Excerpt from A History of English Dress, Vol. 1 of 2: From the Saxon Period to the Present Day IT is not intended, in the following pages, to give a history of clothing, but to describe the changes that have occurred in the fashion of our apparel since the days of the Roman occupation of Britain. To trace the origin of clothes would involve the discussion of many principles of psychological interest. What first prompted man to devising raiment? Was it the love of ornamentation - a quality so universal and so deeply seated as to seem like an instinct? Was it the desire for protection as man became more of a roving animal? Was clothing first adopted as a dis tinction by those who assumed superiority over their fellows? Was it the result of man contriving for himself rude habitations, instead of sheltering in the caves and holes of the earth? How and where the idea of clothing first grew up must remain matter for conjecture. But, once adopted, the form of clothing was, in the first instance. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.