Fashion Scarce In The 19th Century

“Fashion (is) a key resource through which individuals … construct their identities and position themselves in relation to others”. Bennett, A. (2005). Culture and Everyday Life. London: Sage. p. 115.

Fashion as an indicator of wider social development and historical progress of the material civilization during the human history advancement, and mourning attire is one of the representatives from fashion. In a society with a strict hierarchy, people performed their social stratification by pattern and ornament of the attire, which makes it an exceptional mourning culture. This essay will discuss how these kinds of cultural work performed by fashion through mourning attire in 19th century.

History (when it happen, color from white to black, tailor in victorian for identity) According to Melissa (2016)’s report, the oldest literature about people wore special clothing to mark the funeral

Thomas, D. (2015) mention that “the mourning was an expensive activity and also wasteful, because it also had to be fashionable. Identical in fashion styling to the modes of the day, it used different colours and materials.” When their family members passed away, there are inevitable to worn the clothes for several years, obviously some fashion trend won’t existed for long period, so they have to frequently remodeled their clothes. As Thomas, D. (2015) said, “Crape, the most commonly used mourning fabric for respectable widows in 19th century are vastly increased its demand, which used to the most high-ranking material of mourning until the spinning Jenny invented in 1767, Courtaulds built a textile empire on the sales of the crape cloth alone in the 1890s.” And the style of mourning attire became increasingly fashionable, “with black coats and breeches for men and mantua dresses for women, in black and half-mourning mauve.” Taylor, L.