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ABSTRACT
The mass retailing of fashionable clothing is a practice which is bounded both by time, since each season’s new styles renders previous garments obsolete, and by space, as innovations are promoted as sanctioned by fashion capitals such as Paris, London, or New York. This study of fashion advertising in British national periodicals from 1880–1914 reflects on the historiography of retailing, from Jefferys to Breward and Stobart, which often makes strong distinctions between London and the provinces. Case studies of two retailers with multiple branches, H.J. Nicoll and Alfred Stedall, and of two retailers selling through mail-order, John Noble and Pryce Jones, will examine the methods used to sell goods internationally, nationally and locally. These case studies will draw on unpublished publicity documents in the National Archives and other collections, and on advertisements in national and local newspapers. An analysis of discourses of place in fashion magazines will investigate the ways in which magazines acted as virtual spaces in which readers could both receive and offer information. This will lead on to a consideration of Appadurai and Augé’s concepts of space, place and non-place in consumption, and the applicability of these to earlier periods.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank all of the staff at The National Archives who have assisted with this research, and especially Katherine Howells, Visual Collections Researcher. She has benefitted greatly from exchanges and discussions at the seminars and conferences run by the Centre for the History of Retailing and Distribution, University of Wolverhampton. She would also like to thank Jon Stobart for his encouragement, and the two anonymous readers for their insightful comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Steele, Paris Fashion, 262–76.
2 Musée de la Mode et du Costume Palais Galliera, Femmes fin de siècle.
3 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, on 178.
4 Augé, Non-Places.
5 Jefferys, Retail Trading in Britain.
6 Adburgham, Liberty’s, a Biography; Briggs, Friends of the People.
7 Crossick and Jaumain (Eds.), Cathedrals of Consumption; Lancaster, The Department Store; Mitchell, “The Victorian Provincial Department Store”.
8 Adburgham, Shops and Shopping 1800–1914; Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure; Breward, Ehrman and Evans (eds.), The London Look.
9 Breward, Fashioning London.
10 De la Haye, “Dissemination of Design”; Toplis, Clothing Trade in Provincial England; Stobart, “Advertising and the Character”; Bowlby, Back to the Shops.
11 Worth, Fashion for the People; Coopey, O’Connell and Porter, Mail Order Retailing.
12 Stobart, “Advertising and the Character”.
13 Loeb, Consuming Angels; Jobling and Crowley, Graphic Design; Rickards and Twyman, Encyclopedia of Ephemera.
14 Beetham, A Magazine of Her Own; Beetham and Boardman, Victorian Women's Magazines, 221–8.
15 Launch publicity for Home Dressmaker, Pearson's Weekly, 29 December 1894, 16. For context, many working-class households were subsisting on £1 or 20 shillings a week, as encapsulated in the title of the 1913 report by Maud Pember Reeves, Round About a Pound a Week (London: Virago, 1979).
16 Breward, “Patterns of Respectability”.
17 Kurkdjian, “Paris as the Capital of Fashion”.
18 Coleman, “Pourvu que vos robes vous aillent”.
19 Coleman, Opulent Era, p.21.
20 Rose, Art Nouveau Fashion, 15–16.
21 Miller, Bourgeois Culture.
22 Falluel, “Les grands magasins et la confection féminine”.
23 Barbera, “Des journaux et des modes”, 109.
24 Schorman, Selling Style; Rappaport, Shopping for Pleasure, 142–77, 215–22.
25 Schorman, Selling Style, 23.
26 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 178.
27 Augé, Non-Places, 91.
28 Rose, ““Rough Wolves in the Sheepcote””.
29 Paterson, “Selling Fashion”; Adburgham, Liberty’s, a Biography; Worth, Fashion for The People; Pryce Jones archive, M/D/PJ at http://calmview.powys.gov.uk/CalmView/Overview.aspx?src=CalmView.Catalog
30 These are catalogued as Women’s Clothes and Millinery (WCM), boxes 1–10. https://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/collections-and-resources/special-collections/catalogues/johnson/finding-aids/digitised
31 Rose, “Advertising Ready-made Style.”
32 Some boxes have itemised listings online, with text taken from the registration forms, and documents in boxes 60–100 (1882–91) have been digitised at https://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/browse/r/h/C5349.
