https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1330-8368
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ABSTRACT
From the late 19th century, when the Melbourne manufacturer and department store Foy & Gibson began to produce mail order catalogues for country customers, it recognised the potential to sell clothing made of Australian wool. This article explores how Foy & Gibson influenced consumer attitudes towards the natural fibre by encouraging them to feel wool as a next-to-the-skin experience. By focusing on underwear and swimsuits in the catalogues across the first three decades of the 20th century, it offers a historical counterpoint to promotional activities that continue into the present urging consumers to understand the benefits of wearing wool.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 “Feel Merino,” Australian Wool Innovation, https://www.woolmark.com/performance/feel-merino/ (accessed 8 April 2023); Australian Wool Innovation, “New Marketing Campaign: Feel Merino,” Beyond the Bale 85 (2020): 6–8. For more on wool for athleisure wear, see Mark Abernethy, “Demand for Australian Merino Wool on the Rise, Thanks to the Athleisure Market,” Australian Financial Review, 12 June 2018, https://www.afr.com/life-and-luxury/wool-is-fashionable-again-especially-in-the-gym-20180517-h1065k. For a discussion of the rise of athleisure wear, see Jennifer Craik, “‘Feeling Premium’: Athleisure and the Material Transformation of Sportswear,” in Fashion and Materiality: Cultural Practices in Global Contexts, ed. Heike Jenss and Viola Hofmann (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 214–32.
2 For a mid-century example: Melissa Bellanta and Lorinda Cramer, “‘Well-Dressed’ in Suits of Australian Wool: The Global Fiber Wars and Masculine Material Literacy, 1950–1965,” Fashion Theory (2023), https://doi.org/10.1080/1362704X.2023.2228009.
3 Foy & Gibson, Two Miles of Mills (Melbourne: Foy & Gibson, ca. 1922). History of Foy & Gibson: Annette Cooper, “Foy & Gibson: From the Sheep’s Back to Yours,” La Trobe Journal 106 (2021): 6–22.
4 Foy & Gibson, “Gibsonia” Woollen and Hosiery Mills (Melbourne: Foy & Gibson, ca. 1921), back cover.
5 All Foy & Gibson catalogues referred to in this article are held by the University of Melbourne Archives (see also the business records: 1968.0005 and 2007.0062) and State Library Victoria. Many other Australian department stores produced mail order catalogues: Myer Emporium, Anthony Hordern & Sons, and Grace Bros among them. All sold wide-ranging woollen clothes and underclothes. The Myer Emporium also had its own wool mills that made “Myrall” brand underwear, suitings and more. Myer Emporium, For Autumn & Winter 1927 (1927): 8, 86, 88, 94–5.
6 Prices for women’s clothing, for example, were described as “about half what similar goods made by dressmakers” cost. Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 20 (1902): 15.
7 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 71 (1925): inside front cover. Today’s superfine merino is a luxury product, though the wool that Foy & Gibson sold in its clothes and underclothes was competitively priced. Its underwear in 1910 was “proved beyond a doubt to be equal to the best imported at about two-thirds of the price”. Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 38 (1910): 69.
8 For example: Lorinda Cramer and Melissa Bellanta, “‘Clothes Shall Mark the Man’: Wearing Suits in Wartime Australia, 1939–1945,” Cultural and Social History 19, no 1 (2022): 57–76; Robert Crawford, “Nothing to Sell?: Australia’s Advertising Industry at War, 1939–1945,” War & Society 20, no. 1 (2002): 99–124.
9 The Draper of Australasia provided “constructive criticism” on department store catalogues, including Foy & Gibson’s: “Make the Advertising Pay,” Draper of Australasia, 30 April 1926, 160; “Make the Advertising Pay,” Draper of Australasia, 30 June 1927, 268; “Aggressive Sale-Time Advertising,” Draper of Australasia, 31 July 1928, 306; “Make Your Advertising Pay,” Draper of Australasia, 31 October 1928, 509.
10 For example: Robert Crawford, “Emptor Australis: The Australian Consumer in Early Twentieth Century Advertising Literature,” Australian Economic History Review 45, no. 3 (2005): 221–329; Robert Crawford, Judith Smart, and Kim Humphery, eds., Consumer Australia: Historical Perspectives (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars, 2010); Jackie Dickenson, Australian Women in Advertising in the Twentieth Century (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); Gail Reekie, Temptations: Sex, Selling and the Department Store (St Leonards: Allen & Unwin, 1993).
