How much did 18th-century women know about their clothes? | Fast Fashion v Georgian Dress

In today’s world of fast fashion, consumers might not know much about where their clothing comes from, but that wasn’t the case in the eighteenth century. Join Dr Serena Dyer to learn about what eighteenth-century women (and some men) knew about their dress. Georgian dress history meets shopping – what more could you want?

To find out more, take a look at Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Nation of Makers, edited by Dr Serena Dyer and Dr Chloe Wigston Smith. You might also be interested in Serena’s forthcoming book, Material Lives: Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century.

Material Literacy: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/material-literacy-in-eighteenth-century-britain-9781501349614/
Material Lives: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/material-lives-9781350126961

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Bibliography

Primary Sources
Kent Archives, U908/C60/4: ‘Letters relating to the education of Frances and Charlotte Starkie, 1804’.
Ellenor Fenn, Rational Sports in Dialogues Passing Among the Children of a Family (London: John Marshall, 1783).
Catherine Hutton, Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century, ed. C. H. Beale (Birmingham: Cornish Brothers, 1891).
Louisa Stuart, Gleanings from an Old Portfolio, 1785-1799, ed. Godfrey Clark, vol. 2 (Edinburgh: D. Douglas, 1895).
Priscilla Wakefield, Reflections on the Present Condition of the Female Sex (London: J. Johnson, 1798).

Secondary Sources
Serena Dyer, Material Lives: Women Makers and Consumer Culture in the 18th Century. (London: Bloomsbury, 2021).
Serena Dyer and Chloe Wigston Smith (eds.) Material Literacy in Eighteenth-Century Britain: A Nation of Makers (London: Bloomsbury, 2020).
Serena Dyer, “Training the Child Consumer: Play, Toys and Learning to Shop in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in Childhood by Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood, 1700-Present, ed. Megan Brandow-Faller (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), 31–46.
Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, ed., Material Women, 1750–1950: Consuming Desires and Collecting Practices (Ashgate, 2009).
Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, ed., Women and Things, 1750–1950 (Ashgate, 2009).
Maureen Daly Goggin and Beth Fowkes Tobin, ed., Women and the Material Culture of Needlework and Textiles, 1750–1950 (Ashgate, 2009)
Kate Smith, Material Goods, Moving Hands: Perceiving Production in England, 1700-1830 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).
Kate Smith, “In Her Hands: Materializing Distinction in Georgian Britain,” Cultural and Social History 11, no. 4 (2014): 489–506.

Images
Sampler: LACMA, 1785, M.82.105.2.
Doll’s dress, front view, 1805, Museum of London, A21412.
Laetitia Powell, Mrs Powell’s Wedding Suit, 1761. Copyright Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
William Henry Pyne, frontispiece to Miseries of Human Life, 1806. Courtesy of The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University.
George Walker, Industrious Jenny, watercolour on paper, 1810s, Yale Centre for British Art, B1975.4.974.
Netted dress, DAR, 1800, 2004.2.2.
Henry Kingsbury, A Milliner’s Shop, 1787, Yale Centre for British Art, B1978.43.923.

Northanger Abbey, BBC, 2007.

Music
Bright Inspired Piano from Envato

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