The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860–1914
by Brent Shannon
Ohio University Press, 2006 Cloth: 978-0-8214-1702-7 | Paper: 978-0-8214-1703-4 | eISBN: 978-0-8214-4228-9 Library of Congress Classification HC260.C6S52 2006 Dewey Decimal Classification 306.3094109034
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
The English middle class in the late nineteenth century enjoyed an increase in the availability and variety of material goods. With that, the visual markers of class membership and manly behavior underwent a radical change. In The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860–1914, Brent Shannon examines familiar novels by authors such as George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hughes, and H. G. Wells, as well as previously unexamined etiquette manuals, period advertisements, and fashion monthlies, to trace how new ideologies emerged as mass-produced clothes, sartorial markers, and consumer culture began to change.
While Victorian literature traditionally portrayed women as having sole control of class representations through dress and manners, Shannon argues that middle-class men participated vigorously in fashion. Public displays of their newly acquired mannerisms, hairstyles, clothing, and consumer goods redefined masculinity and class status for the Victorian era and beyond.
The Cut of His Coat probes the Victorian disavowal of men's interest in fashion and shopping to recover men's significant role in the representation of class through self-presentation and consumer practices.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Brent Shannon is a visiting professor of English at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He has published articles on nineteeth-century literature and culture in Victorian Studies and Studies in Browning and His Circle.
REVIEWS
“Shannon’s book is like one of those nifty wardrobes advertised for sale by the new department stores of the era, a polished piece of furniture with carefully labeled chapters and neatly hanging concepts that help us organize all that information and tuck it away without getting it wrinkled.”—Ellis Hanson, author of Decadence and Catholicism
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
List of Figures 000
Acknowledgments 000
Introduction 001
Chapter One. "It cannot be supposed that men make no study of dress": The "Disappearance" of
Men's Fashion and Consumption in Victorian Britain 000
Chapter Two. Outfitting the Gent: The Emergence of the Male Consumer and the Commodification
of the Male Body 000
Chapter Three. "Really there is much more to be said about men's fashions than I had imagined":
Fashion and the Birth of the Men's Lifestyle Periodical 000
Chapter Four. From Dandy to Masher to Consumer: Competing Masculinities and Class
Aspirations 000
Chapter Five. Ready to Wear: Class Performance and the Triumph of Middle-Class Sartorial Taste
000
Epilogue 000
Notes 000
Bibliography 000
Index 000
The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860–1914
by Brent Shannon
Ohio University Press, 2006 Cloth: 978-0-8214-1702-7 Paper: 978-0-8214-1703-4 eISBN: 978-0-8214-4228-9
The English middle class in the late nineteenth century enjoyed an increase in the availability and variety of material goods. With that, the visual markers of class membership and manly behavior underwent a radical change. In The Cut of His Coat: Men, Dress, and Consumer Culture in Britain, 1860–1914, Brent Shannon examines familiar novels by authors such as George Eliot, Anthony Trollope, Thomas Hughes, and H. G. Wells, as well as previously unexamined etiquette manuals, period advertisements, and fashion monthlies, to trace how new ideologies emerged as mass-produced clothes, sartorial markers, and consumer culture began to change.
While Victorian literature traditionally portrayed women as having sole control of class representations through dress and manners, Shannon argues that middle-class men participated vigorously in fashion. Public displays of their newly acquired mannerisms, hairstyles, clothing, and consumer goods redefined masculinity and class status for the Victorian era and beyond.
The Cut of His Coat probes the Victorian disavowal of men's interest in fashion and shopping to recover men's significant role in the representation of class through self-presentation and consumer practices.
AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Brent Shannon is a visiting professor of English at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. He has published articles on nineteeth-century literature and culture in Victorian Studies and Studies in Browning and His Circle.
REVIEWS
“Shannon’s book is like one of those nifty wardrobes advertised for sale by the new department stores of the era, a polished piece of furniture with carefully labeled chapters and neatly hanging concepts that help us organize all that information and tuck it away without getting it wrinkled.”—Ellis Hanson, author of Decadence and Catholicism
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Contents
List of Figures 000
Acknowledgments 000
Introduction 001
Chapter One. "It cannot be supposed that men make no study of dress": The "Disappearance" of
Men's Fashion and Consumption in Victorian Britain 000
Chapter Two. Outfitting the Gent: The Emergence of the Male Consumer and the Commodification
of the Male Body 000
Chapter Three. "Really there is much more to be said about men's fashions than I had imagined":
Fashion and the Birth of the Men's Lifestyle Periodical 000
Chapter Four. From Dandy to Masher to Consumer: Competing Masculinities and Class
Aspirations 000
Chapter Five. Ready to Wear: Class Performance and the Triumph of Middle-Class Sartorial Taste
000
Epilogue 000
Notes 000
Bibliography 000
Index 000
ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC