DUNLEVY, Mairead. Dress in Ireland. With 129 illustrations and 8 colour plates.

Cork: Collins Press, 1999. Quarto. pp. 192. Modern blue buckram with original pictorial wrappers laid on. A very good copy in dust jacket.

This is the first authoritative work on the History of Irish dress, lavishly illustrated and based on original research on primary sources, the book examines in detail the story of Irish costume from the Bronze Age to the twentieth century.
Much adverse comment has been made over the centuries about the Irish style of dressing, usually by English commentators, ranging from distaste at the poverty it reflected, to annoyance at those Irish people who were inclined ‘to dress above their station’. The English conquerors has always been thwarted in their attempts to impose their code of dress upon the defiant cultural heritage of the Gaeil. Even Henry VIII failed with his stringent laws forbidding the wearing of the Irish mantle and the use of the distinctively Irish dye, saffron. Throughout the book Mairead Dunlevy draws together contemporary illustrations and commentaries, literature and remarkable extant costumes, the oldest dating from 750 BC, to create a living picture of dress in Ireland.

[CAT 164]