"Fashionable dress has seldom been designed for comfort, the main influence on designers vbeing the demand for coquetry. Here the author traces the trends of fschions from the soft drapery of ancient Greece and Roman Britain through the centuries of flowing gowns, close fitting dresses, high waistlines, low waistlines, crinolines and bustles, small hats, extravagant headdresses, through the feminist movement when women copied the prevailing male hard-line fashion wearing tailor-made suits, high stiff collars and ties, to the teagowns of the twenties and the jumper suits of the thirties." --from inside cover of dust jacket