Includes bibliographical references p. (45) and index

Describes how clothing for girls in the United States has reflected society's changing views on children, from dressing girls as little adults in the seventeenth century to allowing girls to express themselves by choosing from a variety of styles in the twenty-first century. Who thought up bloomers? Why were three-year-old colonial girls bound up in corsets? How did fashions such as voluminous muttonchop sleeves and incredibly wide hoopskirts catch on? From corsets and bustles to blue jeans and bell-bottoms, an acclaimed author of art books for children takes a thoughtful look at what American girls have been wearing from Colonial times to the present. Through pictures and a lively text, Leslie Sills presents practical as well as outrageous garments, how clothing was made, the people who made the clothes, and how fashion was marketed to women. This book includes more than sixty pictures and photographs, a glossary, index, bibliography, webography, and list of museums with costume collections

Swaddling and stays: confined colonial children -- Flowing freedom: empire waists on eighteenth-century girls -- Aprons and calico: hardworking girls of farms and mills -- Buckskins and bishop sleeves: all sorts of nineteenth-century girls -- Hoopskirts and crinolines: frilly victorian girls -- Blooming in bloomers: liberated girls of the mid-nineteenth century -- Bustles and ruffles: stylish girls of the late nineteenth century -- Yoke dresses: turn-of-the-century girls at work and play -- Shirtwaists: immigrant girls of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries -- Flappers and rompers: modern twentieth-century girls -- Shirley and Jane: ideal twentieth-century girls -- Anything goes: girls of today

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