Based upon the authors large personal collection of beautiful fashion postcards from Edwardian times, this book takes the reader on a journey through that era covering the hat fashions and social changes of the day. Delve further into the carnage that took place around the world, in which unscrupulous and money grabbing individuals from the Northumbrian coast in England to the Everglades in America, would callously slaughter whole colonies of birds (leaving their young to die) purely to provide the millinery trade with ornate feathers to decorate fashionable hats during that era.

The book also takes the reader into the world of millinery sweatshops of poverty stricken New York and describes the conditions and deprivations under which the poorly paid workers, many of them immigrants, worked. You can even learn about the background, history and amazing life of one of the worlds greatest fashion designers, Coco Chanel, as she set out on her lifetime of fashion in Edwardian Paris.

With superb fashion colour plates of the day, together with images of amazingly creative and colourful hat pins from both the UK and America, the author shares the fruits of his 40 years of postcard collecting and the highs and lows of his search for the 'Hats' postcards, as worn by his Edwardian 'girlfriends' from over 100 year ago.

© 2017 Pen & Sword History (Ebook): 9781473881310

Release date

Ebook: 19 April 2017