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Sewing & Fashion Movies & Books for Inspiration

ByAmy (Admin)

If you like fashion, these shows, movies, and books could be the inspiration for your next project. This list will be continually updated as I find new sources (leave your suggestions in the comments).

Fashion TV & Movies

I watch Project Runway as I sew. There are so many episodes, that I’m not even close to running out. I tune out when I need to concentrate on my task, but I always pause for the runway show. Making the Cut is just as entertaining but doesn’t have as many episodes.

Project Runway

Project Runway

This long-running fashion design competition features Tim Gunn and Heidi Klum and made Mood Fabrics a household name.

Making the Cut

Making the Cut

Tim and Heidi moved on to this Amazon Prime show in 2020. The winning designer’s look is available to purchase on Amazon for a limited time.

Coco Before Chanel

Coco Before Chanel

Audrey Tautou stars in this portrait of the early life of Gabrielle Bonheur Chanel, the orphan who built a fashion empire and became known universally by her nickname, Coco.

Dior and I

Dior and I brings the viewer inside the world of the Christian Dior fashion house with a privileged, behind-the-scenes look at the creation of Raf Simons’ first haute couture collection as its new artistic director.

Halston

Halston

American fashion designer Halston skyrockets to fame and builds an empire before his life starts to spin out of control.

Velvet

Velvet

An unlikely romance unfolds between a poor seamstress and a fashion mogul’s son in this stylish period drama set in 1950s Spain.

A Stitch in Time

A Stitch In Time

This BBC documentary series explores the lives of historical figures through the clothes they wore.

The New Look

The New Look

This Apple TV series reveals how Dior and his contemporaries, including Coco Chanel, navigated the horrors of World War II.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

An ordinary woman’s dream of owning a Christian Dior gown leads her on a Parisian adventure where her unwavering spirit charms the elite people she meets.

The House of Eliott

The House of Elliot

Sisters Beatrice and Evangeline Eliott start their own London fashion house, and with fierce competition and fickle customers, they cannot afford to make mistakes.

Phantom Thread

Phantom Thread

Daniel Day-Lewis is a renowned dressmaker in 1950s London whose cloistered world unravels when he falls for a strong-willed waitress.

McQueen

McQueen

A personal look at the extraordinary life, career and artistry of Alexander McQueen.

Period TV & Movies

As you can probably tell by this list, I like vintage fashion. I watched The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as much for the costumes as for the storyline.

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

In 1958 New York, Midge Maisel’s life takes a surprise turn, as she embarks on a career as a stand-up comic.

Mad Men

Mad Men

This award-winning show is set in 1960 New York City, in the high-powered and glamorous “Golden Age” of advertising.

Downton Abbey

Downton Abbey

This historical drama, which opens in 1912, follows the lives of the Crawley family and their servants in the family’s Edwardian country house.

Fiction Books

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris is a charming movie; I liked it so much that I bought and read the book.

Paris Seamstress

The Paris Seamstress

As the Germans advance upon Paris, young seamstress Estella Bissette is bound for New York City with a dream to make her mark on the world of fashion.

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris

An ordinary woman’s dream of owning a Christian Dior gown leads her on a Parisian adventure where her unwavering spirit charms the elite people she meets.

The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle

The Wedding Dress Sewing Circle

A local vicar’s daughter trying to repair her mother’s gown, her only chance of a white wedding, is aided by fashion designer Cressida Westcott.

The Gown

The Gown

Ann Hughes and Miriam Dassin, embroiderers at the famed Mayfair fashion house of Norman Hartnell, are chosen to take part in the creation of Princess Elizabeth’s wedding gown.

Sewing Machine

The Sewing Machine

It is 1911, and Jean is about to join the mass strike at the Singer factory. For her, nothing will be the same again. Decades later, in Edinburgh, Connie sews coded moments of her life into a notebook, as her mother did before her.

By Her Own Design

By Her Own Design

This novel is based on the true story of one of the most famous designers of the twenties through the sixties who has since been unjustly forgotten, Ann Lowe.

Mrs. Lincoln's Dressmaker

Mrs. Lincoln’s Dressmaker

In a life that spanned nearly a century and witnessed some of the most momentous events in American history, Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley was born a slave. A gifted seamstress, she earned her freedom by the skill of her needle, and won the friendship of First Lady Mary Todd Lincoln by her devotion.

The Time in Between

The Time In Between

With the Spanish Civil War brewing in Madrid, Sira leaves her mother and her fiancé, impetuously following her handsome lover to Morocco. However, after finding herself abandoned, Sira turns to the one skill that can save her: her gift for creating beautiful clothes.

Fashion & Textile History Books

I have lots of fashion books — more than I’ve read, honestly. The best of the bunch, for me, are Madly Marvelous: The Costumes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel and The Lost Art of Dress. The latter is a lesson in beautiful dressing, according to the Dress Doctors, women who taught clothing design and sewing in the early 1900s.

Real Clothes, Real Lives

Real Clothes, Real Lives

This volume shows how American women from every background have lived, worked, and dressed for 200 years.

Worn

Worn

Sofi Thanhauser tells five stories—Linen, Cotton, Silk, Synthetics, Wool—about the clothes we wear and where they come from.

