Imported custom-made clothes were usually beyond the financial reach of the average middle-class American woman of a century ago; and store-bought garments were often of inferior quality. This left many women with the options of making their own clothes or hiring a seamstress.
While a number of economy-minded women did sew simple housedresses, and clothing for their children, many took favorite fashion plates to a dressmaker who would often consult patterns in a magazine such as The Voice of Fashion. This book, compiled by costume authority Kristina Harris, painstakingly reprints a...