Labour of the Stitch: The Making and Remaking of Fashionable Georgian Dress

Date

2024-03-27

Advisors

Journal Title

Journal ISSN

ISSN

Volume Title

Publisher

Cambridge University Press

Type

Book

Peer reviewed

Yes

Abstract

The making of fashionable women's dress in Georgian England necessitated an inordinate amount of manual labour. From the mantuamakers and seamstresses who wrought lengths of silk and linen into garments, to the artists and engravers who disseminated and immortalised the resulting outfits in print and on paper, Georgian garments were the products of many busy hands. This Element centres the sartorial hand as a point of connection across the trades which generated fashionable dress in the eighteenth century. Crucially, it engages with recreation methodologies to explore how the agency and skill of the stitching hand can inform understandings of craft, industry, gender, and labour in the eighteenth century. The labour of stitching, along with printmaking, drawing, and painting, composed a comprehensive culture of making and manual labour which, together, constructed eighteenth-century cultures of fashionable dress.

Description

Keywords

fashion history, material culture, recreative practice

Citation

Dyer, S. (2024). Labour of the Stitch: The Making and Remaking of Georgian Fashionable Dress. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Rights

Research Institute