Dress in all its global diversity is the theme of this beautifully illustrated book. It brings together some 150 garments from East and West, from the tropics to the Arctic circle, from the plains of India to the mountain ranges of Montenegro. Many of the garments illustrated here were made for festivals, weddings and other ceremonies, and they display a breathtaking richness of detail - rows of ornamental buttons, embroidered borders, intricate pleating and stitching, flamboyant fringes and tassels - that makes them a source of inspiration for many of today's top designers.