Dress, Culture and Commerce: The English Clothing Trade before the Factory, 1660-1800

by B. Lemire

Overview

This work examines a trade that covered the backs of sailors and soldiers, that shirted labouring men and skirted working women, that employed legions of needlewomen and supplied retailers with new consumer wares. Garments, once bought, returned again to the marketplace, circulating like a currency and bolstering demand. The agents in this trade included military contractors for clothing, female outworkers and dealers in used clothes. Each was affected by a changing demand for new-styled 'luxuries' and necessities in apparel.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312164041
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan UK
Publication date:	01/15/1997
Edition description:	1997
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 0.90(d)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations - List of Tables - Acknowledgements - Introduction: Dress, Culture and the English People - Bobby Shafto's Shirt and Britches: Contracted Clothing and the Transformation of the Trade - Redressing the History of the Clothing Trade: Ready-made Apparel, Guilds and Women Outworkers - Margins and Mainstream: Jews in the English Clothing Trade - Disorderly Women and the Consumer Market: Women's Work and the Second-hand Clothing Trade - The Theft of Clothes and Popular Consumerism - Bibliography - Index