James Laver
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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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".
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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 |
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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 |
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Select bibliography
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Poetry
- Cervantes (1921)
- A Stitch In Time (1927)
- Love's Progress (1929)
- Ladies' Mistakes (1933)
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Fiction
- Nymph Errant (1933)
- Winter Wedding - A Decoration (1935)
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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)
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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
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Autobiography
- Museum Piece; or, The Education of an Iconographer (1964)
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Other
- Design in the Theatre (with George Sheringham) (1927)
- Nostradamus, or the Future Foretold (1942)ISBN 0704102021
- Oscar Wilde. published 1968
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