Get In Loser, We're Going Shopping (in the 18th Century) 🛍

A common misconception that is perpetuated about history is that people made their own clothes. All the time. For all of history. However, this simply isn't true. Just like today, there are only so many hours in a day, and there is always so much to do, to just *function* throughout your day. So, today, I want to walk you all through how people actually bought their clothes in the 18th and early 19th centuries, with a lot of explanation about the three main clothing trades: Tailors, Milliners, and Mantua-makers.

So, now, people didn't make their own clothes back then. During the 18th & most of the 19th centuries, people paid skilled professionals to cut, fit, and sew custom clothes for them. If they couldn't have new clothes made, they would have old clothes remade. In some parts of Great Britain and during some time periods, second-hand clothing was an option too (but I don't talk about that here, btw) ((it also wasn't a thing the Colonies -- too much money & too much pride)). 😂

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🖼Images Used

The devil among the tailors, 1805, British Museum

Houses on the Corner of Red Crosse Street and Fore Street, Cripplegate, 1850, British Museum,

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[zeideerskine]

The trick is having lots of unmarried, childless aunts and uncles living with you in a larger family compound to spread expertise and labor around.

[AlexandraRoedder]

Video request: laundry! How did people wash their garments, both fancy and not, and how do we modern people best care for ours, both fast fashion and handmade?

[mizwoody]

Your video reminded me of a Napoleon Bonaparte quote: History is a set of lies agreed upon.

[NewMoonStarlight]

So what I'm hearing is costumers gotta specialise and then we can trade skills to make garments for each other :P

[melissashiels]

The best thing I read about shopping in Georgian Dublin was that the wealthy would sometimes pull up in front of the shops in their carriages, and the shop-owners would carry the goods out to them, for the wealthy customers to peruse from the comfort of said carriages. However, some gangs of thieves mimicked this by hiring a fancy carriage and getting ahold of upper-class clothing, and stealing the goods when the shop keeper brought them out to the carriage! I read about this anecdote in an academic journal article, published a few years ago, that looked at consumerism in 18th century Ireland.

[NamiSparrow]

It’s so funny learning about this because it’s basically how I get all my custom clothing done in India so it sounds totally “normal” to me. When I shop for Indian clothes in India I basically just buy the fabric pre embroidered and take it to our tailor to sew up for us. It’s how all saris are sold actually and you get the blouse piece custom sewn to your measurements!

[lavendarcrash]

So what you're telling me is that Elizabeth Swan was not being ✨ fashionably tightlaced✨ by her maid, she was just trying to shove her into the dress daddy ordered a size too small. Got it.

[jenninstitches]

It's about time people started understanding trades. I think this bugs me because my dad was a custom cabinet maker and furniture maker and I was a pastry chef that specialised in sweets/chocolates. How much we know isn't a matter of what is in the book. There is so much that is orally taught and then the experience of the day in and day out of doing the thing. I want people today to give things a go if they are interested, and I still want to learn more and hone in my own expertise in things. However, sometimes just because you can doesn't mean you should and people used to know that once upon a time.

[adelaidemorningstar]

I think child labor was very important for maintaining a farm and home

[Marialla-ub]

I love thinking of fabric for a dress in terms of "how many days of income did this cost" rather than "cost per yard". To say I would pay one day's income for a basic dress (fabric yardage plus notions/embellishments) puts things into perspective for me.
I'm just glad I don't live in the days where we had to spin our own flax and weave our own cloth just to have one new linen undergarment every year!

[jayleevt]

I live in Kansas and grew up obsessed with pioneer stuff, little house on the prairie, etc. For them, they often couldn't afford sewing machines, and they DID handsew clothing for their whole family. One super fascinating thing is that for fabric? Feedbags, the sacks your cow's food came in, or potato sacks, etc. They would repurpose that fabric. So companies started selling their items in colors and patterns becuase wives would tell their husband to buy "three blue, four pink, two white" lol. Because they needed the fabric. If your product came wrapped in a patterned fabric, it would sell more and at a higher price to pioneer families because it was a fashionable print.

[katherinemorelle]

As an Aussie, it’s strange to remember that other counties don’t have as many Irish and Scottish and even Welsh names about. Siobhan is not an uncommon name here. Neither is Niamh.

There are some less common names, where you might have to help someone out with the pronunciation, like Gràinne (Gronya), or Aoife (eefa), but we do tend to have plenty of Bronwyns and Maeves (also spelt Meadhbh) and Bridgets and Rhiannons about, and the proportion of traditional names spelt in the original Gaelic is increasing.

