The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth Century England

The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England by John Styles

Not having the surviving garments of the lower classes this book seeks to tell the story of the ordinary consumers in eighteenth-century England and provides thru evaluation of a myriad of primary sources a wealth of information about what they wore. 
John Styles reveals that ownership of new fabrics and new fashions was not confined to the rich but extended far down the social scale to the small farmers, day laborers, and petty trades people who formed a majority of the population. The author focuses on the clothes ordinary people wore, the ways they acquired them, and the meanings they attached to them, shedding new light on all types of attire and the occasions on which they were worn.  Pictured in the book are swatches from the admissions book for the Foundling Hospital used as part of the orphan’s identity perhaps in hopes that they would one day be retrieved.  This in itself provides a wonderful time capsule of the everyday.  A must have for anyone who wishes to investigate further the life and fashion of the common folk.