An interesting thing I've been doing recently is attempting to read "Odevanje u Beogradu u XIX i početkom XX veku" by Mirjana Prošić Dvornić.
Title translation: "Clothing in Belgrade in the 19th and early 20th century."
The key word here is 'attempting.'
This book is very long, over 500 pages, in small text. It is written by a professor of costume history and ethnology, adapted from a shorter piece she did in the 1980s on the same subject. The phrasing and terminology are all intended for an audience of university students. This is 100% a text for academics, and I'm sure it's primary purchasers are students in that field at the University of Belgrade.
It is also in Serbian, with no available translation to English.
...y'all, I cannot explain how inept I am at reading university-level texts in Serbian.
I want to know about fashion history for my own culture but this is the only book I've found that addresses the topic with the depth and context I want to see (the first 200+ pages don't even touch on fashion, it's about research methodology and political shifts and economic dynamics and supply chain), and the context is great and the references are extensive and it's all so hecking hard to read, oh my god.
Lucy Christiana, Lady Duff-Gordon (née Sutherland; 13 June 1863 – 20 April 1935) was a leading British fashion designer in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who worked under the professional name Lucile.
Carte de visite of a young man coyly holding a lady's fan and wearing what appears to be eyeliner while perched on a rocking horse gazing intensely into the eyes of an older man wielding a horse whip, Berlin, circa 1865.
Con mangas gigantes, en comparación con la moda anterior, el vestido se hace más simple en la parte inferior, debido al nuevo interés en el deporte y en particular con el ciclismo, tal y como podemos ver en este vestido de novia de alrededor de 1895.
De pongis de seda de tono marfil, tiene una delicada puntilla en el mismo tono. El cuerpo se caracteriza por su encaje fruncido y se abrocha en la…