33 Rose, “Women's Ready-to-Wear”.
34 Ibid., 7.
35 Rose, Buying and Selling, 73–96, 129–40.
36 The earliest use of this term was in The Sportsman, 25 June 1884.
37 Montrose Review (Elgin), 24 November 1911.
38 South London Press, 29 March 1884.
39 Banbury Guardian, 17 March 1910.
40 Eldridge and Young advertisement, Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 2 November 1878.
41 The Field, 5 June 1880.
42 For example, on an 1880’s woman’s jacket, CI41.133.5, in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
43 “The Hub of Fashion”, London Evening Standard, 16 May 1914.
44 Glasgow Evening Citizen, 1 March 1880.
45 Birmingham Daily Gazette, 2 August 1870.
46 Batley News, 25th May 1906.
47 Adburgham, Shops and Shopping, 73.
48 Coopey, O’Connell and Porter, Mail Order Retailing, 15; Rose, Buying and Selling, 128–30; Pryce Jones and the Royal Welsh Warehouse (powys.org.uk) (accessed 1 March 2023).
49 This subsidiary closed in 1916: https://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/cpm/catalog/cat2410e.html (accessed 1 March 2023)
50 Bradford Manufacturing Company catalogue, 1889, WCM Box 2(7), John Johnson Collection, The Bodleian Library. This firm started by retailing yardage; this catalogue evidences their expansion into women’s underwear, raincoats and unfitted jersey jackets. Their 1898 style sheet in TNA (Copy 1 968, 24th March 1898) presents a range of women’s and girls’ coats, jackets and tailored suits.
51 See Rose, Buying and Selling, 73–96; John Noble catalogue in the collection of the Gallery of Costume, Manchester Museums and Art Galleries.
52 Rose, “Elias Moses and Son, Minion of the Million 1849”. The specific clothing needs of emigrants on long sea voyages are discussed in Jarvis, “Kitted Out for Australia”.
53 Manchester Courier, 19 December 1863.
54 “International exhibition”, Manchester Courier, 25 May 1867.
55 H.J. Nicoll advertisement, American Register, 20 April 1878.
56 Rumball, “The Ladies’ Ulster”. For an 1876 advertisement of ladies’ Ulsters, see Arthur Lynes, Merriment and Modes, reproduced in Rose, Buying and Selling, 56.
57 Weston, “Branding Burberry”, 94–6.
58 “Home, Indian and Colonial Sporting Outfits”, The Field, 23 March 1889.
59 Burberry catalogue, 1910, Copy 1 1067/38380, TNA.
60 H.J. Nicoll advertisement, The Field, 14 April 1877: “New designs for the spring - The Austrian, The New Ulster, and The Berlin”.
61 Anderson, Anderson & Anderson, 1893, Copy 1 108a/045, TNA; Stedall,1893, Copy 1 109/429, TNA.
62 North, “John Redfern and Sons”, 156.
63 Birmingham Daily Gazette, 2 August 1870.
64 North, “John Redfern and Sons”, 147–52.
65 1894 John Noble catalogue, Gallery of Costume, Manchester Museums and Art Galleries.
67 Stobart, “Advertising and the Character”
68 South Wales Daily News, 23 November 1886.
69 Birmingham Daily Post, 4 January 1869.
70 Birmingham Daily Gazette, 2 August 1870: ‘Families residing within ten miles of H. J. Nicoll’s Establishments are waited upon by competent persons without extra charge, with sample specimens to order from, or Garments submitted for immediate purchase.’
71 Fenwick advertisement, The Gentlewoman, 15 August 1903.
72 Falluel, “Les grands magasins”, 79.
73 “Local Intelligence”, Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 21 October 1893; see Rose, Buying and Selling, 73–96.