11 Joanne Entwistle, “Fashion and the Fleshy Body: Dress as Embodied Practice,” Fashion Theory 4, no. 3 (2000): 323–47.
12 For example: Lucia Ruggerone, “The Feeling of Being Dressed: Affect Studies and the Clothed Body,” Fashion Theory 21, no. 5 (2017): 573–93; Sophie Woodward and Tom Fisher, “Fashioning through Materials: Material Culture, Materiality and Processes of Materialization,” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty 5, no. 1 (2014): 3–22.
13 Rosie Findlay, “‘Such Stuff as Dreams are Made On’: Encountering Clothes, Imagining Selves,” Cultural Studies Review 22, no. 1 (2016): 88–89.
14 Heike Jenss and Viola Hofmann, “Introduction: Fashion and Materiality,” in Fashion and Materiality: Cultural Practices in Global Contexts (London: Bloomsbury, 2020), 1.
15 Marie Hebrok and Ingun Grimstad Klepp, “Wool Is a Knitted Fabric That Itches, Isn't It?,” Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty 5, no. 1 (2014): 67–93.
16 For example: Jane Schneider, “In and Out of Polyester: Desire, Disdain and Global Fibre Competitions,” Anthropology Today 10, no. 4 (1994): 2–10; Susannah Handley, Nylon: The Manmade Fashion Revolution (London: Bloomsbury, 1999); Kaori O’Connor, “The Other Half: The Material Culture of New Fibres,” in Clothing as Material Culture, ed. Susanne Küchler and Daniel Miller (Oxford: Berg, 2005), 41–60. For plastics more broadly, see Tom H. Fisher, “What We Touch, Touches Us: Materials, Affects, and Affordances,” Design Issues 20, no. 4 (2004): 20–31.
17 Elyse Stanes and Chris Gibson, “Materials That Linger: An Embodied Geography of Polyester Clothes,” Geoforum 85 (2017): 27–36; Elyse Stanes, “Dressed in Plastic: The Persistence of Polyester Clothes,” in Plastic Legacies: Pollution, Persistence, and Politics, ed. Trisia Farrelly, Sy Taffel, and Ian Shaw (Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2021). For the feel of clothes more broadly, see Elyse Stanes, “Clothes-in-Process: Touch, Texture, Time,” Textile 17, no. 3 (2019): 224–45.
18 For example: D. P. Bishop, “Fabrics: Sensory and Mechanical Properties,” Textile Progress 26, no. 3 (1996): 1–62; Maryam Naebe and Bruce A. McGregor, “Comfort Properties of Superfine Wool and Wool/Cashmere Blend Yarns and Fabrics,” Journal of the Textile Institute 104, no. 6 (2013): 634–40; and Joanne N. Sneddon, Julie A. Lee, and Geoffrey N. Soutar, “Exploring Consumer Beliefs about Wool Apparel in the USA and Australia,” Journal of the Textile Institute 103, no. 1 (2012): 40–47.
19 Hebrok and Klepp, “Wool Is a Knitted Fabric That Itches, Isn't It?,” 68.
20 Cecily Close, “Foy, Mark (1830–1884),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/foy-mark-3565/text5515 (accessed 8 April 2023). Other sources suggest that Foy arrived in 1859: “The History of Foy and Gibson,” in Miss Smith Street (Collingwood: Smith Street Traders’ Association, ca. 1950), 14.
21 “Summer Fair,” Gibsonia Gazette (January 1927): 1; “Store Histories – Foy & Gibson Ltd.,” Retail Merchandiser (February 1966): 5.
22 “On Sale,” Mount Alexander Gazette, 28 October 1862, 3.
23 First appearing: “Summer Has Arrived,” Bendigo Advertiser, 4 November 1867, 1.
24 First appearing: “Commercial Intelligence,” Bendigo Advertiser, 13 May 1868, 1.
25 On diggers’ dress: Margaret Maynard, Fashioned from Penury: Dress as Cultural Practice in Colonial Australia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 168–70.
