I recently acquired a lovely bound book containing issues of Le Mirror Des Modes form 1907-1908.  I’m super excited to share images with you of these gorgeous illustrations of early 20th century fashions.

Many of you read a prior post about my allergies, one of which is an allergy to the mold that grows on old paper.  However, I wasn’t about to give up all of my favorite things, so I have also now acquired a Darth Vader-esque face mask.  I may look like a female version of something out of Star Wars (complete with two large pink air filters on either side of my face), but I can carefully handle some of these old papers and keep scanning in articles from my fashion history resources to share.  So hurrah for implements to make things better (even if it does take some getting used to).  It looks totally awesome when I add my vintage day-to-day 1950s cat eye frames with rhinestones.  Just sayin’

But I digress… here is the first post of what I hope will be a regular blog feature of some fabulous Edwardian (or Belle Epoque, rather) fashions from Le Mirror des Modes.

For starters, I wanted to share a “before” and “after” example of what I do to the images I post here after I’ve scanned in the original source material.  It takes a while to do, but it truly is a labour of love, and I’m really glad to have finally found others who appreciate these old fashion history treasures.

If you are fluent in French you’ve got an extra special treat, as I’m including scans of the entire article.  For the rest of us, however, we must be content to look at pretty pictures.  If you do understand what’s written, I’d love it if you would be willing to share any interesting tidbits written here.  My French is somewhat questionable, at best

I also have a few of the images themselves here to share for your fashion history research/craft projects