74 Noble advertising sheet, 1896, Copy 1 129/557, TNA.
75 Manchester Courier, 22 October 1896.
76 Coopey, O’Connell and Porter, Mail Order Retailing, 14.
77 Manchester Courier, 15 June 1895.
78 Sheffield Weekly Telegraph, 10 March 1894, 27; poster, Copy 1 127/144 (1896), TNA.
79 Noble catalogue cover, 1899, Copy 1 971/17095, TNA.
80 Noble catalogue, 1889, Men’s Clothes 2(26), John Johnson collection.
81 “Opening of the Royal Welsh Flannel Warehouse at Newtown,” Western Mail, October 4 1879, p.4.
82 Coopey, O’Connell and Porter, Mail Order Retailing, 15–6.
83 Harrods’ included unfitted women’s garments (underwear, dressing gowns and, blouses and coats) in its general catalogue for 1895, but did not issue separate fashion catalogues at this date; Adburgham, Victorian Shopping, 841–57.
84 The Queen, 20 May 1899.
85 The Queen, 30 April 1910.
86 “Fashion catalogues in the making, their cost and arrangement”, Pall Mall Gazette, 2 July 1912.
87 Rose, Buying and Selling, 1; Selby and Jones, Moses Mods and Mr Fish, 20–2.
88 Manchester Courier, 14 February 1863.
89 Manchester Courier, 26 October 1869.
90 For example George Simpson, Merchant Tailor, of 33 & 39, Parliament-street, York, ‘Sole Agent for Messrs. H. J. Nicoll's Garments’ Otley News and West Riding Advertiser, 28 December 1868.
91 Birmingham Daily Post, 1st February 1876, 4.
92 Stedall advertisement, Daily Telegraph & Courier (London), 17th July 1886, 4.
93 Stedall advertisement, Aris's Birmingham Gazette, 29th January 1876, 3.
94 The lack of mail-order provision is particularly surprising given that Stedall registered over 1000 images of the women’s clothing they produced in Copy 1 between 1893 and 1900.
95 The illustrated advertisements ran in the South London Press, West London Gazette and Marylebone Mercury between 19 January 1912 and 26 December 1913.
96 The advertising of garments that were not actually in stock was common enough to be satirised in Trollope, Adventures of Brown, Jones and Robinson, 47–8.
97 Pearson's Weekly, 29 December 1894.
98 This debate started with “Suffragists and the Art of Dress”, Common Cause, 8 August 1913, and continued through letters published up to 12 September. See Rose,
Abuses and Reforms, 417–25.
99 See the 1913 letter to Common Cause, from Ada Nield Chew, Ibid., 421–2.
100 “A Clever Feat in Illustrated Journalism”, The Scotsman, 4 May 1911.
101 Appropriately, this competition was for a travelling outfit. The Gentlewoman, 4 August 1900.
102 The Gentlewoman, 20 December 1890.
103 Noble’s 1894 catalogue cover mentions 800 employees (Gallery of Costume, Manchester Museums, no number). Pryce Jones invited 350 of his workers to celebrate the opening of his new warehouse in 1879; “Workmen’s Supper”, Cambrian News, 10 October 1879.
104 “The Catalogue of the moment by Callisthenes”, Pall Mall Gazette, 29 September 1913; also in the Westminster Gazette, 29 September 1913.
105 Miller, Bourgeois Culture.
106 Augé, Non-Places, 91.
107 Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 178–82.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Clare Rose
Clare Rose has been researching the British ready-to-wear clothing industry for over twenty years, using retailing documents in the Stationers’ Hall Collection of The National Archives and other archives. Her publications include Making, Selling and Wearing Boys’ Clothes in late Victorian England, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010); (with Vivienne Richmond) Clothing, Society and Culture, (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2011) and Art Nouveau Fashion (London: V&A Publishing, 2014). She has taught at several universities and lectures for the V&A Museum.