26 First appearing: “Summer Having Now Fairly Set in,” Bendigo Advertiser, 17 November 1868, 1.
27 Foy & Gibson, Welcome to Foys (Melbourne: Foy & Gibson, 1963), 1.
28 First appearing: “Attractive Display of Drapery,” Age, 26 April 1873, 3.
29 First appearing: “To the Ladies of Victoria,” Weekly Times, 22 March 1873, 16.
30 “Foy and Gibson’s Winter Fair,” Argus, 10 July 1891, 1; “Foy and Gibson’s Winter Fair,” Age, 10 July 1891, 1.
31 David Merrett and Simon Ville, “Industry Associations and Non-Competitive Behaviour in Australian Woolmarketing: Evidence from the Melbourne Woolbrokers’ Association, 1890–1939,” Business History 54, no. 4 (2012): 517–18.
32 Foy & Gibson, Two Miles of Mills, 7.
33 Foy & Gibson, Two Miles of Mills, 7.
34 Foy & Gibson, Two Miles of Mills, 27.
35 Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue, Adelaide (1929): 16c. (This Adelaide catalogue does not bear a print number; however, it is likely to be 46 given the Autumn and Winter 1930 catalogue is 48, and there would have been a Spring and Summer catalogue between them.)
36 Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue, Adelaide 48 (1930): inside front cover.
37 The Companies Acts, Companies Limited by Shares, Memorandum and Articles of Association of Foy & Gibson Proprietary Limited (Melbourne: Anderson, Gowan Pty Ltd, 1936), 3–4.
38 For a small sample of a much larger body of research, see Charles Massy, The Australian Merino: The Story of a Nation (North Sydney: Random House, 2007, rep. 1990); David Merrett and Simon Ville, “Accounting for Nonconvergence in Global Wool Marketing before 1939,” Business History Review 89 (2015): 229–53; Kosmas Tsokhas, Markets, Money and Empire: The Political Economy of the Australian Wool Industry (Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Press, 1990); Simon Ville and David Merrett, “Too Big to Fail: Explaining the Timing and Nature of Intervention in the Australian Wool Market, 1916–1991,” Australian Journal of Politics and History 62, no. 3 (2016): 337–52.
39 Reviewer, “Wool at the Moment,” Textile Journal of Australia 2, no. 2 (14 April 1927): 106.
40 “The Wool Market,” Textile Journal of Australia 2, no. 1 (15 March 1927): 8–9.
41 Australian Wool Board, First Annual Report of the Australian Wool Board, Dated 31st July, 1937 (Canberra: L. F. Johnston, Commonwealth Government Printer, 1937), 5, 7. For Australian Wool Board wool promotional activities, see Tiziana Ferrero-Regis, “From Sheep to Chic: Reframing the Australian Wool Story,” Journal of Australian Studies 44, no. 1 (2020): 48–64; Prudence Black and Anne Farren, “The Wool Industry in Australia,” Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, Volume 7, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, ed. Margaret Maynard (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2010), 100–5.
42 Donald Coleman, “Man-Made Fibres before 1945,” The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, Vol. 2, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 942–44.
43 “News of the Day,” Age, 8 January 1926, 8; “New Textiles: Germany’s Substitutes,” Sun, 29 August 1934, 13; “Wool Publicity,” Textile Journal of Australia 10, no. 12 (15 February 1936): 550.
44 Madelyn Shaw and Trish FitzSimons, “Fabric of War: The Lost History of the Global Wool Trade,” Selvedge 90 (2019): 10–18.
45 “‘Wool’ from Seaweed,” Textile Journal of Australia 14, no. 1 (15 March 1939): 47.
46 “Synthetics versus Wool: Test Tube Challenge to Merino,” Pix, 11 December 1943, 27.
47 Coleman, “Man-Made Fibres before 1945,” 933; Jeffrey Harrop, “Man-Made Fibres since 1945,” The Cambridge History of Western Textiles, Vol. 2, ed. David Jenkins (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 950; “Product like Silk Made from Coal, Air, Water,” Textile Journal of Australia 14, no. 2 (1939): 58.
48 Regina Lee Blaszczyk. “Styling Synthetics: DuPont’s Marketing of Fabrics and Fashions in Postwar America,” Business History Review 80, no. 3 (2006): 485–528; Handley, Nylon; Schneider, “In and Out of Polyester,” 4.
49 House of Representatives, Official Hansard, No. 38, 20 September 1944, 1087. See also: Hannah Rose Shell, Shoddy: From Devil’s Dust to the Renaissance of Rags (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020).
