AN ANALYSIS OF MIDDLE-CLASS WOMEN’S FASHION IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY URBAN ENGLAND
No Thumbnail Available
Date
Authors
Blackburn, Julianna Mayako
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
Studying nineteenth-century middle-class women’s fashion history allows us to better understand how traditional gender roles affected women’s empowerment and women’s rights through fashion trends and styles with the growth of the beauty industry in the 1860s and onwards. In studying fashion and dress reforms from 1860 to 1890, I argue that the Victorian dress reform failed because reformers were unable to accept public ridicule about the way they dressed and were unable to reach a consensus on what ‘moral’ styles of fashion they were trying to encourage their fellow women to follow. Analyzing the changing fashion styles concerning the desires of fashion reformists shows that the victimizing characteristics of middle-class women’s fashion were enforced just as much by women as by men. The sources on nineteenth-century England newspapers and articles used in this thesis primarily came from the British Newspaper Archive. With the expansion of online archival sources about British print culture, other scholars can use these sources to develop their interpretations of print, social and gender history, and fashion culture in Britain.