¹ “Laced Mutton” was slang for prostitute, and “Mutton Monger” a man addicted to wenching. See A Classical Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue (London, 1785)Google Scholar.

² “The Mantua Maker,” in The London Magazine; or, Gentleman's Monthly Intelligencer (London, 1737), 574Google Scholar. In case the antiquity of mutton was in doubt, a woman past her prime might be labeled an “old Ewe.” “‘Look at the old Ewe dressed lamb-fashion’ gasped visitors at the theatre in the Belle Assemblée of 1807. ‘Where? Oh Horrid, horrid!’ I raised my head, and could not help exclaiming with them horrid!” La Belle Assemblée, 50 vols. (London, 1807), 2Google Scholar:222.

³ For an overview, see Shahar, Shulamith, Growing Old in the Middle Ages: “Winter Clothes Us in Shadow and Pain” (1995; London, 2004)Google Scholar; Botelho, Lynn and Thane, Pat, eds., Women and Aging in British Society Since 1500 (Harlow, 2001)Google Scholar; Thane, Pat, Old Age in English History: Past Experiences, Present Issues (Oxford, 2000)Google Scholar.

⁴ Shepard, Alexandra, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003), 54–55Google Scholar.

⁵ Vickery, Amanda, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England (New Haven, CT, 2009), 49–82Google Scholar.

⁶ Kugler, Anne, “I Feel Myself Decay Apace: Old Age in the Diary of Lady Sarah Cowper (1644–1720),” in Botelho and Thane, Women and Aging in British Society Since 1500, 73Google Scholar.

⁷ Heath, Kay, Aging by the Book: The Emergence of Mid Life in Victorian Britain (2009), 1–24Google Scholar. In its nature, what constitutes “middle age” is itself mutable, adjusting to the moving threshold of old age, though a single, meaningful measure of elderliness has proved elusive. Chase, Karen, The Victorians and Old Age (Oxford, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁸ Botelho, Lynn, “Old Age and Menopause in Rural Women of Early Modern Suffolk,” in Women and Aging, 43–65Google Scholar. Menopause was not a term used until the nineteenth century and there was debate among seventeenth- and eighteenth-century medical authorities about its implications for female health. See Mendelson, Sarah and Crawford, Patricia, Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720 (Oxford, 1998), 25–26CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For later debates, see Foxcroft, Louise, Hot Flushes, Cold Science: A History of the Modern Menopause (London, 2010)Google Scholar.

⁹ Gowing, Laura, Common Bodies: Women, Touch and Power in Seventeenth Century England (New Haven, CT, 2003), 79Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Medieval convention also saw fifty as the boundary of old age. Sahar, “Who Were Old in the Middle Ages?” Social History of Medicine 6 (1993): 314–41Google Scholar.

¹¹ Jones, Robert, Gender and the Formation of Taste in Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Analysis of Beauty (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar; Rosenthal, Angela, “Visceral Culture: Blushing and the Legibility of Whiteness in Eighteenth-Century British Portraiture,” Art History 27, no. 4 (September 2004): 562–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Yeazell, Ruth, Fictions of Modesty: Women and Courtship in the English Novel (Chicago, 1991), 65–80Google Scholar.

¹² See the age of marriage table in Wrigley, E. A. and Schofield, R. S., The Population History of England, 1541–1871: A Reconstruction (London, 1981), 255Google Scholar. These are broad means, within which there was variation by rank, occupation, and locality.

¹³ Anne Elliot's bloom had long vanished by age twenty-six, while her older sister Elizabeth though very handsome “felt her approach to the years of danger.” Austen, Jane, Persuasion (1817; Oxford, 2004), 11–12Google Scholar. A letter to the editor of the London Magazine (March 1777), 132–33, proposed that no woman should be allowed to marry after the age of thirty-five “as at that period they shall be incapable of performing any of the necessary functions incident to such a happy state.” Discussed in McCreery, Cindy, The Satirical Gaze: Prints of Women in Late Eighteenth Century England (Oxford, 2004), 214Google Scholar.

¹⁴ Goldsmith, Oliver, Life of Richard Nash, Esq (London, 1762), 33Google Scholar; Fordyce, James, Sermons to Young Women (London, 1766), 112Google Scholar.

