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The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America
In eighteenth-century America, fashion served as a site of contests over various forms of gendered power. Here, Kate Haulman explores how and why fashion--both as a concept and as the changing style of personal adornment--linked gender relations, social order, commerce, and political authority during a time when traditional hierarchies were in flux. In the see-and-be-seen port cities of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, fashion, a form of power and distinction, was conceptually feminized yet pursued by both men and women across class ranks. Haulman shows that elite men and women in these cities relied on fashion to present their status but also attempted to undercut its ability to do so for others. Disdain for others' fashionability was a means of safeguarding social position in cities where the modes of dress were particularly fluid and a way to maintain gender hierarchy in a world in which women's power as consumers was expanding. Concerns over gendered power expressed through fashion in dress, Haulman reveals, shaped the revolutionary-era struggles of the 1760s and 1770s, influenced national political debates, and helped to secure the exclusions of the new political order.
304 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 1, 2011
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October 11, 2014
Kate Haulman’s The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America presents the multi-faceted role of fashion in late colonial and early American politics. She demonstrates how changes in fashion both reflected and helped create meaning and tension in regards to “gender relations, social order, and political authority” (3). The cumulative effect of her discussion of fashion is that the reader sees that eighteenth-century American life was far more contested and fluid than it might seem at first glance because fashion offered so many opportunities for commentary and criticism. People’s daily engagement with fashion enabled them to create meaning, make statements, and challenge or uphold distinctions between classes, genders, and political groups.
Haulman’s use of fashion as a lens into larger issues in eighteenth-century British North America is innovative and useful because fashion acts as both a destabilizing and stabilizing agent for political, social, and gender hierarchies. Her emphasis on fashion’s destabilization of hierarchies comes across most clearly in her sections on class. The upper class idealized fashion as a marker of clear class distinctions in which they demonstrated their wealth and privilege with expensive and often imported dress. However, middle and lower class people could emulate the upper class and blur class lines by adopting elite fashions. The elites at the time saw this adoption of elite fashion as both emulation and a threat to their power, but Haulman is careful to not simply reflect their opinions in her analysis. Instead, she demonstrates that the lower orders often adopted elite dress in order to “mock the social hierarchy” and demonstrate that they could also access fine imported clothes and create their own fashions (25). The upper class responded by developing complex codes of dress and behavior that sometimes enabled them to distinguish between the true elites and mere pretenders. The upper class had an idea of “how the social order was supposed to look,” but they were never able to enforce clear sartorial distinctions among the classes (7).
Haulman’s discussions of fashion and gender further demonstrate the ability of fashion to uphold and challenge hierarchies in colonial America. She notes that the basic tension regarding fashion was that “fashion was conceptually feminized, but particular styles à la mode were either for men or women” (48). Women’s profound influence over the sphere of fashion enabled them to criticize men for their dress and actions in ways that would normally be unacceptable. Because women’s sartorial authority implicitly impinged on male reputations and social power, many men attempted to discredit the entire sphere of fashion. Men could uphold gender distinctions by dismissing fashion as a ridiculous, unpatriotic, and corrupt sphere or a mere reflection of women’s natural vanity and fickleness. They could also assert distinctions between masculine and effeminate men by labeling certain men as fops, who were overly effeminate in their dress and unduly obsessed with the pursuit of women. Haulman shows that both men and women recognized the potential for fashion to undermine or preserve gender binaries, which led a constant spoken and unspoken conversation about what people wore and what their clothing said about gender.
