The House of Worth ─ Fashion Sketches, 1916-1918

This stylish compilation features 125 watercolor and ink renderings of designs from the house of Worth, the first couturier establishment and founder of the modern fashion industry. Sent to one of their clients, a seasonal resident in Litchfield, Connecticut, the sketches include fabric swatches, design names, detailed price information, and personalized notes.
The catalog includes two substantial essays that address the cultural and social significance of both the house of Worth sketches and the town of Litchfield. The first item introduces the town during the early twentieth century and the residents associated with the sketches, Julia Chester Wells and Mary Perkins Quincy. The second essay profiles the house of Worth in the 1910s, focusing on the sketches and their place within the broader history of fashion and noting social shifts and changes in fashion consumption. The final segment includes images of all 125 sketches, accompanied by twenty annotations that offer in-depth explorations of common themes such as historic design influences and ethnic inspiration. Published in conjunction with an exhibition at the Litchfield Historical Society, this volume is a source of interest and inspiration to individuals from fashion historians to costume designers.

Karen M. DePauw is an independent fashion historian. After receiving a degree in history at Quincy University, she earned a Master of Science at the University of Rhode Island studying historic costume and textile conservation. Karen's interest in fashion revolves around clothing's personification of the social and cultural environments of its time.
Jessica D. Jenkins is the Curator of Collections at the Litchfield Historical Society. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in History and a Master of Arts in Public History. Jenkins has a special interest in late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century American social history. Her article Marching Shoulder to Shoulder: New Life in the Connecticut Woman Suffrage Movement was published in the Fall 2011 issue of the journalConnecticut History.
Michael Krass is a costume designer for the theater, having designed eighteen plays and musicals on Broadway, and many more world premieres, both off-Broadway and in regional theaters. He is the recipient of two Tony Award nominations.