Fashion, like luxury, has been largely conceived in terms of the elite
experience. Indeed, the European fashion cycle was noted first among the
aristocracy where the fashion system celebrated novelty over tradition,
highlighting the individual aesthetic even as it consolidated the group
identity of exquisitely garbed nobles. The counterpoints to the mutability
of style were the legal constraints designed to curb the fashion impulse,
bridling the sartorial ambitions of non-elites. Sumptuary legislation aimed
to enforce luxury codes. The right to extravagant inessentials, which
distinguished those of noble blood, was forbidden to lesser beings;
however, fashion was a contested concept whose influence permeated first
the middling and then even the labouring ranks. In this article I will
examine the competing forces at work within England as the dress of the
common people was transformed over the long eighteenth century.
Although sumptuary legislation came to an end in England in 1604,
government and moralists continued to claim the right to restrain material
expression within the lower ranks, but without success. I will assess the
challenge to a unitary hegemonic elite fashion, and explore the creation
and significance of the multiple expressions in dress within the varied
social ranks of England.
