Second-hand beaux and ‘red-armed Belles’: conflict and the creation of fashions in England, c. 1660–1800

Abstract

Fashion, like luxury, has been largely conceived in terms of the elite experience. Indeed, the European fashion cycle was noted first among the aristocracy where the fashion system celebrated novelty over tradition, highlighting the individual aesthetic even as it consolidated the group identity of exquisitely garbed nobles. The counterpoints to the mutability of style were the legal constraints designed to curb the fashion impulse, bridling the sartorial ambitions of non-elites. Sumptuary legislation aimed to enforce luxury codes. The right to extravagant inessentials, which distinguished those of noble blood, was forbidden to lesser beings; however, fashion was a contested concept whose influence permeated first the middling and then even the labouring ranks. In this article I will examine the competing forces at work within England as the dress of the common people was transformed over the long eighteenth century. Although sumptuary legislation came to an end in England in 1604, government and moralists continued to claim the right to restrain material expression within the lower ranks, but without success. I will assess the challenge to a unitary hegemonic elite fashion, and explore the creation and significance of the multiple expressions in dress within the varied social ranks of England.