Dress [ Clothing & Fashion / Taste & Manners ]
… McKendrick, ‘Fashion was the key used by many commentators to explain the forces of social imitation, social emulation, class competition and emulative spending’. McKendrick refers to Bernard Mandeville’s The Fable of the Bees (1723), … fashions became a feat of expense and extremity – fuelled by a need to distinguish oneself not only from the lower classes, but also from one’s peers. According to Hannah Greig, ’Wearing appropriate dress was an essential passport for … particularly at court, forming a distinctive look, and out-doing last season’s gowns, now on the backs of the working classes, demanded a constant monetary expense and continual social assessment of the latest fashions and those items …
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