I am so excited to have The Language of Fashion by Mary Brooks Picken (1938 edition) as an early Christmas present. It’s one of those books I’ve coveted for ages, so finally holding a 1930s copy in my hands feels a bit like opening a time capsule from the golden age of home dressmaking. I’m even more thrilled by my friend’s thoughtfulness in tracking it down and gifting it early so I’d have time to dive in over the holidays.
There’s another layer of excitement, too: according to my search on the U.S. government copyright site, it looks like this particular edition’s copyright has expired. That means it’s effectively in the public domain, so I can scan the pages without feeling guilty. For a reference book this dense—with definitions, diagrams, and period fashion logic all baked in—that’s huge. It turns a rare, fragile volume into something I can safely back up, search through, and share snippets from, instead of worrying about wearing out the binding every time I flip to a favorite page.
Of course, the first thing I did was skip ahead to page 132: “Silhouettes.” I wanted an immediate reference for dating clothing that I can use alongside my usual methods to identify, describe, and date my vintage pieces. It’s fascinating to see how a major fashion authority writing in the late 1930s summarized the whole sweep of fashion history into a handful of iconic shapes. There’s something very telling about what they thought was important enough to distill, and how they drew the timeline only seventy‑odd years after the Victorian era.
That said, one thing jumped out at me pretty quickly: the silhouettes for 1860 and 1880 seem to be swapped. According to everything I’ve learned so far:
- The “bell” shape—huge dome‑like skirts supported by cage crinolines—belongs solidly to the 1860s/Civil War era.
- The dramatic bustle silhouette, where the fullness moves to the back and forms that famous shelf-like rear profile, is characteristic of the 1880s.
In Picken’s chart, though, those two look reversed. The silhouette labeled 1880 is more like a bell, and the one for 1860 seems to be bustle‑ish, which contradicts what I’ve seen in other fashion histories, extant garments, and photographs. It’s still incredibly useful as a quick‑glance reference, but it’s also a good reminder to cross‑check with other sources when I’m trying to date something precisely. Even the “authorities” of 1939 were working with their own interpretations and occasional quirks.
Still, seeing how a 1930s fashion educator organized the entire history of dress into clean little silhouette thumbnails is pure nerd joy. It gives a snapshot of how they taught fashion history to students and home sewers at the time, and what shapes they considered the “essentials” you needed to recognize in order to place a garment in its proper era.
Here are the scans of the first few pages from this 1930s fashion dictionary… such a tease. Just these opening entries already hint at how dense and detailed the rest of the book is—definitions of fabrics, sewing terms, obscure garment names, and then that silhouettes page waiting at 132 like a prize. I can’t wait to get the whole thing digitized so I can zoom in on every tiny line drawing and use it as a working tool for my vintage clothing research and descriptions.
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