John Styles

Publications

The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England
John Styles (Fletcher Jones Distinguished Fellow, 1995-96)

John Styles reveals that ownership of new fabrics and new fashions was not confined to the rich but extended far down the social scale to the small farmers, day laborers, and petty tradespeople who formed a majority of the population. The author focuses on the clothes ordinary people wore, the ways they acquired them, and the meanings they attached to them, shedding new light on all types of attire and the occasions on which they were worn.