Consuming mass fashion in 1930s England : design, manufacture and retailing for young working-class women / Cheryl Roberts.
Roberts, Cheryl, author.
2022
GT1720
Available Online

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Title
Consuming mass fashion in 1930s England : design, manufacture and retailing for young working-class women / Cheryl Roberts.
Author
Roberts, Cheryl, author.
ISBN
9783030946135 (electronic bk.)
3030946134 (electronic bk.)
9783030946128
3030946126
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94613-5
Published
Cham : Palgrave Macmillan, [2022]
Copyright
©2022
Language
English
Description
1 online resource (xxv, 332 pages) : illustrations (some color).
Item Number
10.1007/978-3-030-94613-5 doi
Call Number
GT1720
Dewey Decimal Classification
391/.20904209043
Summary
This book details a significant and largely untold history of the demand for cheap, fashionable clothing for young working-class women. This is an interdisciplinary fashion and business history analysis that investigates the design, manufacture, retailing and consumption of fashion for and by young working-class women in 1930s Britain. It concentrates on new mass developments in the design and manufacture of lightweight day dresses styled for younger women, and on their retailing in the second-hand trade and seconds dealing, street markets, new multiple stores, department stores, independent dress shops and home dressmaking. The book also discusses the specific impact of this new product within the emerging mass manufactured goods mail order catalogue industry in England. These outlets all offered venues of consumption to the young, employed, modern working-class woman, and are analysed in the context of old and new businesses practices. The actuality of the garments worn by these young women is paramount to this research and will be at the forefront of all findings and outcomes. Dr Cheryl Roberts is Senior Lecturer at Chelsea, Camberwell and Wimbledon (CCW), University of Arts London (UAL), UK. She also teaches on the Royal College of Art/V&A Museum MA History of Design Programme and is currently Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Brighton, UK. Her research is rooted in the material culture of objectsparticularly the consumption of dress and textilesand how they acquire meaning through their relationship with specific acts in historical and cultural contexts.
Bibliography, etc. Note
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
Source of Description
Online resource; title from PDF title page (SpringerLink, viewed October 31, 2022).
Series
Palgrave studies in fashion and the body.
Available in Other Form
Print version: 9783030946128
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Intro
Acknowledgements
Contents
About the Author
List of Figures
1 Introduction: Premise
Time Frame
Definition of Terms
1930s Working Class and Locale
Young, Modern, Working-Class Women in the 1930s
The Definition of Working-Class Dress
Affordability
Ready-Made, Ready-to-Wear and Lightweight Clothing
The Framework and Structure of This Book
The Fusing of Business Archives and Object-Based Research: A Developing Approach to Fashion and Dress Histories
Conclusion
Notes
Works Cited
2 Agents of Change
Social Place
Locality and Locale

Shared Community Values and Indicators of Class
Poverty
Class and Poverty
Employment as an Indicator of Class
Employment Possibilities
Wage Contribution
Social Communities of Work
Leisure
Defining Agents of Change
Notes
Works Cited
3 What Is Fashion?
Communicating Fashion
Fashion and Individuality
Individuality and Community Identity
Peer Group, Social Pressure and Individual Dressing: Fashion in the Eye of the Beholder
Dress as a Social Indicator and Social Uniform
Conformity
Taste
Issues of Mass Fashion: Innovators or Emulators?

Material Agency
Fashion or Style?
Notes
Works Cited
4 Progressive Production Practices: Developments in Design, Print, Colour Forecasting and Fabric
Designing Fashionable Lightweight Ready-Made Dresses
Fabric Designs and Textile Prints
Floral Frocks, Designers and Frivolity
Colour Forecasting
Colour in the Wardrobe of a Young Working-Class Woman
Rayon: The Fabric Revolution and British Suppliers
Artificial Fibres: The Importance of Quality and the Sensory
Notes
Works Cited

5 New Developments and Technological Change: The Business of Mass Manufacturing Fashion
London as a Centre for Mass Fashion
Fashion Fluctuations
Mass Manufacture or Technological Determinism: Creators of Consumption
Technological Determinism: Vertical Integration Versus Vertical Disintegration
Small Factory Production
Jewish Workshops and Factories
Workforce and Gender Change
The Small Factory and the Shift to Dressmaking
Methods of Production: "Making Through" and Sectionality
Technological Driven Change?
Wholesale Methods: The Manufacturing Middleman

The Specialist Wholesaler, the Fashion Copy House Designers and Levels of Wholesale
The Trading System for the Manufacturing Wholesaler of Ready-Made Lightweight Day Dresses and Their Eventual Decline
The New Providers of Mass Manufactured Lightweight Day Dresses
Multiple Trading: In House Manufacture vs. Direct from Manufacturer
C&A. The Self-Sufficient Womenswear Provider
C&A: Factory Revolutionaries-Advancement in the Mass Manufacture of Lightweight Day Dresses
C&A's "Style Monotony", Consumer Demand and Manufacturing Turnover

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