Although politics was mainly a masculine sphere in colonial America, Haulman demonstrates that the politics of fashion meant that what both men and women wore was politically relevant. Fashion became one of the main points of conflict during the political crises of the 1760’s and 1770’s, especially in regards to non-importation movements and the issue of homespun clothing. Gender and politics intersected during these movements as male republicans tried to refashion new political roles for women by regulating their dress and behavior. Activist men criticized women and foppish men for their obsession with fashion, which required the importation of fine goods from Great Britain. Instead, they encouraged women to make homespun clothing and dress more plainly. In turn, revolutionaries believed that homespun clothing and simpler dress would help reform women’s behavior by encouraging them to be virtuous, plain, and deferential to men. Encouraging republican fashion was also a way to assert a new American identity that would reflect a “country or pastoral” aesthetic in contrast to British ostentation (96). Haulman thus shows that fashion was at the center of male attempts to stabilize gender hierarchies and create a new American identity. She also argues that these efforts to create a republican were only partially successful. For example, during the “Loud Period” between 1770 and 1773, British fashion enjoyed a revival in the colonies that infuriated republicans with its flamboyance and reliance on imported goods (130).
The true value of Haulman’s excellent study is that she convinces the reader to take late colonial Americans’ unspoken sartorial expressions as seriously as their written or spoken ideas. Haulman thereby enlarges the pool of people whom historians can see participating in conversations about class, gender, and politics. Usually, only privileged members of society could write or speak on these issues, but because everyone else had to wear something, groups like women, free blacks, and lower class whites also had a chance to comment and criticize. These statements may have been more open to interpretation because of the inherent subjectivity of fashion, but they no less valuable in giving us clearer sense of a broader range of people’s thoughts about class, gender, and politics.
Haulman’s use of fashion as a lens into larger issues in eighteenth-century British North America is innovative and useful because fashion acts as both a destabilizing and stabilizing agent for political, social, and gender hierarchies. Her emphasis on fashion’s destabilization of hierarchies comes across most clearly in her sections on class. The upper class idealized fashion as a marker of clear class distinctions in which they demonstrated their wealth and privilege with expensive and often imported dress. However, middle and lower class people could emulate the upper class and blur class lines by adopting elite fashions. The elites at the time saw this adoption of elite fashion as both emulation and a threat to their power, but Haulman is careful to not simply reflect their opinions in her analysis. Instead, she demonstrates that the lower orders often adopted elite dress in order to “mock the social hierarchy” and demonstrate that they could also access fine imported clothes and create their own fashions (25). The upper class responded by developing complex codes of dress and behavior that sometimes enabled them to distinguish between the true elites and mere pretenders. The upper class had an idea of “how the social order was supposed to look,” but they were never able to enforce clear sartorial distinctions among the classes (7).
Haulman’s discussions of fashion and gender further demonstrate the ability of fashion to uphold and challenge hierarchies in colonial America. She notes that the basic tension regarding fashion was that “fashion was conceptually feminized, but particular styles à la mode were either for men or women” (48). Women’s profound influence over the sphere of fashion enabled them to criticize men for their dress and actions in ways that would normally be unacceptable. Because women’s sartorial authority implicitly impinged on male reputations and social power, many men attempted to discredit the entire sphere of fashion. Men could uphold gender distinctions by dismissing fashion as a ridiculous, unpatriotic, and corrupt sphere or a mere reflection of women’s natural vanity and fickleness. They could also assert distinctions between masculine and effeminate men by labeling certain men as fops, who were overly effeminate in their dress and unduly obsessed with the pursuit of women. Haulman shows that both men and women recognized the potential for fashion to undermine or preserve gender binaries, which led a constant spoken and unspoken conversation about what people wore and what their clothing said about gender.
Although politics was mainly a masculine sphere in colonial America, Haulman demonstrates that the politics of fashion meant that what both men and women wore was politically relevant. Fashion became one of the main points of conflict during the political crises of the 1760’s and 1770’s, especially in regards to non-importation movements and the issue of homespun clothing. Gender and politics intersected during these movements as male republicans tried to refashion new political roles for women by regulating their dress and behavior. Activist men criticized women and foppish men for their obsession with fashion, which required the importation of fine goods from Great Britain. Instead, they encouraged women to make homespun clothing and dress more plainly. In turn, revolutionaries believed that homespun clothing and simpler dress would help reform women’s behavior by encouraging them to be virtuous, plain, and deferential to men. Encouraging republican fashion was also a way to assert a new American identity that would reflect a “country or pastoral” aesthetic in contrast to British ostentation (96). Haulman thus shows that fashion was at the center of male attempts to stabilize gender hierarchies and create a new American identity. She also argues that these efforts to create a republican were only partially successful. For example, during the “Loud Period” between 1770 and 1773, British fashion enjoyed a revival in the colonies that infuriated republicans with its flamboyance and reliance on imported goods (130).
