Foundations of Fashion

Silks, velvets, lace, fine woollen cloths fashioned into gowns, coats and robes – these are all visible elements of eighteenth-century fashion, familiar to us through the many portraits of the period. But these fine elements needed a foundation, something that covered the body and protected the expensive outer garments from the sweat and toil of daily wear. Linen undergarments in the form of shifts and shirts were vital components of any eighteenth-century wardrobe, and linen cloth in general was known as a ‘universal commodity’. Without it, maintaining a fashionable and polite appearance was incredibly difficult. This talk will look at this somewhat underappreciated aspect of eighteenth-century fashion, exploring what linen production, use and trade looked like for Scottish society, showing how this plain and simple cloth linked Scots with the Caribbean and North America.

Dr Sally Tuckett is Senior Lecturer in Dress and Textile History, University of Glasgow. She teaches the MLitt in Dress and Textile Histories and a free online course, The History of Royal Fashion. Her research focuses on the Scottish clothing and textile cultures of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Exploring themes of manufacture, trade, and identity, she has published on Ayrshire whitework, Turkey red dyed cotton, and tartan. Her current work is looking at the links between Scottish linen production and clothes of the enslaved people in North America and has a forthcoming book, Transatlantic Threads, with Edinburgh University Press.

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