Labour of the Stitch: The Making and Remaking of Fashionable Georgian Dress

Cambridge Elements: Eighteenth Century Connections

by Serena Dyer

The making of fashionable women's dress in Georgian England necessitated an inordinate amount of manual labour. From the mantuamakers and seamstresses who wrought lengths of silk and linen into garments, to the artists and engravers who disseminated and immortalised the resulting outfits in print and on paper, Georgian garments were the products of many busy hands. This Element centres the sartorial hand as a point of connection across the trades which generated fashionable dress in the eighteenth century. Crucially, it engages with recreation methodologies to explore how the agency and skill of the stitching hand can inform understandings of craft, industry, gender, and labour in the eighteenth century. The labour of stitching, along with printmaking, drawing, and painting, composed a comprehensive culture of making and manual labour which, together, constructed eighteenth-century cultures of fashionable dress.

Genres: Nonfiction

90 pages, Hardcover

Published April 18, 2024

Reviews

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Small book but has some interesting points.

Dyer focuses heavily on the idea of the hand (and the labour behind it) when examining 18th century dress. Modern audiences can often ignore or dismiss the work done by mantua-makers or other sewers as simple or just ‘labour.’ However by recreating a gown herself, she explains all the skill and techniques necessary. She refutes the idea that mantua-makers were less skilled than tailors and had sloppy stitching. They were economical, not everything had to be sewn with 40 stitches to the inch.

Dyer includes a good overview of 18th century dress and makers in the second chapter. I especially liked how she talked about the rhythm of sewing and the pros/cons to auto-ethnographic sewing.

[Sally Pryce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very much an academic book but still a very interesting and accessible introduction for lay people to the making of 18th century women’s dress, particularly the English gown which is the focus of the reproduction in the book. The overview of the evolution of gowns over the century. I have a Research Masters (albeit in a different field) so I found the discussions about research methodology really interesting and useful. Definitely recommend for anyone with an interest in women’s fashion of this era.