Habitus variarum orbis gentium = Habitz de nations estrãges = Trachten mancherley Völcker des Erdskreysz
This is a 1581 costume book, published in Cologne with Caspar Rutz credited, issued in Latin, French and German editions for a European readership, and compiled from the work of Abraham de Bruyn and Jean Jacques Boissard. Its engravings show women of many nations in full dress, each figure labelled beneath with a caption, arranged in plain rows against a ruled ground. A designer could take from them the period silhouettes, layered mantles, veils and headdresses, and the way regional dress was catalogued as a sequence of comparable standing figures.
