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CHORD Workshop:Retailing, Shopping and Gender:Historical Approaches 15 May 2013 University of Wolverhampton PROGRAMME 10.30 – 11.00 Coffee and welcome Retail Strategies 11.00 – 11.30 Anneleen Arnout, University of Leuven &#38; University of Antwerp, BelgiumFlaneurs and Grisettes: Shopping in the Galeries Saint-Hubert in nineteenth-century Brussels11.30 – 12.00 Justin Bengry, McGill University, Canada and Birkbeck, University of London‘What has happened to the nation’s manhood?’: John Stephen’s Queer Retail Strategies, 1956-6612.30 – 13.00 Emily M. Orr, Royal College of Art/Victoria &#38; Albert MuseumThe Window Dresser ‘Baiting His Lady-Trap 13.00 – 14.00 Lunch Consumption and Commodities 14.00 – 14.30 Elin Jones, Queen Mary, University of London‘I..shall compleat myself with everything I want’: Naval men and masculine consumerism, 1758 – 181514.30 – 15.00 Thomas Turner, Birkbeck, University of LondonLawn tennis shoes for men and for women, c.1870–c.190015.00 – 15.30 Cheryl Roberts, University of Brighton and Middlesex UniversityA Price for Fashion? A Young Working Class Woman's Wardrobe in 1930s London15.30 – 16.00 Coffee Retailers 16.00 – 16.30 Juliet Claxton, Queen Mary, University of London‘His wife was the rich china-woman that the courtiers visited so often’: The role of the china-woman in early modern London16.30 – 17.00 Deborah Wynne, University of ChesterHades! The Ladies!:The Male Draper in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Popular Culture&#160;INFORMATIONThe workshop will be held in Room MH110,Mary Seacole Building (MH), located on the University of Wolverhampton’s City campus, just 10 minutes’ walk from Wolverhampton’s bus and train stations.For directions, please click here. MH building is located in City Campus North.The workshop fee is £16To register, please complete the registration form, available here.Details of accommodation in Wolverhamptoncan be found hereFor further information, please contact:Dr. Laura Ugolini, School of Law, Social Sciences and Communications University of WolverhamptonE-mail:  L.Ugolini@wlv.ac.uk&#160;ABSTRACTSAnneleen Arnout, University of Leuven &#38; University of Antwerp, BelgiumFlaneurs and Grisettes: Shopping in the Galeries Saint-Hubert in nineteenth-century Brussels Ever since Walter Benjamin left us his unfinished arcades-project, the shopping arcade has come to be emblematic for the experience of urban modernity during the nineteenth-century. Historians studying nineteenth-century cities or the concept of modernity often refer to it as a distinct modern urban space. Nevertheless, research on the arcade as an urban and commercialized space has been rather scarce. On the one hand, the existing research on the arcade has mainly been executed from an architectural and conservational point of view. On the other hand, Benjamin’s astute characterization of the arcade as an iconic commercialized urban space seems to have warded off historians. Scholars of the nineteenth-century consumer culture have very much tended to focus on those institutions Benjamin had identified as their immediate successors: the department stores.By focusing on department stores and neglecting other shopping spaces within the nineteenth-century city, we have missed opportunities to intensify our understanding of the complexity of shopping practices. For example, through the very valuable research on department stores we have come to know shopping in the city as an extensively gendered practice. However, our knowledge is mainly based on the turn of the century department store and does not extend very far beyond that sphere. We know less about the gendered character of shopping practices in other urban shopping spaces such as the market place, the corner shop and the arcade. The arcade is an especially interesting case to research because of its entanglement with the concept of the male flâneur. Its implicit association with masculinity stands in stark contrast with the ‘female’ department store. In this paper I will try to unravel the gendered use of space in the Galeries Saint-Hubert in nineteenth-century Brussels. This 1847 arcade was one of the major nineteenth-century arcades, setting an architectural example for many to come after it. It held the middle between the socially diverse Parisian arcades and the more aristocratic ones in London. I will argue that this arcade was a mixed space, in which shopping practices were nevertheless gendered, though in a less straightforward way than in the later department stores.&#160;Justin Bengry, McGill University, Canada and Birkbeck, University of London‘What has happened to the nation’s manhood?’: John Stephen’s Queer Retail Strategies, 1956-66 Glaswegian John Stephen was perhaps the most successful interpreter of queer menswear styles in postwar Britain. This paper will consider the evolution of Stephen’s retail strategies with regard to the queer styles he proffered and the queer life he hid. Coming out of post-WWII physique photography and magazines, through the small gay-owned Soho boutiques emerging in the 1950s, the success of styles that gave rise to Carnaby Street as a global centre of men’s fashion reaching its peak success in the md 1960s can be directly attributed to John Stephen’s invocation, manipulation, sanitization, and popularization of queer style.Since his days as a sales assistant at Vince Man’s