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

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.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Stitched dress; 3. Recreating the English gown; 4. The manual labour of style; References.

Summary

This Element centres the sartorial hand as a point of connection across the trades which generated fashionable dress in the eighteenth century. It explores how the agency and skill of the stitching hand can inform understandings of craft, industry, gender, and labour in the eighteenth century.

Foreword

Labour of the Stitch activates recreative practice to stitch back together the complex and symbiotic eighteenth-century cultures of fashion.

Product details

• Authors: Serena Dyer, Serena (De Montfort University) Dyer, Dyer Serena
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.03.2024
• EAN: 9781009507493
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0950749-3
• No. of pages: 90
• Series: Elements in Eighteenth-Century Connections
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > English linguistics / literary studies; Fashion & society, Fashion & textiles: design, Industrial / commercial art & design, history of design, Needlework & fabric crafts, Sewing, Fashion and textile design, 1714–1837 (Georgian period), History of art & design styles: c 1600 to c 1800, C 1700 To C 1800, Cultural studies: dress and society