The Button Box: The Story of Women in the 20th Century Told Through the Clothes They Wore [J0040]

2017 - PB Nice clean condition An inlaid wooden chest the size of a shoe box holds Lynn Knight's button collection. A collection that has been passed down through three generations of women: a chunky sixties-era toggle from a favourite coat, three tiny pearl buttons from her mother's first dress after she was adopted as a baby, a jet button from a time of Victorian mourning. Each button tells a story. 'The Button Box' traces the story of women at home and in work from pre-First World War domesticity, through the first clerical girls in silk blouses, to the delights of beading and glamour in the thirties to short skirts and sexual liberation in the sixties.

From recent-ish Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "Really interesting social history of women, told in buttons and haberdashery items."; "A lovely personal history through the buttons and ephemera that end up in all of our haberdashery boxes. It goes into fashions of the eras and really contextualises the sartorial decisions of the day. I really enjoyed this book, although found it a bit repetitive towards the end. I would still recommend."; "Really interesting social history of women, told in buttons and haberdashery items."