Stays and Body Image in London:

The Staymaking Trade, 1680–1810

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Lynn Sorge-English

The Body, Gender and Culture

Stays were the most important article of women's clothing in eighteenth-century life. Worn from infancy, they were designed to reshape the female body into an accepted aesthetic ideal. Starting with their production and trade, Sorge-English uses surviving examples to look at the intricacies of the staymaker’s craft, the role of gender in the design and manufacture of stays and their changing shape over time. The study shows how long-term use caused serious health problems throughout women's lives and that as they became more involved in the production process women influenced their design to become closer to the natural female form.

This book takes a unique approach to the cultural and social history of clothing by combining material analysis with more traditional research methods that includes the discovery of an eighteenth-century staymaker’s diary.

Sample pages

• Stays and Body Image: Introduction
• Stays and Body Image: Index

Readership

Eighteenth-Century Studies, History of Medicine and Gender Studies

Contents

Introduction
1 Stays Trade and Production in London
2 Stays Provision and Supply
3 Stays and the Body through the Life Cycle
4 Consumption: Class and Gender
5 Aesthetics of Body Image and Representation
Conclusion

Related titles

• The Clothing Trade in Provincial England, 1800–1850
• Clothing, Society and Culture in Nineteenth-Century England
• The British Cotton Trade, 1660–1815

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