Everyday Dress 1650 - 1900

Bveryday Dress 1650-1900 presents a revealing picture of the costume which clothed the mass of the English population through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A much neglected topic in costume history, everyday dress was not generally shown in formal portraits and there are not many surviving examples of the clothes themselves.

Elizabeth Ewing succeeds triumphantly in this lively story, told as much as possible through first-hand descriptions from diaries and contemporary writings, including accounts of shops and shopping. The clothes people wore are related to the history of textiles and manufacturing with the technical advances of the Industrial Revolution and the use of sweated labour playing an ever increasing role.

The end of the Victorian era was the time when ‘everyday dress’ was becoming the dress of all classes, social and industrial changes rendering meaningless distinctions which had for centuries ruled the lives of millions. The twentieth century had begun.