50 “Wool Adulteration: Practical Step by Manufacturer,” Draper of Australasia 39, no. 7 (1939): 72; “Union Knitting Mills,” Draper of Australasia 40, no. 10 (1939): iii. The Australian Wool Board’s first annual report recognised this problem: Australian Wool Board, First Annual Report of the Australian Wool Board, 6.
51 “Name of ‘Wool’,” Textile Journal of Australia 14, no. 6 (1939): 254–55.
52 “Defining Pure Wool Goods,” Textile Journal of Australia 14, no. 6 (1939): 267.
53 For example, see Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly of New South Wales, Textile Products Labelling Act 1945, https://legislation.nsw.gov.au/view/pdf/asmade/act-1945-13 (accessed 8 April 2023).
54 “Measures to Prevent Fraud in Woollens,” Sun, 20 April 1944, 2; “Wool Board Critical on Textiles Labelling,” Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 1952, 2; Australian Wool Board, Annual Report 1952–53 (Melbourne: Australian Wool Board, 1953), 5, 8–9.
55 Australian Wool Board, Annual Report 1950–51 (Melbourne: Australian Wool Board, 1951), 8.
56 For example, the Gowing Bros bill of sale and self-measurement form in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, https://collection.maas.museum/object/251548 and https://collection.maas.museum/object/159874 (accessed 8 April 2023).
57 “Golden Fleece All Australian Underwear,” Textile Journal of Australia 2, no. 9 (15 November 1927): back cover.
58 “Empire Shopping Week in West Australia,” Draper of Australasia, 31 July 1930, 349.
59 Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 67 (1923–24): 107; Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 38 (1910): 69; Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 69 (1924): 125; and Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue, Brisbane (1929): 35.
60 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 38 (1910): 26; Foy & Gibson, Summer Catalogue 39 (1910–11): 26; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 41 (1911–12): 26; Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 42 (1912): 26; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 43 (1912–13): 26; Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 44 (1913): 26. Men’s underwear was likewise described in these terms: Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 55 (1918–19): 73.
61 Lydia Edwards, How to Read a Dress: A Guide to Changing Fashion from the 16th to the 20th Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2017), 123–27.
62 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 38 (1910): 69.
63 Prudence Black et al., “What Lies Beneath? Thoughts on Men’s Underpants,” Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion 1, no. 2 (2014): 134. For more of the layers beneath, specifically singlets, see Jess Berry, “The Underside of the Undershirt: Australian Masculine Identity and Representations of the Undershirt in the ‘Chesty Bond’ Comic-Strip Advertisements,” Critical Studies in Men’s Fashion 1, no. 2 (2014): 147–59; Lorinda Cramer, “Rethinking Men’s Dress through Material Sources: The Case Study of a Singlet,” Australian Historical Studies 52, no. 3 (2021): 420–42.
64 For more on the gendered rendering of bodies in mail order catalogues, see Reekie, Temptations, 137–42.
65 “‘Reason Why’ Copy,” Draper of Australasia, 31 March 1927, 115; Reekie, Temptations, 176.
66 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 38 (1910): 69; Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 54 (1918): 81.
67 Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue (1935): 37.
68 “Monthly Advertising Review,” Draper of Australasia, 27 April 1912, 165.
69 Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 66 (1923): 94.
70 Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 67 (1923–24): 66; Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 69 (1924): 73.
71 Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 67 (1923–24): 106.
72 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 77 (1928): 69; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 67 (1923–24): 67; and Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 69 (1924): 73.
73 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 73 (1926): 76; Foy & Gibson, Summer Catalogue 74 (1926–27): 76.
74 Susan North, Sweet and Clean? Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020).
75 Shaun Cole, The Story of Men’s Underwear (New York: Parkstone International, 2011), 52–53.
76 Gustav Jaeger, Dr Jaeger’s Health Culture, enlarged and revised ed., trans. and ed. Lewis R. S. Tomalin (London: Waterlow and Sons Limited, 1887), 117. Jaeger went further, insisting it was “not enough to wear wool next to the skin, and any other material over it”. Rather, only wool should be worn to permit exhalations when “the noxious portion of the exhalation settles in the vegetable fibre”. Jaeger, Dr Jaeger’s Health Culture, 118.
77 Cole, The Story of Men’s Underwear, 54.
78 Foy & Gibson, Summer Catalogue 57 (1919–20): 77; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 80 (1929–30): 71; Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue, Adelaide 48 (1930): 64.