Shop, the notoriously queer Soho menswear shop the mid 1950s, John Stephen recognized the potential first for expanding the queer market, and then of harnessing a still edgy aesthetic to mainstream previously queer-coded fashions to a wider audience. For the next decade Stephen, the ‘King of Carnaby Street’, created a male fashion empire by interpreting and designing fashions based on an aesthetic of beauty long associated with gay men. Still further, his retailing and marketing strategies were directly influenced by his products’ queerness, his position as an icon of Mod menswear, and his own homosexuality. Stephen’s transformation of a queer aesthetic for mainstream male consumers did not go uncontested, however, and at the height of his success in themid 1960s, Stephen was forced once again to contend with accusations of his products’ queer associations.This paper is based on a variety of sources across business archives, media coverage, and the oral histories. It relies upon collections held at the Victoria &#38; Albert Museum’s Art and Design Collection, the Brighton Ourstory Oral History Archive, the Lesbian and Gay Newsmedia Archive, the Hall-Carpenter Archive of Gay and Lesbian History, as well as numerous smaller library and media collections. This primary evidence is supported by analysis and historiography from gay and lesbian history, cultural history and the history of consumerism.&#160;Juliet Claxton, Queen Mary, University of London‘His wife was the rich china-woman that the courtiers visited so often’: The role of the china-woman in early modern London Manuscript sources indicate that specialized shops, termed china-houses were established in London in the first half the seventeenth century.  As their name suggests the china-houses sold Chinese porcelain, but their stock also included fans and lacquer objects, as well as luxury goods of European origin including Venetian glass.  In fact the London china-houses are a particular feature of the play Epicene by Ben Jonson, first performed in 1609, which introduces the character of Mrs. Otter, who is literature’s first ‘china-woman’, or dedicated retailer of oriental commodities. Seventeenth-century literary and manuscript sources suggest that women were not only the principal clients of the china-houses, but that selling luxury Asian commodities was a profession that was increasingly linked to women – a trend that continued into the eighteenth century.My paper will explore the role of female merchants in this expanding luxury market place, and it will focus on an un-published probate inventory dated 1682, which records the contents of both the private house and London warehouse of a wealthy female merchant.  The first part of the inventory is missing and the personal details of the merchant herself have not survived, but the remaining pages reveal that alongside high-quality material, clothing and jewels, the merchant also provided luxury oriental goods such as porcelain and lacquer to courtiers.  The long list of aristocratic debtors at the end of the inventory also evidences that the merchant’s principal clients included Sir Peter Lely and several famous court beauties, such as Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland and Louise de Kerouaille. By concentrating on the procurement and sale of Asian commodities to later Stuart courtiers, my paper will examine the gender-specific mechanisms and networks used by china-women to sell luxury commodities in pre-eighteenth century London.&#160;Elin Jones, Queen Mary, University of London‘I..shall compleat myself with everything I want’: Naval men and masculine consumerism, 1758 – 1815 In the opening months of 1810, the man who would become Admiral Henry Jenkinson wrote to his mother, informing her that whilst his ship the Clyde was in port he intended to ‘compleat’ himself with everything which he deemed to befit an aspiring officer of the Royal Navy. Indeed, Jenkinson’s letters home during the period 1808 – 1814 demonstrate an acute sense of the material objects he felt he needed, as well as an evident knowledge of the value of objects; his comment that ‘My new Worsted stockings are not worth two pence’ sits alongside many of the same ilk.Through my current research in to masculinity and material culture in the Royal Navy during the period 1758 – 1815, I have discovered that Jenkinson was not alone in his mastering the realm of consumer goods. Receipts and inventories of many naval officers depict almost frantic bursts of shopping and consumer behavior in their attempt to ‘fit out’ for a voyage. These episodes of shopping involved the consumption of a smorgasbord of products, including silk scarves, personalized navigational instruments, as well as vast quantities of silver, china, and furniture. Furthermore, I believe that the way in which advertising aimed at naval officers was constructed implied that they could shop for products which would bolster their maritime knowledge and sea-faring acumen, whereas in previous centuries this prized knowledge was accepted to be the preserve only of the seasoned mariner.Naval officers then, were not passive recipients of the booming eighteenth century consumer revolution, but rather active participants; participants who were well versed in the practices of ‘shopping around’ and for whom advertisements were increasingly and carefully designed. Although work done by Margot Finn and Amanda