Alice Morse Earle’s Two Centuries of Costume in America surveys what colonists and early Americans actually wore, from the plain dress of the Puritan settlers through the powdered elegance of the Revolutionary era. Drawing on portraits, inventories, letters, and surviving garments, Earle reconstructs the everyday wardrobe of a young nation across its first two hundred years.
This first volume covers 1620 to 1820, tracing the slow drift of American dress between imported European fashion and homespun necessity. A pioneering social historian, Earle treats clothing as evidence of class, region, trade, and changing manners. Richly anecdotal and grounded in primary sources, the book remains a foundational reference for students of American material culture, and is offered here as a free EPUB download.