¹⁵ For literary criticisms of aging socialites, see Kittredge, Katharine, “‘The Ag'd Dame to Venery inclin'd’: Images of Sexual Older Women in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” in Power and Poverty: Old Age in the Pre-industrial Past, ed. Ottaway, Susanna, Botelho, Lynn, and Kittredge, Katharine (Ithaca, NY, 2002), 247–65Google Scholar.

¹⁶ Little, David M. and Kahrl, George M., eds., The Letters of David Garrick, 3 vols. (London, 1963), 2:557Google Scholar, 8 February 1767.

¹⁷ See especially Sahar, Growing Old; Botelho and Thane, Women and Aging; Ottaway et al., Old Age in the Pre-industrial Past; Thane, Old Age in English History; Ottaway, Susanna, The Decline of Life: Old Age in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2004)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Thane, Pat, ed., A History of Old Age (London, 2005)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ See Weatherill, Lorna, “A Possession of One's Own: Women and Consumer Behaviour in England, 1660–1740,” Journal of British Studies 25 (1986): 131–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Vickery, Amanda, “Women and the World of Goods: A Lancashire Consumer and her Possessions, 1751–81,” in Consumption and the World of Goods: Consumption and Society in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Brewer, John and Porter, Roy (London, 1993), 274–301Google Scholar; Kowaleski-Wallace, Beth, “Women, China and Consumer Culture in Eighteenth-Century England,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 29, no. 2 (1995–96): 153–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pointon, Marcia, Strategies for Showing: Women, Possession and Representation in English Visual Culture, 1665–1800 (Oxford, 1997)Google Scholar; Johanna Dahn, “Women and Taste: A Case Study of Katharine Plymley (1758–1829)” (PhD, University of Aberystwyth, 2001); Berg, Maxine, “Women's Consumption and the Industrial Classes of Eighteenth-Century England,” Journal of Social History 30, no. 2 (1996): 415–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On material culture, see Styles, John and Vickery, Amanda, eds., Gender, Taste and Material Culture in Britain and North America (New Haven, CT, 2006)Google Scholar; Harvey, Karen, ed., History and Material Culture: A Student's Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (London, 2009)Google Scholar; and Amanda Vickery, Behind Closed Doors: At Home in Georgian England.

¹⁹ Much dress history has charted the twists and turns of fashion change at the apex of society. See especially Ribeiro, Aileen, Dress in Eighteenth-Century Europe, 1715–1789 (London, 1984)Google Scholar and Dress and Morality (London, 1986)Google Scholar. But a broad range of society is covered in the classics Buck, Anne, Dress in Eighteenth-Century England (London, 1979)Google Scholar, and Ashelford, Jane, The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society, 1500–1900 (London, 1996)Google Scholar. On clothes and rank, see Vincent, Susan, Dressing the Elite: Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Clothes and the poverty cycle are addressed by Styles, John, The Dress of the People: Everyday Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England (New Haven, CT, 2008),Google Scholar and clothes and the life cycle are raised in Baumgarten, Linda, What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America (Williamsburg, 2003)Google Scholar. For fashion in textiles, see Lemire, Beverly, Fashion's Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1991)Google Scholar. On gender and the consumption of clothes, among other commodities, see Vickery, Amanda, “His and Hers: Gender, Consumption and Household Accounting in Eighteenth-Century England,” in The Art of Survival: Essays in Honour of Olwen Hufton, ed. Roper, Lyndal and Harris, Ruth (London, 2006), 12–38Google Scholar.

²⁰ Hallett, Mark, The Spectacle of Difference: Graphic Satire in the Age of Hogarth (New Haven, CT, 1998)Google Scholar. See also George, M. Dorothy, Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum, vols. 5–11 (London, 1959)Google Scholar; Donald, Diana, The Age of Caricature: Satirical Prints in the Reign of George III (New Haven, CT, 1996)Google Scholar.

²¹ Philip Dawe, “A New fashion'd Head Dress for Young Misses of Three score and Ten,” 1777, mezzotint, 777.05.08.01+, Lewis Walpole Library (LWL).

