James Laver  

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James Laver CBE FRSA (1899–1975) was an author, art historian, and museum curator who acted as Keeper of Prints, Drawings and Paintings for the Victoria and Albert Museum between 1938 and 1959. He was also an important and pioneering fashion historian described as "the man in England who made the study of costume respectable".

Contents

Laver's Law

Laver's Law

Laver's Law was an attempt to compress the complex cycle of fashion change and the general attitude towards any certain style or period into a simple timeline. It first appeared in Taste and Fashion (1937):

Indecent 10 years before its time
Shameless 5 years before its time
Outré (Daring) 1 year before its time
Smart 'Current Fashion'
Dowdy 1 year after its time
Hideous 10 years after its time
Ridiculous 20 years after its time
Amusing 30 years after its time
Quaint 50 years after its time
Charming 70 years after its time
Romantic 100 years after its time
Beautiful 150 years after its time

Select bibliography

Poetry

  • Cervantes (1921)
  • A Stitch In Time (1927)
  • Love's Progress (1929)
  • Ladies' Mistakes (1933)

Fiction

  • Nymph Errant (1933)
  • Winter Wedding - A Decoration (1935)

Art history

  • Portraits in Oil and Vinegar (1925)
  • A History of British and American Etching (1928)
  • "Vulgar Society": The Romantic Career of James Tissot (1936)
  • French Painting and the Nineteenth Century (1937)
  • Adventures in Monochrome (1941)

Fashion

  • Taste and Fashion; from the French Revolution until today (1937)
  • Clothes (Pleasures of Life Series) (1953)
  • Dandies (Pageant of History) (1968)
  • Modesty In Dress (1969)
  • A Concise History of Costume (World of Art) (1968), revised and retitled Costume and Fashion: A Concise History (1995, 2003) ISBN 978-0-500-20348-4

Autobiography

  • Museum Piece; or, The Education of an Iconographer (1964)

Other





Unless indicated otherwise, the text in this article is either based on Wikipedia article "James Laver" or another language Wikipedia page thereof used under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License; or on research by Jahsonic and friends. See Art and Popular Culture's copyright notice.

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