This book details a significant and largely untold history of the demand for cheap, fashionable clothing for young working-class women. This is an interdisciplinary fashion and business history analysis that investigates the design, manufacture, retailing and consumption of fashion for and by young working-class women in 1930s Britain. It concentrates on new mass developments in the design and manufacture of lightweight day dresses styled for younger women, and on their retailing in the second-hand trade and seconds dealing, street markets, new multiple stores, department stores, independent dress shops and home dressmaking. The book also discusses the specific impact of this new product within the emerging mass manufactured goods mail order catalogue industry in England. These outlets all offered venues of consumption to the young, employed, modern working-class woman, and are analysed in the context of old and new businesses practices. The actuality of the garments worn by these young women is paramount to this research and will be at the forefront of all findings and outcomes.
Author(s): Cheryl Roberts
Series: Palgrave Studies in Fashion and the Body
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 353
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
1 Introduction: Premise
Time Frame
Definition of Terms
1930s Working Class and Locale
Young, Modern, Working-Class Women in the 1930s
The Definition of Working-Class Dress
Affordability
Ready-Made, Ready-to-Wear and Lightweight Clothing
The Framework and Structure of This Book
The Fusing of Business Archives and Object-Based Research: A Developing Approach to Fashion and Dress Histories
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
2 Agents of Change
Social Place
Locality and Locale
Shared Community Values and Indicators of Class
Poverty
Class and Poverty
Employment as an Indicator of Class
Employment Possibilities
Wage Contribution
Social Communities of Work
Leisure
Defining Agents of Change
Notes
Works Cited
3 What Is Fashion?
Communicating Fashion
Fashion and Individuality
Individuality and Community Identity
Peer Group, Social Pressure and Individual Dressing: Fashion in the Eye of the Beholder
Dress as a Social Indicator and Social Uniform
Conformity
Taste
Issues of Mass Fashion: Innovators or Emulators?
Material Agency
Fashion or Style?
Notes
Works Cited
4 Progressive Production Practices: Developments in Design, Print, Colour Forecasting and Fabric
Designing Fashionable Lightweight Ready-Made Dresses
Fabric Designs and Textile Prints
Floral Frocks, Designers and Frivolity
Colour Forecasting
Colour in the Wardrobe of a Young Working-Class Woman
Rayon: The Fabric Revolution and British Suppliers
Artificial Fibres: The Importance of Quality and the Sensory
Notes
Works Cited
5 New Developments and Technological Change: The Business of Mass Manufacturing Fashion
London as a Centre for Mass Fashion
Fashion Fluctuations
Mass Manufacture or Technological Determinism: Creators of Consumption
Technological Determinism: Vertical Integration Versus Vertical Disintegration
Small Factory Production
Jewish Workshops and Factories
Workforce and Gender Change
The Small Factory and the Shift to Dressmaking
Methods of Production: “Making Through” and Sectionality
Technological Driven Change?
Wholesale Methods: The Manufacturing Middleman
The Specialist Wholesaler, the Fashion Copy House Designers and Levels of Wholesale
The Trading System for the Manufacturing Wholesaler of Ready-Made Lightweight Day Dresses and Their Eventual Decline
The New Providers of Mass Manufactured Lightweight Day Dresses
Multiple Trading: In House Manufacture vs. Direct from Manufacturer
C&A. The Self-Sufficient Womenswear Provider
C&A: Factory Revolutionaries—Advancement in the Mass Manufacture of Lightweight Day Dresses
C&A’s “Style Monotony”, Consumer Demand and Manufacturing Turnover
Marks and Spencer and the Direct from Manufacturer Approach
The Role of Design and Technology Within Marks and Spencer’s Business Practice
N. Corah and Sons the Manufacturer: Marks and Spencer the Customer
Notes
Works Cited
6 Localities of Fashion Modernity in the 1930s: Practices of Retailing Behind the High Street
Unsettling Times
Consuming Fashion
Money Lenders, Doorstep Credit, Second-Hand Dealers, Seconds Traders and Street Markets
Tallyman, Money Lenders and Doorstep Credit
Second-Hand Traders, Wardrobe Dealers and Hawkers—the “Curb-Side Couturiers”
“Material Literacies”
Jumble Sales, Sale of Jumble
Seconds Traders of Excess and Faulty Mass Manufactured Garments: Z. Myers & Sons and Mr Meyer Gold
Street Markets: Shopping for Young Working-Class Women
Touts, Schleppers and Guinea Gowns
The Downfall of Berwick Street
Cross Class Communication and Social Commentary
Mail Order: Acquisition of Goods and Retailing Methods
Mail Order and the Young Working-Class Woman
Pricing Structure and Marketing: Littlewoods Rayon Day Dresses
Littlewoods Marketing Method for One Rayon Day Dress
Competition Between Mail Order and the High Street
Notes
Works Cited
7 Localities of Fashion Modernity in the 1930s: Practices of Retailing on the High Street
Multiple and Chain Shops
C&A Modes and the British High Street: Affordable Fashion for All?
Missed Opportunities
Marks and Spencer: Value and Quality
Retailing Fashion, Value and Quality
Marketing Methods of Lightweight Day Dresses
Department Stores: The Working-Class Female Consumer and Class Fragmentation
Low-End Madam Shops: The Hodson Shop, Ready-Made Clothing Wholesalers and the Customer.
Ready-Made or Home Dressmaking? The Style Oxymoron
Home Dressmaking Lightweight Day Dresses as a Tool for Modern Self-Presentation
The Cost of Home Dressmaking and Its Decline
Home Dressmaking Assumptions and Fashionability
Notes
Works Cited
8 Findings and Conclusion
Dispelling the Tropes
Future Possibilities?
Notes
Works Cited
Index
