ABSTRACTS

Kay Staniland, Fine Silks for the Fashionable 1662-4

Handsome profits might be expected from dealing in fine silks and laces in fashionable Restoration London, but it was a demanding and uncertain trade. The weekly letters of William Turner (1615-93), a prosperous draper in St. Paul's Churchyard (Lord Mayor in 1668-9) with a wealthy clientele for his fine cloths, to his partner/agent in Paris demonstrate some of the difficulties of acquiring rich silks and metallic laces suitable for the English taste - not always ready to follow Paris blindly, it seems - and selling them before fashion moved on. We read of the samples Turner frequently sent to Paris and of his determined manoeuvres to avoid paying custom duties, and encounter his impatience with the Continental weavers and complaints about the rapid deterioration of laces supplied to him, his comments on the state of the London market, the difficulties of getting merchants to release money owed to him, and of competition from London's own silk-weavers.

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Sarah Johnson, University of Hertfordshire, “Splendid value for the money”: Nineteenth-century American department stores’ production of women’s clothing

E-mail: s.a.1.johnson@herts.ac.uk

This paper will present a model for the material cultural interpretation of women’s garments as another type of industrially produced commodity. New evidence from mail order catalogues will establish thirty-five American department stores as manufacturers of women’s garments by at least the 1860s. “No lady need have any hesitation in intrusting us with her commands, as we give splendid value for the money,” stated New York City retailer O’Neill & Company in their Fall 1888 catalogue. Retailers used a variety of production paradigms that have been discussed by historian of technology Philip Scranton, but not previously applied to garments within object-based dress history. The implications of flexible garment production on retailers and consumers will be traced through the second half of the nineteenth century, thus establishing an earlier date for both the emergence of women’s ready-to-wear and mail order as a distribution system.

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Clare Rose, Chelsea College of Art and Design London, Fashionable Advertising for Fashionable Clothing

E-mail: c.rose@chelsea.arts.ac.uk

Ready - made garments in the nineteenth century were shaped by fashion as well as by cost, as Schorman and Breward have demonstrated. They were sold by retailers who were highly aware of the importance of publicity and who embraced new printing technologies and formats to attract customers.  Different types of images (humorous or `artistic’) were available to attract different types of customers, or to reflect topical concerns (Royal Jubilee; Boer War). There was a boom in commercial publishing in Britain in the 1880s and 1890s, as evidenced by the thousands of documents contained in the Stationers’ Hall Archive of the Public Record Office. This Archive raises several research questions: Who were the publishers whose work we see here? How did their images relate to the actual garments on offer? How did retailers select the images and how did customers understand them? How did fashion affect not only the goods, but also the manner of their promotion?

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Jessica Bush, Buckingham Chilterns University College, Art in Retail

E-mail: jessica_ejb@hotmail.com

This paper examines the presence and use of art in retail. It focuses on Dover Street Market, a remarkable store in the luxury sector of fashion retail, as a model that introduces art into the contexts of retail, fashion, commerce and culture. Developed by Rei Kawakubo, Designer and Founder of Comme des Garçons, this shop is unique, integrating Art as a form of display, Art and Architecture become interdependent. In this store, not only clothes are sold, but artworks, books, music, furniture… The ‘conceptual’ or eccentric aspects of some of the clothes are mirrored in the highly inventive interior design. In fact, I argue that the appearance of art in retail allows clothes themselves to be presented as if they were 'works of art'. The retail space becomes cultural, fashion itself is turned into art. I am convinced that, in the beginning of this new century, shopping is becoming more than leisure, it is becoming cultural. By comparing stores to art institutions, this paper demonstrates that a new form of retail outlet has emerged, a hybrid between art galleries, branded experiences and shops.

INFORMATION

The workshop will be held at the University of Wolverhampton, Room MC413, Millennium City Building, Wolverhampton.