Two Centuries of Costume in America, Volume 1 (1620-1820)

The book that explodes the myth of the drab Puritan. Alice Morse Earle, writing in the late 19th century with obsessive archival rigor, reconstructs two centuries of American dress from 1620 to 1820, proving that colonial Americans cared deeply about their clothes. Drawing on merchant inventories, court records, surviving garments, and portraiture, she reveals settlers in vivid russets, scarlets, and complex embroidered waistcoats, their dress signaling wealth, profession, and regional identity with the precision of a language. This isn't costume history as antiquarian curiosity. It's a window into how Americans first defined themselves through appearance, how cloth became social currency in a world where a man's coat declared his trade and a woman's cap marked her station. For anyone who has ever wondered what real people wore in early America, beyond the stereotypes, Earle's scholarship remains essential and endlessly fascinating.