79 Jill Julius Matthews, “They Had Such a Lot of Fun: The Women’s League of Health and Beauty between the Wars,” History Workshop 30, no. 1 (Autumn 1990): 22–54.
80 Charlotte Macdonald, Strong, Beautiful and Modern: National Fitness in Britain, New Zealand, Australia and Canada, 1935–1960 (Wellington: Bridget Williams Books, 2011).
81 Walter E. Withrow, “The Editor’s Foreword,” Withrow’s Physical Culture Magazine (1920): 5.
82 Dame Fashion, “The Flight of Fashion, Month by Month, December 1926,” Gibsonia Gazette 4 (December 1926): 6. The Gibsonia Gazette combined “home hints” with its catalogue pages. According to the Draper of Australasia, it was so strong in “the technique and essentials of good advertising” that they could “offer no suggestions for improvement”. See “Make the Advertising Pay,” Draper of Australasia, 31 May 1927, 228.
83 For example: Douglas Booth, “Swimming, Surfing and Surf-Lifesaving,” in Sport in Australia: A Social History, ed. Wray Vamplew and Brian Stoddart (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 231–54; Jennifer Craik, “Swimwear, Surfwear, and the Bronzed Body in Australia,” Berg Encyclopedia of World Dress and Fashion, Volume 7, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands, ed. Margaret Maynard (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2010), 113–20.
84 Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 78 (1928): 81; Kay Saunders, “‘Specimens of Superb Manhood’: The Lifesaver as National Icon,” Journal of Australian Studies 22, no. 56 (1998): 96–105.
85 Stephen Garton, The Cost of War: Australians Return (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1996); Marina Larrson, Shattered Anzacs: Living with the Scars of War (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2009); Saunders, “‘Specimens of Superb Manhood’,” 96–7.
86 Saunders, “‘Specimens of Superb Manhood’,” 97.
87 Dame Fashion, “The Flight of Fashion, Month by Month, December 1926,” Gibsonia Gazette 4 (1926): 6.
88 Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 41 (1911–12): 15; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 43 (1912–13): 84.
89 Foy & Gibson, Summer Catalogue 74 (1926–27): 74.
90 This corresponds with Reekie’s finding that men appeared active in mail order catalogues “in contrast to women who appeared to be almost exclusively creatures of leisure”. Reekie, Temptations, 140.
91 Entwistle, “Fashion and the Fleshy Body,” 334; Jennifer Craik, The Face of Fashion: Cultural Studies in Fashion (London: Routledge, 1994), 136.
92 Entwistle, “Fashion and the Fleshy Body,” 327.
93 Entwistle, “Fashion and the Fleshy Body,” 334.
94 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 38 (1910): 26; Foy & Gibson, Summer Catalogue 39 (1910–11): 26; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 41 (1911–12): 26; Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 42 (1912): 26; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 43 (1912–13): 26; Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 44 (1913): 26.
95 Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 55 (1918–19): 73; Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 77 (1928): 69; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 80 (1929–30): 47; Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 81 (1930): 34; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 82 (1930–31): 42; and Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 83 (1931): 24.
96 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 73 (1926): 50; Foy & Gibson, Summer Catalogue 74 (1926–27): 26. And a variation in Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 75 (1927): 22.
97 Reekie, Temptations, 83.
98 Foy & Gibson, Autumn and Winter Catalogue 66 (1923): 65.
99 Walter E. Withrow, “Bathing Costumes and Bathing Customs,” Withrow’s Physical Culture (January 1924): 11.
100 Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 82 (1930–31): 73.
101 Foy & Gibson, Christmas Bargain Carnival (1935): 12.
102 Foy & Gibson, Spring Catalogue (1934): 28.
103 “Men’s Swim Suits,” Draper of Australasia 39, no. 6 (1939): 41.
104 “Jantzen Reports Many Changes in Swim Suits,” Textile Journal of Australia 14, no. 5 (1939): 221.
105 Craik, “‘Feeling Premium’,” 214–32.
106 Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 20 (1902): 52; Foy & Gibson, Catalogue 29 (ca. 1906): 58; Foy & Gibson, Summer Catalogue 30 (1906–7): 59; Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 38 (1910): 69.
107 Foy & Gibson, Summer Catalogue 64 (1922): 78; Foy & Gibson, Spring and Summer Catalogue 78 (1928): 71; and Foy & Gibson, Winter Catalogue 83 (1931): 33.