Ecuador is somewhat of a stepchild to most studies of Andean textile traditions, as so much of the published work to date has focused on the southern Andean regions primarily encompassing present-day Peru, Bolivia and perhaps Chile. This book, along with the two separately published but related volumes edited by Ann Rowe, Costume and Identity in Highland Ecuador (University of Washington Press, 1998) and Weaving and Dyeing in Highland Ecuador (University of Texas Press, 2007), substantiates and elevates the subject to an enviable position.

The focus on costume, by its nature, not only engages in the examination of the related textile traditions – fibres, dyes, spinning, weaving, sewing – that are all part of constructing garments, but primarily situates this study in the social, political and historical context of their use, style and design. One constant throughout this multi-authored volume is the teasing out of indigenous, Inca, Spanish, colonial and post-colonial garment traditions, related to concepts of ethnic identity as identified through aspects of costume and dress. In her excellent chapter on Carchi Province, Joanne Rappaport underscores an important issue in the question of indigenous identity, linking markers of such to include ‘distinctive forms of speech and narrative, Andean modes of labor exchange, dispersed settlement patterns and characteristic forms of material culture’ (pp. 120–1), in conjunction with aspects of dress and costume in terms of ethnic identities.

The careful laying of the prehistorical groundwork (gleaned by Karen Olsen Bruhns based on representations of garments on ceramic sculptures, and by Ann Rowe's examination of the few actual extant textiles) is followed by John Rowe's accounts of the Inca in Ecuador. Suzanne Austin and Lynn Meisch detail the historical developments of the colonial era, including the complex political relationships between the indigenous populations and the Spanish administrators, established through legal and social constructs of the Council of the Indies and the Audiencia of Quito as a governing entity exercising encomienda, tribute and labour systems, mit'a and the dislocation of populations, and redefining land rights and tenure, to say nothing of disease, slavery and a whole list of labour abuses in the obrajes and textile workshops established in the region as one of the major enterprises (all aspects, in fact, of Spanish colonial rule throughout the Americas). Margaret Young-Sánchez's essay on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries provides a glimpse into the transition from the late eighteenth century and the political revolt of Tupac Amaru through the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1767 and the establishment of the state of Ecuador in 1830, to the social welfare and land reforms of the mid-twentieth century.

This complex historical narrative establishes the groundwork for the second part of the book, which follows region-by-region (and in some cases village-by-village and hamlet-by-hamlet) descriptions, often chronologically developed, of the components of costume and dress. Looking area to area, these chapters that deal primarily with the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (up to the period of 1980s fieldwork that had been conducted by the authors) provide a micro-focus on regions, towns, villages and family groups. Details such as whether the anaku, the Inca-style women's wrapped dress, was ankle-length or mid-calf, whether skirts had waistbands, and if so, whether they were produced on treadle or backstrap looms, construct snapshots of stages of a continuously changing landscape of garments and textile traditions in concert with social and political change. Further observations on the fringes of shawls, the ties in the hair and whether the shawl was held with a knot or a safety pin, among others, provide an acute and nuanced view of the differing historic traditions and their contemporary forms. Comparing 1980s field observations on these details with literature, photographs, paintings, prints, actual collected items and other sources, the reader is drawn into the mindset of the observer searching for clues to a complex history. Mapping these observations region by region, however, one is presented with an almost overwhelming amount of information – targeted to its subject, yet difficult to process.

The final six-page chapter of conclusions to this 382-page book is not really sufficient to restate and coalesce the significance of the data. The conclusions do summarise some of the detailed observations from the earlier chapters, providing an abbreviated glimpse into the origins, introduction and development of particular garments and garment traditions, but many readers will be left wishing for more. For example, examining the Inca origins of many of the garment types, a subject that is discussed in various chapters, and tracing their evolution in the early colonial era, leads to a discussion of the question of ethnic identity and its significance to indigenous communities. In contrasting the use of the anaku, which continued in some form into the twentieth century, with the observations of the earlier abandonment of the pre-Spanish male loincloth for the wearing of pants, which occurred shortly after the Spanish arrival, this discussion contextualises the role of garments in social interactions in the constantly evolving culture. The forms of costume, such as the pleating of skirts (a persistent feature of contemporary women's garments, attributed to Spanish origins), had been difficult to trace, though the pollera, used as an underskirt, was documented in the early part of the eighteenth century. These are all ideas that are mentioned but could be developed with more in-depth summary.

The subject of the rebozo as a garment type, presented with its complex history and hypothetical potential origins ranging from Mexico to West Africa, provides a glimpse into some of the social, economic and political issues that intertwine with a costume history of the region. The presentation of parts of its history, dispersed amongst the various chapters of the book, underscores a difficulty encountered here. As the structure of the book uses the province-by-province organisational principle, the study of particular garment types – for example, the warp-resistant, dyed ikat rebozo or the poncho, two very interesting components of Ecuadorean costume history – can be difficult to manage, particularly for those items common to many areas, resulting in segments of information about them being placed throughout the book. The index is a good aid for ameliorating the problem, but as we can see from the term ‘poncho’, which has over 76 separate page entries listed, or ‘rebozo’, with over 40, it requires a dedicated reader to put together the whole picture.

The regional approach to the study can make it somewhat difficult for the reader, who is left to sift through the data in order to tease out the significance of the observations, though at the same time, one can only wish that a similarly focused and detailed study for the whole southern Andean region, with such high-level scholarship, will come next.