Vickery has already confirmed that men did act as consumers, my research pushes to the forefront a group of men who were often married, yet operating as rampant consumers outside the familial home, and engaged in the task of filling their ship-board homes with material goods. Not only were men actively shopping, but they were shopping to ‘compleat’ a transient home which was theirs alone, and which would be juxtaposed with the realities of naval warfare. How these men shopped was thus very different from not only women, but also other groups of men. However, my argument is that understanding their shopping patterns and motives enlarges our understanding of the implications of the consumer revolution for men generally, as well as of how naval officers could construct their masculine identities through the world of goods.&#160;Emily M. Orr, Royal College of Art/Victoria &#38; Albert MuseumThe Window Dresser ‘Baiting His Lady-Trap’ At the turn of the twentieth century, male department store display strategists engaged in a complex dialogue with art and commerce in the show window often guided by deliberate strategy to tempt the female consumer. This paper will challenge impressionistic interpretations of department store window display and uncover the calculated layouts, labor-intensive mechanics, and attentive artistic aims that governed the work of the window dresser as he assembled objects into configurations and narratives. I will propose that the show window not only captured the contemporary imagination, but also demonstrated professional skill, and experimented with a gendered consumer psychology.A few times a week on the shopping streets of London display men reassembled temporary exhibitions in department store windows that competed to showcase the fashionable goods on the market and develop the store’s identity. I aim to reshape lines of thinking around department store visual merchandising by foregrounding the point of view of the expert male window dresser as he formulated gender-conscious displays. These department store employees followed the advice of a growing body of didactic literature in order to construct imaginative and yet financially successful window designs. I will draw on the primary evidence in retail trade journals, advice manuals, correspondence school textbooks, and periodical accounts to determine how male retailers perceived and arranged their expanding material world to target females. Authors wrote on female-specific tactics of color, the creation of an attractive atmosphere, appropriate themes, and proper sales copy. Window dressers draped fabrics on blocks so as to simulate the impression of a woman’s skirt on the body. Texts identified particular color harmonies as most pleasing to female passersby. Mannequins earned popularity for their ability to show garments and accessories in use therefore prompting personal connection to the goods.  Advice manuals included graceful window designs such as a giant lily flower formed from hundreds of folded handkerchiefs. By offering a new and more precise reading of the department store show window, this paper will investigate how gender was evaluated in the then emerging professional practice of window display.&#160;Cheryl Roberts, University of Brighton and Middlesex UniversityA Price for Fashion? A Young Working Class Woman's Wardrobe in 1930s London This interdisciplinary material culture analysis, ‘A Price for Fashion: A Young Working Class Woman’s Wardrobe in 1930s London’ will investigate the design, manufacture, retailing and consumption of fashion for a working class woman in the 1930s. This paper will explore a young working class woman’s fashion interests and purchasing power probing the influences of issues such as modernity, peer group cohesion, leisure and related dress, along with the reactions of their parents and peers. As Todd notes, ‘as rising numbers of young women worked in larger factories, shops and offices, so workplaces increasingly became a venue for friendship and for disseminating information on fashion and appearance.’ In the context of work, income, family and gender expectations, this study will thus explore the life, work and aspirations of a young working class woman in the 1930s through the contents of her wardrobe.Three key themes will be acceptability, accessibility and affordability. Accessibility will discover the influences on a young working-class woman in her purchasing choices with reflection on magazines; cinema; mass manufacture and ready-to-wear; peers and parents. Affordability of fashion will research where the young working-class woman of London in the 1930s would have been purchasing her clothing by investigating high street retail; mail order catalogues; the tallyman; the pawn shop; markets; home-dressmaking and the power of window shopping. The final key theme, acceptability, unravels where a young working-class woman in London would have worn the clothing in her wardrobe, be it to work in the office, the factory or in the retail sector; for leisure activities, such as dance halls or sport; and to church.Research methodology and interdisciplinary approaches will include investigation of department store archives along with emerging period mail-order catalogues from Littlewoods and expanding cheap ready-to-wear retailers such as Marks and Spencer for prices and quality of cheap ready-to-wear fashion. Written testimony at The Mass Observation Archive at the University of Sussex, which records British social history in public surveys from the 1930s onwards, will be explored along with editorials and advertisements from period magazines such as Mabs, Home Chat, Picture Post and the Picturegoer. Documentary photography from pioneers Humphrey Spender and Edith Tudor Hart along with amateur photographs will be closely assessed. Film analysis will explore both the influence of the cinema visit and amateur film footage will be applied as a tool into researching material culture. Object-based study closely assess surviving dress in collections at Worthing Museum, Walsall Museum and the University of Brighton Teaching collection.