Chantal Trubert-TolluHouse of Worth: The Birth of Haute Couture

I’ve been waiting for a really good book on Worth for a long time and have been rewarded with this magnificent volume. The design, photography and paper quality are superb and the garments shown are, as expected, visually exciting and wonderful. He was a man of great imagination and artistic talent, able to combine stunning and unexpected fabrics, trims, colors and shapes. Of course his personal commissions of Lyons silks made many of his clothes phenomenally beautiful and impossible to imitate. His sons and grandsons were certainly good designers in their own right, particularly son Jean-Phillipe.I have been interested in historic clothing since I lived in New York in the late 1960s and early 1970s and, like many others at that time, purchased vintage and antique clothing to wear. Later my husband and I were involved in Civil War reenactments and I became a collector of photos and historic images of women in their period clothing, purchased original dresses and accessories (mostly NOT to wear) and had clothing made for me by custom dressmakers. At the present time I am a curator and archivist of a small museum which has a stunning collection of historic clothing, both American and European. I have spent many hours describing these garments and enjoying their details as I prepared them for display or archival storage.As a student of historic clothing I enjoy reading the details of clothing photographed for books and not simply a label, wearer’s name, date and fabric type. That might be the one weakness of this book: that the captions on the page with the clothing shown are not detailed enough. Fortunately, many of the images in the book show clothing from the superb collection of Worth garments at the Museum of the City of New York. One can go to their website and look at their Worth/Mainbocher collection item by item. Each photo (the same photos as appear in the book) is accompanied with a detailed description of the materials, methods of construction and all one could wish to know about each garment. Unfortunately the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum’s website (including their Brooklyn Museum clothing collection) does not have these details for web viewing. The information is minimal.Altogether The House of Worth will give great pleasure to anyone who appreciates the fine art of women’s dress from the past.

Beautiful book! The illustrations, narrative all so interesting. Gave it as a gift and plan to buy one for myself!

This is the book on Worth you have been waiting for. This is an important house and until now all the published material on Worth was a short chapter in an anthology or something showing only vintage photography. This book is amazing. Not only does it give you an important history of the house but it also details who wore them and why. Especially nice was the history and examples of the house from the first half of the 20th century which was interesting to see. Current iterations of the house and it’s fragrance business are also included. Gorgeous new photography shows the true color and details of the materials both inside and out. There is also good vintage photography as well. This is not light reading. There is meaty text to separate this from other mere picture books. My only critique is that I wish they would have listed who owns each piece. An amazing book and you won’t be disappointed.

I have had this particular book on my radar for nearly 3 years, when this year my MIL bought it for me for my birthday. I nearly cried when I got it in the mail because it's so gorgeous. It discusses the backgrounds, the photos, the drama of certain customers, and the changes the line went through.But it's strong point is definitely the PHOTOS. It's a wellmade book and the photo printing is so beautiful, it's like I can touch the gowns through the photos. Upon receiving it in the mail, I handed my baby to my husband, and immediately hid to just pore myself over the book.Long summary short: 100% worth it. Great coffee table book, or for anyone who loves fashion/ historical dress. I'm a sewer and seamstress and I want to make atleast 5 of these gowns myself now.

I love the full page photos in this book and the amount of dresses shown boggles the mind. This book could keep the most enthusiastic costumer busy for hours at a time. Each dress is a work of art and the history behind them, who wore them and when, adds even more intrigue.The only negatives I would have for this book would be that it doesn't include some House of Worth dresses that I was hoping to see, although no book could hold the full catalog produced by this famous couture house. I was thrilled that Lady Curzon's peacock dress and the Lily dress (loved by youtuber Bernadette Banner) were both in the book. A dress I would have liked to see would be the Ironwork dress (recreated by Cynthia Settje of Redthreaded) or the green imperial Russian court dress made for Princess Maria Maximilianova Romanovskya (Although that dress is currently held by the Indianapolis Museum of Art so maybe it was harder to access).I would recommend this book to any costumer, couture enthusiast, or fashion history buff.

Beautiful color plates.

This book is absolutely stunning !!!A must for 19th century fashion lovers - fantastic photographs and a extremely interesting text.It is really a little (not so little - actually huge and heavy) masterpiece.

Wonderful book. As a dress historian I've seen dozens of Worth dresses in museums and large-format books. But many of these were new to me. The book includes some garment construction details. I haven't yet read the text history of the Worth family and business empire.