The Language of Fashion: A Dictionary and Digest of Fabric, Sewing, and Dress

1939

Storage Bliss Oversize UXP P

New York: Funk & Wagnalls Company

From dress petticoats to Easter bonnets, Mary Brooks Picken provides North American definitions for and explanations of fashion terms. For example, a dude is a ‘fastidious or affected man; hence, in Western U.S., city-bred person, over-dressed Easterner.’ An Easter bonnet refers to ‘the first Spring hat, especially one bought for wear at Easter time’. Books such as this become invaluable reference works as fashion and language change, and as the names for things and what they mean fall out of common use or are forgotten.