Free Sewing Inspiration: ABC of Dress by Harry Collins

Oh internet. Daily you force me to confront the best and the worst in humanity. *waits for pizza ordered online thus avoiding the dread and horror of talking to real humans on the phone* Is there a special circle of hell for people who claim to be book lovers and knowledge preservers who just sit back and profit off of some poor publicly funded librarian’s scanning efforts? I would like to think so. (I noticed this book, and many others, from archive.org listed on Etsy, being sold as someone’s own work. The listing *did* make me sit up and take notice of the book’s content, which is a plus, but also depresses/frustrates/enrages me bc there are sellers who just take others’ work and sell it as their own.)

But where was I? OH YES. Art deco 1920s excellence that I wouldn’t have ever found had I not been snarkresearching on this Etsy seller’s stock. This book by Harry Collins called the ABC of Dress is part dressing guide, part dressmaking guide and the illustrations are gorgeous:

Wanna download it? A variety of formats available (here) free of charge, thanks to the indefatigable wonderful folks at archive.org.

2 thoughts on “Free Sewing Inspiration: ABC of Dress by Harry Collins”

  1. You did the world a service! I stumbled upon the same Etsy listing but figured… “isn’t this public record at this point?” It took some searching but I eventually found it thanks to this post. Thank you!

  2. You’re very welcome! 😄 (To be completely fair/transparent, though, I do have some Etsy pdf reproductions in my own shop, but they are *my own* scans of sometimes rather expensive books that I have found, purchased, scanned and edited with my own two hands. It’s selling the work of others at the internet archive that makes me crazy.) But glad this was helpful!

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