The Color of Clothes: Fashion and Dress in Autochromes 1907-1930

Between 1907 and 1930 the Autochrome process, refined and launched by the Lumiere brothers, was the only commercially viable colour photographic process on the market. During this time, it recorded the transition of fashion from Edwardian elegance to streamlined modernity. Its internal technology meant that each image was fixed and unchangeable like a Polaroid, and so it provides a robust register of the colour of clothes. My book features 370 images, mostly Autochromes, rarely or never seen before and aims to highlight the diversity of colour in fashion during a period dominated by monochrome visual iconography.