The Case of the Hidden Consumer: Men, Fashion and Luxury, 1870–1974

Abstract

‘I always hold in having it if you fancy it!’ sang the music hall star Marie Lloyd in the final decade of the nineteenth century, a clarion call to an unapologetic and popular consumption of luxury commodities that appears to illustrate precisely the claims made for new forms of consumer behaviour by recent investigations into the nature of late nineteenth-century consumer culture. The character of both the evidence and much of the analysis surrounding Victorian shopping practices, however, also suggests that both consumer choice and consumer pleasure were prioritized and enforced for one half of the population and either stigmatized or ignored by the other. Fashion consumption in particular has been presented by historians and social commentators as an activity defined and divided through gender difference;¹ from the late eighteenth century through to the mid-twentieth century it has been generally assumed that women consumers held the prerogative as far as choice and style in clothing and related ‘luxury’ commodities were concerned.

I would like to thank John Styles, Madeleine Ginsburg, Deborah Sugg, James Ryan, Tim Barringer, Louise Purbrick, David Peters Corbett, Naomi Tarrant, Penny Sparke and Frank Mort for comments, suggestions and support received during ongoing research into clothing and nineteenth-century masculinity.