The true value of Haulman’s excellent study is that she convinces the reader to take late colonial Americans’ unspoken sartorial expressions as seriously as their written or spoken ideas. Haulman thereby enlarges the pool of people whom historians can see participating in conversations about class, gender, and politics. Usually, only privileged members of society could write or speak on these issues, but because everyone else had to wear something, groups like women, free blacks, and lower class whites also had a chance to comment and criticize. These statements may have been more open to interpretation because of the inherent subjectivity of fashion, but they no less valuable in giving us clearer sense of a broader range of people’s thoughts about class, gender, and politics.
October 22, 2014
If you were a Quaker woman living during the early eighteenth century you might slip on your fine-spun garments before you began your day of labor, but you would avoid decorative prints, jewelry, or other ostentatious adornments. If you were a New Yorker preparing for a formal ball you would spend hours perfecting your high-roll and assembling the whale-bone hoop to display the skirt you had made from the finest and most colorful materials available. However, if you were a Patriot living several decades later during the Revolutionary War you might trade in your silk and wool for a homespun dress and your jewelry, high-roll, and hat for a small lapel pin or badge to signal your solidarity with the cause. In all three cases what you decided to wear signaled something about your social class, political affiliation, religious beliefs, or gentility. In The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America, historian Kate Haulman traces how individuals mapped political, social, and gender ideas onto fashion and how fashion thus became a flash point for perennial anxieties about gender and gender relations among other things.
Haulman argues that fashion was intertwined with ideas about gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century and it became the primary way to distinguish between sensible and the appetitive or foppish. These distinctions between the sensible and the foppish had important implications for political divisions during the American Revolution as patriotic writers consistently linked treachery and loyalism to modes of high fashion. In turn, they ascribed patriotism to country and military modes, frugality, and bland homespun. Haulman shows that cultural pundits did not create fixed, top-down definitions of fashion. Pamphleteers and fashion critics constantly vied with the “lower sorts,” runaway slaves, and thieves who used fashion to subvert, mock or “pass” in a fluid social hierarchy.
Fashion remained in a constant state of flux during the early-1700s and incidentally provided space for runaway slaves, criminals, and “misfits” to don fashion à la mode and subvert social hierarchies. A lucrative black market trade in fashionable garments grew with the general upshot of consumerism in port-cities. Self-emancipated slaves often stole garments to keep up with the latest trends and pass as free blacks. Those trying to “pass” were always in jeopardy of being exposed. Because advertisers introduced the latest styles and trends of European court culture, and because merchants offered these for purchase, an item’s fashionableness was always ephemeral. For example, calico transitioned from the use in fashion to use in functional work clothing by the 1730s. Fine wools and silks eventually supplanted calico as the essential materials of stylish dress. Thus, calico’s fall from grace threatened to expose any self-emancipated slave who if seen wearing calico by 1730 looked the part of a common servant or slave.
From the French and Indian War onward, two competing discourses of fashion emerged. One argued that an individual’s frugality and plainness attested to their sensibility and capacity for virtue. The second encouraged women and men to continue buying extravagant clothes, stressed the legitimacy of high fashion for distinguishing the social elite, and dovetailed with the economic needs of a market-driven economy. The former discourse originated from political dislocations, especially after the Revenue (Sugar) Act of 1764 exacerbated tension with England. The latter emanated from merchants and consumers who drove demand for fashionable imports. Fashion created political and economic controversy by the 1770s as the consumption of imported fashion became the focal point for extolling ideal conceptions of feminine and masculine virtue and identifying those with a steeled commitment to the Patriot cause. The availability of imports intensified these discourses because the lower classes could ape the appearance of social elites by donning affordable high style garments. Fashion became an important means by which cultural and political pundits tried to locate and fix identity during the Revolutionary War.
