Book Review: The Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion

I love fashion. I love to read about and learn about fashion. I am not, however, an expert in fashion, yet. So, for Christmas I asked for The Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion to help me brush up on correct terms, learn new fashion related words, and figure out what I should call this or that cute thingamajig.

I've already found it extremely useful. There are a pretty good number of illustrations (although I wish everything could be illustrated, but that would make the book too heavy), and most terms are very well explained. I especially like the inclusion of historic fashion terms, which aren't all that useful, but they are fun. The dictoinary is also a reasonable size and weight so you won't feel like it's a ton of work to pull it out just to look up a word or two.

Also, the dictionary is set up in categories. If you know you're looking for a type of skirt, you can browse the skirt category instead of wandering through the entire dictionary. If you know the name but not the category, it's still under the alphabetical listing and will refer you to the proper place or provide a disambiguation.

The Third Edition has been updated recently so the terms are very current. There is also an appendix of designers in the back, which doesn't provide much info that you couldn't find on the internet, but it's still handy to have in an easy-to-use reference book.

Amazon sells The Fairchild Dictionary of Fashion, Third Edition for $38.47