I’ve also met many Anguses and Hamishes (that last one is pretty popular here), Connors and Declans. Not so many Tadhgs (Tadhg is pronounced like tiger, without the “er” part), but even that’s growing. It’s funny, because I see a lot of Irish American and Scottish American pride, whereas here in Australia, we don’t really use the prefix, we’re just Aussies, maybe with some Irish or Scottish ancestry (and this could then lead to discussions of Plastic Paddys or Styrofoam Scots, but we won’t go into that now). My nana (all of my mum’s family, actually) was Scottish, she spoke and sang in Gàidhlig (trad folk is awesome!), and she taught me many traditional songs, and I do have a little Gàidhlig from her.... but I’d never describe myself as Scottish. I’ve never left Australia.

But- even though Americans seem to care a lot more about their ancestry, they don’t tend to use the traditional names that much, and that is really quite strange to me. Why not? They’re lovely names, and honestly, Gaelic (both Irish and Scottish Gaelic) pronunciation is actually easier than English, once you know what the combinations sound like.

And yes, I did indeed write this lengthy comment based off of Abby having to sound out how to pronounce Siobhan. It’s been on my mind lately, I guess. Also, I haven’t finished my first coffee and I tend to blabber when I’m tired. Or hopped up on painkillers (and I’m currently both). So my apologies for the long, yet supremely unimportant comment.

[Chappysmom]

I remember reading Louisa May Alcott when I was a kid, and she was always talking about "turning your gown" to get another year's worth of wear out of them, and the day I understood what that MEANT! Plus the concept of buying lengths of fabric and bringing them to your dressmaker--historical fiction actually written in history made for really useful childhood reading for historical perspective.
And, of course, Spinsters as the unmarried maiden aunt got their name because they were the female in the house who "had time" to do all that time-consuming spinning/weaving/sewing because she didn't have the responsibilities of the woman of the house (cough).

[CathyHay]

Thank you Abby, this filled in lots of gaps in my knowledge! It does raise a question for me - Would a milliner have been lower status than a mantua maker, or was it just a different trade of equivalent value? I know 19th c is not your primary expertise, but I'm extrapolating - when Worth first opened his business in 1858, he was described disparagingly as a "man milliner", meant to express discomfort with a guy designing women's clothes. I had read that "milliner" was equivalent to "dressmaker" at the time, but after you explained the difference here, I'm wondering whether describing him as a "milliner" could have been intended as an extra put-down, or perhaps it was just a mistake.

[yaminilump]

the seamstress' s didn't want us to know how close to witchcraft geometry is

[TheMetatronGirl]

Fascinating subject! I always thought the “women did everything” idea was a myth. I mean, we are amazing, but even we have limits. Much love to you and yours!

[aprillen]

It always makes me laugh when characters in historically inspired fantasy novels (or bad historical romance novels) get a complete set of new fashion garments made in, like, a day. Or get them second-hand and they just inexplicably fit perfectly.

[beatniksvintage]

'Went with the Wind' is the funniest skit ever written! I'm always happy to see it <3

[Keeperoffyre]

my favorite part of reading historical fiction is when they're "shopping" for gowns and accessories. that part of history has always been fascinating for me (this also includes smiths, and carpenters and apothecaries).

[CarmenShenk]

There is also the information and skills that have historically been passed from parent to child. To this day, Mennonite and Amish mother’s/aunts/grandmothers teach the young women to sew, and this is how I learned. People like Tasha Tudor may have been an anomaly, she had an amazing range of the old skills. Many Mennonites were passing down those skills well into the 21st century. Our older generation didn’t gain those skills from watching a tailor or dress maker, they knew how to do it because they participated with their parents at home or on the farm. They knew how to care for a horse or dairy cow, how to grow a garden, or how to make a quilt from scraps and quilt it with insanely tiny stitches. I was fitted for dresses from a very squirmy young age, and saw women sewing all the time, as well as canning peaches and making apple sauce, which we now buy instead of doing the work. It wasn’t until I came across Bernadette Banner that I heard the dressmaker’s term of “felling”, to me it was just finishing a seam. I have a friend who is really good at making apple butter each year, but I’ve never taken the time to learn - so the old skills do require the participation of the younger generation and that’s not always present these days. These days kids may not learn such practical skills as making clothing from their parents, so thank goodness for YouTube educators like you who can fill in the gaps or we’d all fall victim to Zombies in the early days of the apocalypse. 💜💙💚