Best Dressed Fashion from the Birth of Couture to Today Book

A dazzling tour of selected highlights from the Philadelphia Museum of Art's collection of fashionable dresses beginning with several masterpieces by the father of haute couture, Charles Frederick Worth, most of which were made for and owned (or yearned after) by American women.

The first garments collected by the museum after its founding in 1876 provided early costume historians with a rich resource for the study of historic American dress, and with the opening of the first costume galleries under the sponsorship of the Fashion group of Philadelphia in 1947, the collection expanded its focus to include fine examples of contemporary design as well.