These anxieties reached their fever pitch when General William Howe besieged and occupied Philadelphia in 1777. Before Howe’s occupation, Patriot pamphleteers already labeled women traitors who defied prescriptions for frugality and proscriptions against the high-roll and English-styled dress. Outward appearance demonstrated one’s political loyalties during the occupation. It wasn’t only their political loyalties that worried anxious Patriot men but, the sexual license that might accompany British-colonist relations inside Philadelphia—especially among the Quaker women who plied neutrality. Artwork and cartoons vilified colonial women bedecked in frippery who cavorted with the British enemy. Their stylistic and financial dependence on English fashion suggested their sexual impropriety and political disloyalty.
On the whole, Haulman has written a monograph rich with detail about “fashion” as both the physical adornment worn by individuals (e.g. the high-roll, hoops, wigs) and a social concept that individuals packed with various, contested meanings. Haulman has crafted an important work that challenges how historians conceptualize revolutionary politics and particularly how fashion and material culture exacerbated political and social schisms during the imperial crisis and American Revolution.
Haulman argues that fashion was intertwined with ideas about gender and sexuality in the eighteenth century and it became the primary way to distinguish between sensible and the appetitive or foppish. These distinctions between the sensible and the foppish had important implications for political divisions during the American Revolution as patriotic writers consistently linked treachery and loyalism to modes of high fashion. In turn, they ascribed patriotism to country and military modes, frugality, and bland homespun. Haulman shows that cultural pundits did not create fixed, top-down definitions of fashion. Pamphleteers and fashion critics constantly vied with the “lower sorts,” runaway slaves, and thieves who used fashion to subvert, mock or “pass” in a fluid social hierarchy.
Fashion remained in a constant state of flux during the early-1700s and incidentally provided space for runaway slaves, criminals, and “misfits” to don fashion à la mode and subvert social hierarchies. A lucrative black market trade in fashionable garments grew with the general upshot of consumerism in port-cities. Self-emancipated slaves often stole garments to keep up with the latest trends and pass as free blacks. Those trying to “pass” were always in jeopardy of being exposed. Because advertisers introduced the latest styles and trends of European court culture, and because merchants offered these for purchase, an item’s fashionableness was always ephemeral. For example, calico transitioned from the use in fashion to use in functional work clothing by the 1730s. Fine wools and silks eventually supplanted calico as the essential materials of stylish dress. Thus, calico’s fall from grace threatened to expose any self-emancipated slave who if seen wearing calico by 1730 looked the part of a common servant or slave.
From the French and Indian War onward, two competing discourses of fashion emerged. One argued that an individual’s frugality and plainness attested to their sensibility and capacity for virtue. The second encouraged women and men to continue buying extravagant clothes, stressed the legitimacy of high fashion for distinguishing the social elite, and dovetailed with the economic needs of a market-driven economy. The former discourse originated from political dislocations, especially after the Revenue (Sugar) Act of 1764 exacerbated tension with England. The latter emanated from merchants and consumers who drove demand for fashionable imports. Fashion created political and economic controversy by the 1770s as the consumption of imported fashion became the focal point for extolling ideal conceptions of feminine and masculine virtue and identifying those with a steeled commitment to the Patriot cause. The availability of imports intensified these discourses because the lower classes could ape the appearance of social elites by donning affordable high style garments. Fashion became an important means by which cultural and political pundits tried to locate and fix identity during the Revolutionary War.
