In eighteenth-century America, fashion served as a site of contests
over various forms of gendered power. Here, Kate Haulman explores
how and why fashion--both as a concept and as the changing style of
personal adornment--linked gender relations, social order,
commerce, and political authority during a time when traditional
hierarchies were in flux.
In the see-and-be-seen port cities of Boston, New York,
Philadelphia, and Charleston, fashion, a form of power and
distinction, was conceptually feminized yet pursued by both men and
women across class ranks. Haulman shows that elite men and women in
these cities relied on fashion to present their status but also
attempted to undercut its ability to do so for others. Disdain for
others' fashionability was a means of safeguarding social position
in cities where the modes of dress were particularly fluid and a
way to maintain gender hierarchy in a world in which women's power
as consumers was expanding. Concerns over gendered power expressed
through fashion in dress, Haulman reveals, shaped the
revolutionary-era struggles of the 1760s and 1770s, influenced
national political debates, and helped to secure the exclusions of
the new political order.