Jennifer Scarce

I have a long standing interest in the clothing of the Near and Middle East, so this book drew my attention. Unfortunately, the title is misleading. This book is ultimately concerned with women's clothing of the Ottoman Empire, and doesn't even do a good job on that.

Scarce attempts to review the clothing traditions that influenced Ottoman clothing. She wanders far afield, and in my opinion, often astray, as she jumps to questionable conclusions about the connections among the disparate systems, Chinese, Byzantine, Persian, and Egyptian.

The section on actual Ottoman clothing ought to be the best, but there, too, Scarce trips and falls. The illustrations are often insufficiently captioned, lacking important information, so that the reader may not always realize what the true relationship of each is to the text and to other garments. Some items from specific ethnic and cultural groups living within the Ottoman Empire are presented as if they are representative of Ottoman Turkish clothing, and the relevant information, which i have found in other sources, is lacking anywhere in the book.

I use this book for historic costume re-creation, but only in conjunction with other books on the clothing of the various groups she draws from which include better historical details and information on the provenance of specific garments.… (mehr)