Woven Tapestry: Guidelines for Conservation

images are offered as decoration rather than evidence, having little to do with the people and events discussed in the book. Meanwhile, other images referenced in the text are not included at all. Yet Block should be commended for producing a tome that is as readable as it is scholarly. She avoids excessive jargon and manages to make detailed discussions of tariffs and bankruptcies interesting, if not exciting. Though the book is densely researched—piecing together clues gleaned from advertisements, directories, fashion plates, invoices and diaries—it is accessible due to its tight structure and clear argumentation, only occasionally lapsing into pedantic laundry lists of names and addresses. Above all, Dressing Up makes the remote, rarefied world of the Gilded Age immediately relevant and relatable in a way that HBO’s prestige period drama of the same name never managed to do. Alva Vanderbilt’s excitement over the twiceyearly arrival of shipments of French clothing would be right at home in the age of YouTube ‘unboxing’ videos. The mobile studios’ society photographers set up to capture the elaborate costumes worn at masked balls were an early iteration of Instagram. And leading hairdresser Lenth eric’s temporary summer outposts in Aix-les-Bains and Monte Carlo were, essentially, pop-up shops. In capitalism as in fashion, everything old is new again.