This two-day conference aims to explore the following aspects of tailored clothes for women: their material culture and their trans-European and trans-Atlantic diffusions and intersections of design, manufacture, trade and commerce.

We define women’s tailoring as bespoke, ready to-wear and mass manufactured tailored feminine garments made, usually but not always in woollen cloth, by tailors using specific, professional tailors’ pattern cutting and making up skills and processes and sold in couture salons, department stores, individual tailoring establishments and wholesale ready-to-wear companies and through the second- hand clothes trade in the 1750 -1920 period. We are including tailors/tailoring from Britain, Europe and North America in our research. Dressmakers also, though far less frequently, also designed and made up such garments and we include them too.

DAY ONE 18th Sept: ‘Tailored clothes for women in Ireland-1750-1920 in the context of Irish social history.’ Consultants: Eliza McKee, Queens University Belfast, Valerie Wilson, Ulster Folk Museum and Charlotte McReynolds [add museum].

Themes might include:
The Irish role in the development of waterproofing.
The design and manufacture of blouses.
Emigration of Irish tailors to USA etc and
Cross-class clothing from the poor through to tweedy sporty/shooting, hunting couture garments related to British Viceroy society in Dublin and Belfast.
The trade in second-hand tailored clothes.
The role of Irish department stores like Robinson & Cleaver in manufacturing and disseminating tailored clothing.
Distinctions between tailored rural dress and urban dress.
The Irish role in the development of tweed and waterproofing.

DAY TWO: Sept. 24th : ‘The Transnational Diffusion of Women’s Tailoring style across Europe and America: 1750-1920.’

Themes might include:
Emigration of tailors to USA- from Britain and Europe 1750-1900.
The spread of tailored fashionable styles for women to and from Britain, Europe and USA within the period 1750-1920.
Blouses, hats or accessories worn with tailored clothes for women in one specific timeframe within the period 1750-1920.
Assessment of tailored garments for women made and marketed at branches of leading trans-European and trans-Atlantic couture salons -1870-1920. Did one country lead this design development?
Middle class women as consumers of fashionable tailored clothes for women in the mid 19th century with an analysis of the function and sources of such garments.
The development of cheapest levels of mass manufactured tailored clothes for women in UK, Germany, Austria, France and USA – 1850-1910 and its diffusion.
Pattern cutting systems for women’s tailored garments and their trans-European and trans-Atlantic diffusion.
Hostility to tailored styles for women between 1750-1920. Cartoons/text/images
Analysis of etiquette rules attached to the fabric of, and the wearing of fashionable tailored garments for women in the mid-late 19th century.
Assessment of the quality and price differences at all market levels of tailored clothes for women manufactured in one country and within one specific timeframe: i.e. 1895, 1910, or 1920.
The design and development of tailor-made travelling clothes for women.
Analysis of wardrobe collections and photographs of individual women who wore tailored clothes.
The collecting and display of women’s tailored clothing in museums with an emphasis on what survives, what does not and why.

We invite proposals for papers of 20 minutes.