Contemporary Fashion has more useful factual content thanany other fashion book ever published.It is regrettable that Gale/St. James could not have putmore of their resources into its presentation.Richard Martin, the only distinguished scholar in the field,edits a substantive encyclopedia of post-war fashion throughoutthe world, and the book falls pitifully short of its contentin its weak binding, design and the illustrations are poor, indeed.They may as well have released it as an un-illustrated work, for their scholarly text is accompanied by off-focus black and whitephotographs completely un-satisfactory in describing the the work and sometimes embarassing in their printing [negativesprinted backwards in at least two instances].It is a shame that an ess