Fashion in History: A Global LookTutor: Giorgio Riello

Week 11Tuesday 12 January 20104-5pm

PRODUCING FASHION IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: INDUSTRIES AND ARTISANS

Three Parts

A. Changes in how Clothing was sold, c. 1750-1850

B. Changes in the production of textiles, c. 1770-1840

C. Changes in the manufacturing of clothing, c. 1840-1914

"High Change, Rag-Fair" : outdoor view of rag fair, High Change, Wellclose Square, Stepney. Guildhall Library, London

Uniform of an 18th-century Russian Officer

Ready-mades were sold in large ‘warehouses’ (a warehouse in the 18th-century is a large shop that sell at cheap prices)

Example:

Bromley’s “Linen and Shirt Warehouse” in Charing Cross in London advertised that:

‘Any Gentleman having and immediate Call for ready made Shirts may be supplied with any quantity from 5s 6d to 21 s.’

Tradecard, c. 1750

Advantages of ready made:

1. Allows for choice

2. Allows browsing

3. Allows shops to sell a variety of commodity, normally at cheap prices

2. Mechanisation and Industrialisation in Textile Production

Petticoat and bodice. Produced in India.TAPI Collection, New Delhi, 05.12

Marie Antoinette en Chemise, 1783. Hessische Hausstiftung, Kronberg.

Textiles Imported from Asia into Europe by the EIC and VOC, 1665-1834 (pieces per year on average over 5-year periods)

0

200.000

400.000

600.000

800.000

1.000.000

1.200.000

1.400.000

1.600.000

1.800.0001665-1669

1675-1679

1685-1689

1695-1699

1705-1709

1715-1719

1725-1729

1735-1739

1745-1749

1755-1759

1765-1769

1775-1779

1785-1789

1795-1799

1805-1809

1815-1819

1825-1829

period

no. o

f pie

ces

per ye

ar

EIC

VOC

Fustian Jacket, c. 1630-60 said to have been presented by Charles II to Mary Grove. V&A

Spinning Jenny, invented by Hargreaves in 1767

Richard Arkwright and his water frame1769

Model of the power Loom invented by Edmund Cartwright in 1785

Stocking Frame invented by William Lee, 1578

Jacquard loom invented in 1804, with punched cards

‘The Development of the clothing industry… does not conform to traditional visions of the industrial revolution as a catalytic combination of entrepreneurial genius and sublime machines’

Michael Zakim, ‘A Ready-Made Business: The Birth of the Clothing Industry in America’, Business History Review, 73, 1 (1999), p. 65.

3. Clothing and Manufacturing

Isaac Merritt Singer (1811-1875)

Woman using a sewing machine, 1862, wood engraving entitled ‘Le Progres’, New York’, Science Museum, London, 1985-2094

Thomas Hood’s ‘The Song of the Shirt’ (1843)