The ill-suited died by the (dress) code

Historians tend to focus on the experiences of social extremes: the wealthy elite and the poorest of society. By prioritising the middle class, this publication helps to address the imbalance. Its title was inspired by a novel of the same name written by Rose Macaulay in 1928.

Catherine Horwood introduces her book with a quotation from the novel that describes the character Daisy's anxiety when a social invitation specifies that she wear morning dress, which she did not possess. "Life must be, to those who lived sartorially, a complex and many-changing business; they must be at it from morning until night, in order not to risk being caught in the wrong clothes. Daisy knew that she would never be good at this game."

This sets the tone for Keeping Up Appearances , a social history that uses dress as a hook to offer insights into English middle-class lives lived in the 1920s and 1930s. Horwood's introduction presents various contemporary interpretations of what constituted membership of the middle class. One amusing and insightful definition is that the middle class used napkin rings, the working class did not use napkins at all, while the upper class used a fresh napkin at each meal. The chapters are arranged thematically, with titles such as "Top hats and tulle", "From seaside to sports club" and "Everything to match". The text (refreshingly) reveals the angst of women and men over the heavy burdens of sartorial etiquette and constantly changing fashion. This is sharply illustrated by one woman's account of her feeling of self-loathing when she arrived at an occasion in the knee-length afternoon dress her mother had insisted she wore, instead of a modern ankle-length dance frock. She sat out the entire evening so as not to draw attention to herself.

There is a fascinating section on the discreet trade in unwanted clothes between upper and middle-class women, which was administered by magazines such as The Lady and dress agencies. The author describes how it was modesty and respectability, rather than fashion and a desire to be glamourous, that governed middle-class evening wear choices. Indeed, Horwood emphasises that middle-class women were the last to embrace fashion. But there is little evidence of the joys many women with reasonable spending power must have experienced when choosing and wearing fashionable dress. (Is there perhaps a hint of academic unease at being seen to condone, let alone delight in, fashion?) The author, a former journalist, has combined her writing skills with the academic research undertaken for her doctorate on interwar dress codes. The result is a meticulous and engaging text that would satisfy academic and general readers. The text is fully referenced, with an excellent bibliography and sources.

The images are mostly satirical press cartoons (which lampoon prevailing trends); line drawings from magazines such as Weldon's Ladies' Journal depicting the cut of suits and dresses; and studio portraits and family snapshots. The photographs, which show "real" men and women, in turn reveal the reality of fashion as opposed to the more widely presented myth.

However, as a curator who loves "objects" - in academic-speak "material culture" - I was disappointed not to see detailed photographs of the clothes. Consider swimwear, the subject of heated debate in the interwar period. It was relatively scant, virtually unisex in style and once wet the hand-knitted costumes would leave little to the imagination. Yet the book contains not one image of a swimming costume even though many museums hold contemporary examples - sometimes accompanied by photographs of the men and women who wore them and testimony about what they were like to wear. This addition would have been the finishing touch to an otherwise excellent publication.

Amy de la Haye is reader in material culture and fashion curation, London College of Fashion, University of the Arts.