These anxieties reached their fever pitch when General William Howe besieged and occupied Philadelphia in 1777. Before Howe’s occupation, Patriot pamphleteers already labeled women traitors who defied prescriptions for frugality and proscriptions against the high-roll and English-styled dress. Outward appearance demonstrated one’s political loyalties during the occupation. It wasn’t only their political loyalties that worried anxious Patriot men but, the sexual license that might accompany British-colonist relations inside Philadelphia—especially among the Quaker women who plied neutrality. Artwork and cartoons vilified colonial women bedecked in frippery who cavorted with the British enemy. Their stylistic and financial dependence on English fashion suggested their sexual impropriety and political disloyalty.
On the whole, Haulman has written a monograph rich with detail about “fashion” as both the physical adornment worn by individuals (e.g. the high-roll, hoops, wigs) and a social concept that individuals packed with various, contested meanings. Haulman has crafted an important work that challenges how historians conceptualize revolutionary politics and particularly how fashion and material culture exacerbated political and social schisms during the imperial crisis and American Revolution.
March 7, 2019
This book was... fine? I'm not super into colonial histories of Anglo America in the first place (I think they're boring) and this didn't feel like. Groundbreaking, though I guess if you're looking for like. Some archival narration that aligns with things already said about fashion re: homespun movements and anti-importation. That is perhaps unfair of me, but the book as a whole just didn't click with me on any level. If you LIKE these kinds of books, though, you will probably like it a lot!
February 9, 2025
I read this for an assignment, and so only actually looked at about 60% of the text, but what I read was a fascinating insight into the surprisingly rich and culturally fraught world of eighteenth-century American fashion. A brilliant analysis of fashion and gender and culture and colonial geopolitics. I highly recommend this book, and will go back and read the whole thing one day, I hope.
January 28, 2021
Very informative about society, gender, politics, etc.
Details about what fabrics were used, where they came from, and the politics involving that!
Would recommend to anyone interested in the topic.
Details about what fabrics were used, where they came from, and the politics involving that!
Would recommend to anyone interested in the topic.
September 23, 2018
I had to read this book for a upper level college course.
September 28, 2016
51. The Politics of Fashion in Eighteenth-Century America by Kate Haulman by Kate Haulman (no photo)
Finish Date: September 24, 2016
Genre: American History
Rating: B+
Review: This book is definitely a different perspective on US history - a view of history seen through the lens of fashions in the colonies, during the War of Independence and during the early years of the nation. Fashion had more influence than you might think. Initially the colonies' upper classes strove to mimic English and French fashions. During the revolution, it was seen to be more patriotic to wear local leather and homespun clothing. But shortly after the war, people were eager to return to the European fabrics and styles that many had abandoned. It's an interesting book that looks at fashion and politics, the economy and society. The 18th century cartoons are fabulous - especially depictions of the fashion fops. And who knew that hoop skirts were so lewd?
February 29, 2012
I really wanted to like this book, but it just didn't end up that way. She has so much information and wonderful ideas, but it just doesn't all work together. In the end she tries to do too much and tt is more confusing than informative.
August 6, 2012
Great argument about politics and fashion that goes beyond the obvious. I'm fascinated by the way people in the Early Republic found ways to categorize people in ways other than race and gender, and this book adds to my knowledge.
May 1, 2012
Witty and beautifully written. It completely changed the way I thought about politics and the American Revolution!
July 13, 2016
Summary: 18th century americans debated the role of fashion in society. The book basically says that, over and over, with fancier words and a few anecdotes.
August 20, 2016
An easy read, fun and informative on the role of fashion both politically and economically.
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April 29, 2017Good book. you will get lots of information related to politics and fashion. yes i got it from local library. and i used it for my upcoming book Lovescape. I didn't go into details. just flipped through pages. yes it seemed a worth reading. I quoted it for my chapter Dressed Nation. as India is currently passing through a transitional stage in whcih things related to costume and food are becoming political controversies, book like this will help me explore and analyse how your apparels are political in our divided nation.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews