The Dress of the People

"Material things transformed the lives of ordinary English men and women between the restoration of Charles II in 1660 and the Great Reform Act of 1832. Tea and sugar, the fruits of British mercantile and colonial expansion, transformed their diets. Pendulum clocks and Staffordshire pottery, the products of British manufacturing ingenuity, enriched their homes. But it was in their clothes that ordinary people enjoyed the greatest transformation in their material lives. In calico gowns and muslin neckerchiefs, in wigs and silver-plated shoe buckles they flaunted the fruits of the nation's commercial prosperity. This book retrieves the unknown story of ordinary consumers in eighteenth-century England and what they wore."--Jacket.