heart of Clare’s designs, and with step-by-step artworks and such clear instructions, anyone can have a go and will be surprised how quickly beautiful pieces can be made.

    Bitten by Witch Fever presents facsimile samples of 275 of the most sumptuous wallpaper designs ever created by designers and printers of the age, including Christopher Dresser and Morris & Co. For the first time in their history, every one of the samples shown has been laboratory tested and found to contain arsenic. Interleaved with the wallpaper sections, evocative commentary guides you through the incredible story of the manufacture, uses and effects of arsenic, and presents the heated public debate surrounding the use of deadly pigments in the sublime wallpapers of a newly industrialized world.

    With new and revised illustrations and instructions, this edition of 'Fashion Sketchbook' continues to provide students with a comprehensive course on sketching the fashion figure, fabric shapes, and garment details.

    In this fascinating book, vintage accessories' expert, Madeleine Marsh, discusses just what makes compacts so desirable and reveals their hidden secrets from cameras to cigarettes. Madeleine shows what to buy and where, what to spot when buying and how to make the most of your compacts, vintage cosmetics or beauty accessories.

    And every Star Trek fan knows about Klingon, which was nothing more than a television show's attempt to create a tough-sounding language befitting a warrior race with ridged foreheads. But few people have heard of Babm, Blissymbolics, and the nearly nine hundred other invented languages that represent the hard work, high hopes, and full-blown delusions of so many misguided souls over the centuries. In In The Land of Invented Languages, author Arika Okrent tells the fascinating and highly entertaining history of man's enduring quest to build a better language. Peopled with charming eccentrics and exasperating megalomaniacs, the land of invented languages is a place where you can recite the Lord's Prayer in John Wilkins's Philosophical Language, say your wedding vows in Loglan, and read Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in Lojban. A truly original new addition to the booming category of language books, In The Land of Invented Languages will be a must-have on the shelves of all word freaks, grammar geeks, and plain old language lovers.

    Part pattern collection, part resource book Ysolda shares all of her tips for successful sweaters that perfectly fit your body. Each of the seven inspiring designs is modelled by Ysolda herself and by her friend Amanda Allen, showing the garment in two different sizes and helping you envision how each design will look on your own shape. 15-17 sizes are included in each pattern, ranging from a 28-60 finished bust. With so many sizes to pick from, and guidance within each pattern on how to customise the fit, it should be easy to get a great result. The extensive reference section will equip you with all of the tools you need to achieve a perfect one.

    This is not one of those books. On the contrary, this is a collection of terrible, awkward, and laughably unreadable excerpts that will teach you what to avoid—at all costs—if you ever want your novel published.In How Not to Write a Novel, authors Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman distill their 30 years combined experience in teaching, editing, writing, and reviewing fiction to bring you real advice from the other side of the query letter. Rather than telling you how or what to write, they identify the 200 most common mistakes unconsciously made by writers and teach you to recognize, avoid, and amend them. With hilarious "mis-examples" to demonstrate each manuscript-mangling error, they'll help you troubleshoot your beginnings and endings, bad guys, love interests, style, jokes, perspective, voice, and more. As funny as it is useful, this essential how-NOT-to guide will help you get your manuscript out of the slush pile and into the bookstore.

    Over 450 photographs, drawings, and diagrams reveal in exquisite detail the hows, whys, and how-to's of the traditional craft of guitarmaking, all accompanied by fascinating historical and technical notes. A comprehensive bibliography; a list of tools, materials, and supply sources; and a full index complete this uniquely authoritative reference -- and essential acquisition -- for guitar and craft enthusiasts, woodworkers, and students of instrument making everywhere.

    Posing is truly a crucial skill that photographers need to have in order to create great photographs. If you're looking to improve your ability to pose your subjects--whether they're men, women, couples, or groups--best-selling author and photographer Lindsay Adler's The Photographer's Guide to Posing: Techniques to Flatter Everyone is the perfect resource for you.In the first half of The Photographer's Guide to Posing, Lindsay discusses how the camera sees, and thus how camera angle, lens choice, and perspective all affect the appearance of your subject. Lindsay then covers the five most important things that ruin a pose--such as placement of the hands, and your subject's expression and posture. If you can look out for and avoid these five things, your skills (and your images) will quickly improve. Next, Lindsay dives into -posing essentials, - outlining her approach to start with a -base pose, - then build on that to create endless posing opportunities. She also discusses posing the face--with specific sections dedicated to the chin, jaw, eyes, and forehead--as well as posing hands.In the second half of the book, Lindsay dedicates entire chapters to posing specific subject matter: women, men, couples, curvy women, families and small groups, and large groups. In each chapter, Lindsay addresses that subject matter's specific challenges, provides five -go-to poses- you can always use, and covers how to train the eye to determine the best pose for your subject(s). In the final chapter of the book, Lindsay brings it all together as she teaches you how to analyze a pose so that you can create endless posing opportunities and continuously improve your work

    The Great Book of Crazy President Trivia is filled with many lesser-known facts about the American Presidents. It is filled with great stories of the US Presidents that you will not find in any US history books. This President Trivia book is going to let you see the Presidents of the past in a whole new light. Learn about their personal lives, the challenges they faced, and their great accomplishments. When you read this trivia book, you are going to learn not only about the Presidents of the US but about the history of the US as well. When we learn about the Presidents, most often we learn about a few of their accomplishments that they had while in office, however, this book is going to show you the good, the bad, and the ugly when it comes to the lives of these men. At the end of each chapter you will find trivia questions and answers that are going to allow you to learn even more about the men that have been in charge of The United States of America. You are going to learn how war not only challenged these men but how it affected who they were. You will see how great decisions were made as well as some that were not so great. In the end, you are going to find that these men were in fact just men who took on a huge responsibility. Some of them were successful some of them failed miserably but each of them with their own hands, molded the US into what it is today.