Concepts of place in British womenswear advertising, 1880–1914

The mass retailing of fashionable clothing is a practice which is bounded both by time, since each season’s new styles renders previous garments obsolete, and by space, as innovations are promoted as sanctioned by fashion capitals such as Paris, London, or New York. This study of fashion advertising in British national periodicals from 1880–1914 reflects on the historiography of retailing, from Jefferys to Breward and Stobart, which often makes strong distinctions between London and the provinces. Case studies of two retailers with multiple branches, H.J. Nicoll and Alfred Stedall, and of two retailers selling through mail-order, John Noble and Pryce Jones, will examine the methods used to sell goods internationally, nationally and locally. These case studies will draw on unpublished publicity documents in the National Archives and other collections, and on advertisements in national and local newspapers. An analysis of discourses of place in fashion magazines will investigate the ways in which magazines acted as virtual spaces in which readers could both receive and offer information. This will lead on to a consideration of Appadurai and Augé’s concepts of space, place and non-place in consumption, and the applicability of these to earlier periods.