What do you think?
Rate this book
On Human Finery
Quentin Bell, author of the biography of Virginia Woolf, sets out to discover why people wear the clothes they do. He probes the essense of fashion, seeking to find the forces that drive it and keep it changing. He presents a theory of what makes "taste."
199 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1947
2 people are currently reading
161 people want to read
About the author
Quentin Bell
66 books22 followersQuentin Claudian Stephen Bell was an English art historian and author.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
October 27, 2020
Interesting and idiosyncratic history of fashion from the nephew of Virginia Woolf. It ranges over the last 400 years or so and up to the 1970s. Bell wrote this in the late 1940s and updated it in the early 1970s. Some of the language is a little dated, but other parts feel very modern.
Bell uses the economic arguments of Veblen to underpin his arguments, and especially, he transfers Veblen’s argument about the “conspicuous consumption” of the leisure class to fashion. He looks at how wealth is displayed on the person in terms of conspicuous consumption, conspicuous leisure, conspicuous waste and conspicuous outrage. The latter idea is an addition of Bell to Veblen’s theories and relates to one of the functions Bell feels that fashion performs.
Bell also looks at the role of fashion and clothing in revolution and times of war and at uniforms of various types. At times this can be heavy going if you know little about theories of fashion (like me!), but Bell has fun with a few sanctified views which are really myths and marshals his facts well.
There are some interesting oddities. He takes a couple of paragraphs to discuss the rising and falling hemlines of the skirts of nuns (I kid you not). There is also a discussion about the picture purporting to show fairies at the bottom of a garden, taken by two young girls. This was the picture that took in luminaries like Conan Doyle and wasn’t shown to be a fake until the early 90s I believe when one of the girls involved confessed in great old age. Bell in the 1940s showed the picture to a historian of fashions in hair styles who dated the hair styles of the fairies to between 1918 and 1922 (the picture was taken in the 1920s).
There are discussions about the future of fashion and the rise of mass markets. An interesting book by a thoughtful and amusing writer which has prompted me to look out for his biography of his aunt Virginia Woolf.
Bell uses the economic arguments of Veblen to underpin his arguments, and especially, he transfers Veblen’s argument about the “conspicuous consumption” of the leisure class to fashion. He looks at how wealth is displayed on the person in terms of conspicuous consumption, conspicuous leisure, conspicuous waste and conspicuous outrage. The latter idea is an addition of Bell to Veblen’s theories and relates to one of the functions Bell feels that fashion performs.
Bell also looks at the role of fashion and clothing in revolution and times of war and at uniforms of various types. At times this can be heavy going if you know little about theories of fashion (like me!), but Bell has fun with a few sanctified views which are really myths and marshals his facts well.
There are some interesting oddities. He takes a couple of paragraphs to discuss the rising and falling hemlines of the skirts of nuns (I kid you not). There is also a discussion about the picture purporting to show fairies at the bottom of a garden, taken by two young girls. This was the picture that took in luminaries like Conan Doyle and wasn’t shown to be a fake until the early 90s I believe when one of the girls involved confessed in great old age. Bell in the 1940s showed the picture to a historian of fashions in hair styles who dated the hair styles of the fairies to between 1918 and 1922 (the picture was taken in the 1920s).
There are discussions about the future of fashion and the rise of mass markets. An interesting book by a thoughtful and amusing writer which has prompted me to look out for his biography of his aunt Virginia Woolf.
January 30, 2024
Interesting from several points of view: this is an academic study of fashion with a historical data set, and it relies heavily on previous work by an author a generation older. Then this work, originally published in 1947, was revised in 1976 and republished with a new foreword by the author in 1992--which is roughly a generation ago now. A hundred years of fashion have passed since the writing of this theory, and it's fascinating to follow its threads and apply them to 2024. Jon.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews