Whalebone and fashion in seventeenth-century England : Changing consumer culture, trade and innovation

Book chapter


Bendall, Sarah. (2023). Whalebone and fashion in seventeenth-century England : Changing consumer culture, trade and innovation. In In Bide, Bethan, Halbert, Jade and Tregenza, Liz (Ed.). Everyday Fashion : Interpreting British Clothing Since 1600 pp. 21 - 35 Bloomsbury Academic.
AuthorsBendall, Sarah
EditorsBide, Bethan, Halbert, Jade and Tregenza, Liz
Abstract

[Extract] At the end of the seventeenth century the consumer landscape of England was vastly different from that of the sixteenth century as new raw materials from around the world made their way into people’s homes and wardrobes. Historians have shown that the diets of fashionable Europeans increasingly contained goods such as sugar, tea and coffee, and their households and wardrobes were filled with colourful porcelain and cotton calicoes. This connected English men and women to a widening world of global trade and consumption, often at the expense of the people and animals that provided such goods. By the eighteenth century, the silhouettes of English women and men were altered with foreign commodities that had come to replace local materials once used to structure fashion. These imported materials included rattan, a type of cane imported in large quantities by the English East India Company, and whale baleen that was sourced from the Arctic and North America. Baleen is the name given to keratinous plates in the mouth of baleen whales that form part of a filter-feeder system. In the early modern period, it was known as whale fin in its raw form and whalebone after being cut for use.1 The unique flexibility, strength and malleability of this natural material made it popular in clothing and other manufacturing right up until the twentieth century.

Keywordswhalebone; baleen ; clothing ; seventeenth century
Page range21 - 35
Year01 Jan 2023
Book titleEveryday Fashion : Interpreting British Clothing Since 1600
PublisherBloomsbury Academic
Place of publicationUnited Kingdom
Edition1
ISBN978-1-3502-3247-1
Web address (URL)https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/acu/detail.action?pq-origsite=primo&docID=30751905
Open accessPublished as non-open access
Research or scholarlyResearch
Publisher's version
License
All rights reserved
File Access Level
Controlled
Output statusPublished
Publication dates
Online28 Dec 2023
Publication process dates
Deposited05 Jul 2024
Additional information

Selection, editorial matter, Introductions © Bethan Bide, Jade Halbert and Liz Tregenza, 2024

Individual chapters © their Authors, 2024

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