Market a la mode: fashion, commodity, and gender in The tatler and The spectator

Abstract

In 18th-century England, fashion-conscious readers learned about changing tastes through lifestyle magazines. On the pages of such periodicals as Tatler and Spectator, readers found an analysis of the hoop skirt, which was both denigrated and celebrated, as well as stories following the growth of window shopping as a popular recreational activity and the frustrating results of this trend for shopkeepers. The critics of these magazines recognized that fashion was an indication of much else, including the growth and spread of commerce, the rise of personal aspirations, and the mark of social divisions. As they compared the tastes of different strata of English life, showing with their favour and blame how they felt British culture should express itself, they found occasion after occasion to transform aesthetics into ethics. This text examines the role that these two periodicals played in the growth of fashion and how they influenced their readers. It traces the commercial context in which Tatler and Spectator operated, focusing on the processes of commodification, fetishization, and revisions of gender identity. The study argues that fashion publications, far from being commentaries on passing fancies, assumed a leading role in defining women's legitimate sphere of activities as well as in the development of commerce as recreation.