A Lady of Fashion, Barbara Johnson’s Album of Styles and Fabrics
Rothstein, Natalie (ed.). A Lady of Fashion, Barbara Johnson’s Album of Styles and Fabrics. First Edition. 1987. Book and dust jacket are both in very good condition—previous owner’s name and address is written discreetly on the flyleaf.
Admission into fashion’s hall of fame is generally accomplished within one’s lifetime. For Barbara Johnson, it occurred over two hundred years after she died. From 1746 to 1823, her entire adult life, Johnson kept an elaborate record of her wardrobe, inserting actual fabric samples and engravings into a painstakingly kept album. Now housed at the Victoria & Albert, it is too fragile to be touched. Fortunately, there is this folio size facsimile reproduction. It is a fascinating record of the ebbs and flows of fashion in upper middle class Georgian society.