&#160;Thomas Turner, Birkbeck, University of LondonLawn tennis shoes for men and for women, c.1870–c.1900 The invention and popular success of lawn tennis in the late Victorian period created a need for a new type of footwear. The rubber-soled lawn tennis shoe was designed and advocated as a means to prevent damage to grass playing surfaces and to enable players to move with graceful ease. The game itself was intimately woven into the social conventions of middle class life; by enabling men and women to play together, its success owed much to its role in Victorian rituals of courtship. This social and cultural function exerted a powerful influence on the tennis shoe. Although the practical requirements of male and female players were ostensibly the same, shoes designed for men and women differed hugely, both stylistically and in the way they were presented to a buying public.Using a range of archival sources, trade advertising, and the popular press, this paper will explore the gendered nature of lawn tennis shoe design and retailing in late Victorian Britain. I argue that manufacturers and sellers of tennis shoes differentiated their products to appeal to middle class male and female buyers, and that in so doing they reflected and reinforced popular gender stereotypes and also enabled consumers to generate newer notions of gender themselves. For men, lawn tennis shoes became part of a modern wardrobe that stressed youthful virility and physical activity, while for women they helped support notions of genteel femininity and inactivity. For both, the lawn tennis shoe was part of a growing world of fashionable consumer goods. I argue that shoe design, retail environments, advertising, and the discussion of tennis shoes in the press contributed to gendered visions of consumption and that these allowed men and women to participate in the pleasures of shopping in different ways.In doing this, my paper will draw on recent scholarship by Erika Rappaport, Christopher Breward, Brent Shannon and others that has stressed the gender implications of Victorian shopping. By investigating an item of sports clothing seldom considered by historians, it will build on the existing work to make hitherto unexplored connections between product design, retailing, fashion, sport, and ideas of gender.&#160;Deborah Wynne, University of ChesterHades! The Ladies!:The Male Draper in Late-Victorian and Edwardian Popular Culture The male draper figured prominently in the popular culture of the late-Victorian and Edwardian periods, a time when the female consumer was gaining increasing power. Charles Cavers, a Bond Street draper trading from the 1880s to the 1920s, recorded in his posthumously published diary, Hades! The Ladies!: The Diary of a Draper: ‘There is a social prejudice, definite and antagonistic, against the draper and all his doings.’ Viewed as an anomaly among men, the draper was often derided for his association with a largely female world of fashion and household textiles. Indeed, Cavers records overhearing the members of his club dismissing one of his colleagues as ‘only a damned draper […] a bloody baby-linen merchant.’ Cavers seeks out a variety of cultural representations of his trade, at the theatre and in popular ‘drapery novels,’ such as those by H.G. Wells, The Wheels of Chance (1895), Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr Polly (1910), as well as Arnold Bennett’s The Old Wives’ Tale (1908), all of which depict male protagonists who start their careers as drapers’ assistants.  For Cavers, the ‘little fellows’ represented by Wells and Bennett ‘are the ones who claim my interest and from whom I cannot withhold my affection.’ Yet, as this paper will demonstrate, Wells’s drapers tend to be represented as comic and unsexed figures, while Bennett considers the man who trades in women’s clothing as a figure worthy of serious representation. Cavers’s diary offers a useful framework with which to read the diversity of fin-de-siècle representations of male shop workers, and this paper assesses the cultural significance of the fictional draper in terms of his potential to disturb conventions of masculinity. His deference towards female customers and knowledge of textiles and fashion, both associated with female consumption, did not accord with fin-de-siècle notions of masculinity, often figured through images of military men and imperial expansion. The emergence of the New Woman at this period also offered challenges to traditional ideas about the relationship between the sexes. The male draper, as this paper will show, was represented in popular culture as both a figure of fun and a potential threat, rarely as a man who just happened to trade in textiles. 