²² Philip Dawe's mezzotint is an even more vicious reworking of a cruel French engraving, Louis Surugue after Charles Antoine Coypel, “La Folie pare la Décrépetude des ajustements de la Jeunesse,” 1745, British Museum. On the fascination with ugliness, see Baker, Naomi, Plain Ugly: The Unattractive Body in Early Modern Culture (Manchester, 2010)Google Scholar.

²³ For discussion of an influential toilet scene, see Hyde, Melissa, “The ‘Makeup’ of the Marquise: Boucher's Portrait of Pompadour at Her Toilette,” Art Bulletin 82, no. 3 (September 2000): 453–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For an early juxtaposition of mirror and bones, see Hans Memling, “Earthly vanity and divine salvation triptych,” c.1485.

²⁴ Isaac Cruikshank, “A Maiden Ewe, Drest Lamb Fashion,” 1796, etching and engraving, 796.09.15.0., LWL.

²⁵ Thomas Rowlandson, “An Old Ewe Drest Lamb Fashion,” 1810, hand colored etching, 810.10.25.01.2+, LWL.

²⁶ George Woodward, “Comfort for an Old Maid,” 1810, hand-colored etching, 810.00.00.70+, LWL.

²⁷ Dictionary of The Vulgar Tongue, unpaginated, see under “muff.”

²⁸ Froide, Amy, Never Married: Single Women in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2005), 155CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁹ Halsband, Robert, ed., The Complete Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, 3 vols. (1965–67), 1:112Google Scholar. The misogyny is chilling, but Lady Mary's fears were not groundless because aristocratic spinsterhood ran between 25 and 30 percent in the 1700s. Hollingsworth, T. H., “The Demography of the British Peerage,” Population Studies 8, supplement (1964)Google Scholar. Of course, many genteel spinsters bore their lot with dignity, fortitude, and resource while managing to express themselves materially. See Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 207–30.

³⁰ The Rambler, Sketch of an old Maid, May 1783, 176: “In short an old maid is opposite to everything that nature considers amiable, generous, good, or true. She is the pest of society, a hypocrite amongst men and women, a Pharisee in the eye of heaven and a rank putrid abomination to the deity.”

³¹ The bluestocking Catherine Macaulay was pilloried for having the temerity to both write history and pursue sexual liaisons with men. In yet another toilet scene, Matthew Darly, “A speedy and effectual preparation for the next world,” 1777, engraving, British Museum, the intellectual is depicted applying rouge, oblivious to the skeleton and hearse looming behind her. In fact, Macaulay was still in her forties. However, she was a flamboyant self-publicist, who lived in a ménage with an admirer nearly thirty years her senior until, at the age of forty-seven, she suddenly married a twenty-one-year-old sailor. Her new brother-in-law was a quack doctor who treated impotence. The satirists had a field day.

³² See, for example, Philip Dawe, “The Butcher's Wife: Dressing for the Pantheon,” W. Humphry, 1772, Mezzotint, Library of Congress, Washington, DC. Older women in general were mocked for fashionable pretensions in a range of satires on extreme vogues, from tight stays to extravagant bonnets. See, for example, Anon, “Tight Lacing,” 1777, hand-colored etching, 777.03.05.01.2., LWL. For a general introduction, see McCreery, Satirical Gaze, 214–51.

³³ Kittredge, “Ag'd Dame,” 247–65.

³⁴ See Harvey, Karen, Reading Sex in the Eighteenth Century: Bodies and Gender in English Erotic Culture (Cambridge, 2004), 138–39Google Scholar.

³⁵ Anon, “The Ridiculous Match,” 1768, engraving, 768.7.0.2., LWL.

³⁶ McNeil, Peter, “That Doubtful Gender: Macaroni Dress and Male Sexualities,” Fashion Theory 3, no. 4 (1999): 411–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McNeil, Peter, “Dissipation and Extravagance: Aging Fops,” in King Power Designing Masculinities Symposium, ed. Allen, Peter (Melbourne, 2007), 1–17Google Scholar.

³⁷ Campbell, R., The London Tradesman (1747; New York, 1969), 192Google Scholar.

³⁸ On the invisibility of male consumerism despite furtive or even enthusiastic engagement with the world of goods, see Vickery, “His and Hers.”

³⁹ McNeil, “Aging Fops,” 1–2.

