My much anticipated copy of In fine Style: The Art of Tudor and Stuart Fashion arrived yesterday and naturally I couldn’t wait to share it with you all as I think quite a lot of you will be VERY interested in getting hold of a copy for yourselves!
In Fine Style accompanies this summer’s big exhibition of the same name at the Queen’s Gallery, which looks like it is going to be absolutely STUNNING with art and clothes from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries displayed alongside each other to fully illustrate the parallels between aristocratic and royal fashion as it was depicted in portraits and worn in real life.
The book itself is GORGEOUS, a nice big hardback with a lavish array of full color illustrations inside, many of which are close ups of paintings and clothes so that you can fully appreciate the artistry and design that went into them.
This is quite a pricey book, I suppose (I paid £28.80 for my copy but it’s been £38.80 for quite a while on Amazon as well) but I think that it’s worth every penny as almost every single page has at least one sumptuous image, either of a portrait, a detail from a portrait or an actual piece of clothing from the period, many of them associated with monarchs such as Charles I, Charles II and William III and several that even I haven’t seen before.
I haven’t had a chance to properly read it yet but a quick glance through shows that the accompanying narrative is a lively and very detailed look at fashion and the art of portraiture in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with particular emphasis on the social history revealed by the way people chose to dress, particularly in their portraits.
Seriously, this book is a MUST BUY if you are at all interested in the fashion and art of that period, particularly the lavish and ornate clothes and costumes worn at the courts of the Tudor and Stuart (although there is some discussion of other European courts as well) monarchs.
Pleasingly, there are chapters devoted entirely to the clothes worn by men and children as well as women and there are also chapters on the clothes worn in war and while hunting and the costumes worn during the elaborate court masques.
The exhibition In Fine Style is running at the Queen’s Gallery, London from the 10th of May until the 6th of October and promises to be AMAZING. I should probably grab my ticket actually!
Ps. If like me you are madly interested in the massively over the top court masques of the seventeenth century then you’ll be thrilled to hear that there are plans to put one on at the Banqueting House in London. I’m SO THERE.