The Dress Diary

The Dress Diary

In the 19th century, a woman collected snippets of fabric to create a unique record of her life and of the lives of her family and friends.

Madly Marvelous

Madly Marvelous: The Costumes of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

See the many inspirations for the show’s wardrobe, such as period photography, American and European fashion trends, and the cultures and countercultures of late-1950s New York.

Costumes of Downton Abbey

The Costumes of Downton Abbey

Get an inside look at the intricate costuming of the popular PBS series, including character costume choices and the historic fashion trends characteristic of the aristocracy during the Edwardian era.

House of Worth

House of Worth: The Birth of Haute

Arriving in Paris in 1845, at the age of twenty and with only a few francs in his pocket, Charles Frederick Worth went on to build the most prominent, innovative, and successful fashion house of the century.

1920s Fashion

1920s Fashion Sourcebook

Illustrated with over 500 original photographs, sketches and prints, this extensive sourcebook documents the season-by-season fashions of the Jazz Age.

1930s Fashion

1930s Fashion Sourcebook

The 1930s was the decade of the bias cut, the statement shoulder, the puff sleeve, the tea dress, the fur shrug and the floor-length evening gown.

1940s Fashion

1940s Fashion Sourcebook

The early Forties were defined by thriftiness and practicality, a make-do-and-mend attitude in a time of war. However, the latter half of the decade saw the emergence of the traditional femininity, elegance and luxury.

Audrey and Givenchy

Audrey and Givenchy: A Fashion Love Affair

Audrey and Givenchy is a celebration of the duo’s collaborations both onscreen and off, featuring fashion profiles on such classic films as Sabrina, Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Charade, How to Steal a Million, and Funny Face.

The History of Modern Fashion

The History of Modern Fashion

This lavishly illustrated book looks at the history of fashion from 1850 to 2010 and covers chronological changes in womenswear, menswear, and childrenswear.

Vintage Fashion

Vintage Fashion

Vintage Fashion enables the reader to identify key designers, shapes, textiles, stitching, and other details that define the most influential pieces of the twentieth century.

Dressing the Decades

Dressing the Decades

Dressing the Decades examines the origins of the most important luxury garments. Each chapter features a detailed overview of a particular decade, including the historical events, politics, technology, and advertising that inspired its most celebrated designs.

Lost Art of Dress

The Lost Art of Dress

In the first half of the twentieth century, a group of women — the so-called Dress Doctors — taught American women that knowledge, not money, was key to a beautiful wardrobe. The Lost Art of Dress introduces a new audience to their timeless rules of fashion and beauty.

How to Read a Dress

How to Read a Dress

How to Read a Dress is a guide to women’s fashion across five centuries. Each entry includes annotated color images of historical garments, outlining important features and highlighting how styles have developed over time.

A History of the Paper Pattern Industry

A History of the Paper Pattern Industry: The Home Dressmaking Fashion Revolution

This book showcases innovations in patternmaking by companies who produced sewing patterns and how these reflected the fashions and demands of the market.

Fashion on the Ration

Fashion on the Ration: Style in the Second World War

For thousands of women throughout the war, fashion was not simply a distraction, but a necessity. In the face of bombings, conscription, rationing and ludicrous bureaucracy, they maintained a sense of elegance and style with determination and often astonishing ingenuity.

Women In Clothes

Women in Clothes

Hear from hundreds of women on the subject of clothing, and how the garments we put on every day define and shape our lives.

Women in Clothes embraces the complexity of women’s style decisions, revealing the sometimes funny, sometimes strange, always thoughtful impulses that influence our daily ritual of getting dressed.

Queen of Fashion

Queen of Fashion: What Marie Antoinette Wore to the Revolution

With her riding gear, white furs, pouf hairstyles, and intricate ballroom disguises, Marie Antoinette came to embody–gloriously and tragically–all the extravagance of the monarchy.

Skirts

Skirts: Fashioning Modern Femininity in the Twentieth Century

Dive into the history of twentieth-century womenswear through the lens of game-changing styles like the little black dress and the Bar Suit, as well as more obscure innovations like the Taxi dress or the Pop-Over dress, which came with a matching potholder.

Empresses of Seventh Avenue

Empresses of Seventh Avenue

Today, American designers are some of the biggest names in fashion, yet before World War II, they almost always worked anonymously. Style, as all the world knew, came from Paris.
But when the Nazis invaded France in 1940, the capital of fashion was cut off from the rest of the world. By the end of the war, “the American Look” had been firmly established as a fresh, easy elegance that combined function with style.

Clothing Production Books

Making It In America

Making It In America

Learn the story of manufacturing in America, and follow a couple in Maine who set out to prove that union-made, all-American-sourced apparel manufacturing is possible in the twenty-first century.

American Flannel

American Flannel

Beginning in the 1980s, Americans went from wearing 70 percent domestic-made apparel to almost none. Dismayed by shoddy imported “fast fashion”—and unable to stop dreaming of re-creating a favorite shirt from his youth—Bayard Winthrop set out to build a new company, American Giant.

Amy (Admin)
Author: Amy (Admin)

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