Kate Strasdin has published an incredible piece of research in this book, which uses a rare scrapbook of mid-nineteenth-century fabric swatches as the jumping-off point for an exploration of female relationships, social structures, fashion, and upper middle class life. All she had to work with were tens of scraps of cloth, neatly annotated with names—often not even surnames—and sometimes dates and occasions. From this she managed to recreate much about the life and marriage of Anne Sykes, the scrapbook-keeper, and her husband Adam. We learn about fabric design, production, and import and export, but, more interestingly, the motivations behind the choices that women made in their clothing. As a New York Times fashion editor wrote recently, “garments can serve as wormholes to memories that are the building blocks of a life, so wearing them becomes a choice filled with meaning” (Vanessa Friedman, “Post-Pandemic Dressing Finally Takes Shape,” NYT, 14 Sept 2023). Marrying in Lancashire, as his business grew, the Sykeses spent a decade in Singapore, then some time in Shanghai, expanding Anne’s cloth and color aesthetic, but also intensifying her female friendships. Strasdin reminds us that the the purpose of the scrapbook was mainly to capture memories of these occasions and the women who dressed for them, and she has done a laudable job of recreating Anne’s world.