James Laver
James Laver
James Laver, CBE, FRSAwas an English author, critic, art historian, and museum curator who acted as Keeper of Prints, Drawings and Paintings for the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1938 and 1959. He was also an important and pioneering fashion historian described as "the man in England who made the study of costume respectable"...
amusing beautiful charming costume fashion hideous indecent quaint ridiculous romantic shameless year
The same costume will be Indecent 10 years before its time, Shameless 5 years before its time, OutrT (daring) 1 year before its time, Smart, Dowdy 1 year after its time, Hideous 20 years after its time, Ridiculous 20 years after its time, Amusing 30 years after its time, Quaint 50 years after its time, Charming 70 years after its time, Romantic 100 years after its time, Beautiful 150 years after its time.
amusing beautiful chic daring dress fifty five hideous hundred indecent romantic ten thirty twenty year
The same dress is indecent ten years before its time; daring one year before its time; chic (contemporarily seductive) in its time; dowdy five years after its time; hideous twenty years after its time; amusing thirty years after its time; romantic one hundred years after its time; beautiful one hundred and fifty years after its time.
area climate country difficult extreme forecast la nearly normally patterns periods season strongly subject summer tied weather winter
During the summer, nearly every area of the country is normally subject to periods of extreme heat, wetness, or dryness. Summer weather patterns over the continental U.S. are more difficult to forecast than those in the winter season because they are not strongly tied to a climate indicator, such as an El Nino or La Nina.
men different mars
Avisitor from Mars contemplating a man in a frock coat and top hat and a woman in a crinoline might well have supposed that they belonged to different species.
religious years two
If we could understand the full significance of a woman's hat we could prophesy her clothes for the next year, the interior decoration of the next two years, the architecture of the next ten years, and we would have a fairly accurate notion of the pressures, political, economic and religious that go to make the shape of an age.
women mean skirts
When women take off their corsets and heighten their skirts it always means high inflation and low morals.
hypocrisy age revealing
Nothing is more revealing of an age than its hypocrisies.
fashion class clothes
Every style seems completely appropriate to its epoch. We cannot imagine Madame de Pompadour, or the Empress Josephine, or the early Victorian lady in anything but the clothes she actually wore. Each represents completely the ideals of her time: elegant artificiality or post-Revolutionary morals, or the prudery of the rising middle class.
eye italian hands
Poor Englishwomen! When it comes to their clothes- well, the French reaction is a shrug, the Italian reaction a spreading of the hands and a lifting of the eyes and the American reaction simply one of amused contempt.
fashion shifting catching
The erogenous zone is always shifting, and it is the business of fashion to pursue it, without ever catching it up.
mean clothes mind
Clothes are never a frivolity: they always mean something, and that something is to a large extent outside the control of our conscious minds.
beautiful smart years
The same costume will be Indecent ten years before its time, Shameless five years before its time, Outre (daring) one year before its time, Smart (in its own time), Dowdy one year after its time, Ridiculous twenty years after its time, Amusing thirty years after its time, Quaint fifty years after its time, Charming seventy years after its time, Romantic one-hundred years after its time, Beautiful one-hundred-and-fifty years after its time.
fashion past clothes
When seen in retrospect, fashions seem to express their era. Although it is more difficult to draw conclusions from contemporary clothes, the same principles which hold for the clothes of the past must hold for clothes of the present and the future.
clothes mind furniture
Clothes are inevitable. They are nothing less than the furniture of the mind made visible.