⁴⁰ Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Women (1792; Harmondsworth, 1982), 162, 309Google Scholar.

⁴¹ On clothes and rank, see Vincent, Dressing the Elite; Arch, Nigel and Marschner, Joanna, Splendour at Court: Dressing for Royal Occasions Since 1700 (London, 1987)Google Scholar. On the efforts of the poor, see Styles, Dress of the People.

⁴² On sumptuary law, see Harte, N. B., “State Control of Dress and Social Change in Pre-industrial England,” in Trade, Government and Economy in Pre-industrial England, ed. Coleman, D. C. and John, A. H. (London, 1976), 132–65Google Scholar; Vincent, Dressing the Elite, 117–43.

⁴³ Pennington, Sarah, An Unfortunate Mother's Advice to her Daughters, 2nd ed. (London, 1761), 34Google Scholar.

⁴⁴ Miss Weeton's Journal of a Governess, ed. Hall, Edward, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1936–39), 1:122–23, 253Google Scholar.

⁴⁵ Smollett, Tobias, The Expedition of Humphry Clinker (1771; Oxford, 1984), 94Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ For example, a rich Captain Debrissy wore the fashions of the 1670s in 1760s Dublin, and a Mr. Harvey was notable in the 1720s for his black clothes of an “unalterable style” dating back to the mid-seventeenth century. See Dunlevy, Mairead, Dress in Ireland: A History (Cork, 1999), 104Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ McNeil, “Aging Fops,” 4, 9.

⁴⁸ Pennington, Mother's Advice, 34; Monro, Alexander (Primus), The Professor's Daughter: An Essay on Female Conduct Contained in Letters from a Father to His Daughter, 1739, ed. Monro, P. A. G. (Cambridge, 1995), 6–7Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Even shameless actresses struggled to live down their “brazenness” in breeches parts. Perry, Gill, Spectacular Flirtations: Viewing the Actress in Eighteenth-Century Art and Culture, 1768–1820 (New Haven, CT, 2007)Google Scholar; Perry, Gill with Roach, Joseph and West, Shearer, The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons (London, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁵⁰ On decorum, see F. Childs, “Prescriptions for Manners in English Courtesy Literature, 1690–1760” (DPhil, Oxford, 1984), chap. 3; Vickery, Behind Closed Doors, 53, 137, 144, 177, 181, 220, 260–61, 298.

⁵¹ Monro, Professor's Daughter, 7.

⁵² Chapone, Hester, Letters on the Improvement of the Mind Addressed to a Young lady (1773), 169Google Scholar.

⁵³ Home, Henry, Kames, Lord, Loose Hints Upon Education, Chiefly Concerning the Culture of the Heart, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh, 1782), 258–59Google Scholar.

⁵⁴ Essex, John, The Young Ladies Conduct (London, 1722), 100–01Google Scholar.

⁵⁵ Leigh, James Edward Austen, Memoir of Jane Austen (London, 1871), 87–88Google Scholar.

⁵⁶ Personal communication from Susan North and Leslie Miller regarding the Victoria and Albert Museum's holdings in particular, from Miles Lambert regarding Platt Hall, and Linda Baumgarten regarding Colonial Williamsburg.

⁵⁷ See, for example, Llewellyn, Sacha, “Inventory of her Grace's things, 1747—the Dress Inventory of Mary Churchill, 2nd Duchess of Montagu,” Costume 31 (1997): 49–67CrossRefGoogle Scholar. At her death at the age of fifty-eight, the duchess owned 6 formal court outfits, 10 nightgowns, 2 sacks, 5 wrapping gowns, 6 riding habits, an array of mourning wear, 2 informal jackets and petticoats, 7 hoops, 47 handkerchiefs, 11 tippets, 38 aprons, and 61 caps. Green, yellow, and blue silks predominated, but she also had pink, purple, cream, and red.

⁵⁸ A Mary White compiled an album of fashion plates covering the years 1759–1819, with scanty but suggestive manuscript comments such as “disgraceful to English taste” in Manchester City Art Galleries, Platt Hall Gallery of English Costume. A Londoner Laetitia Powell (b 1741), the wife of a Bishopsgate merchant, dressed thirteen fashion dolls between 1754 and 1814, using remnants from her own gowns, documenting “the fashionable full dress for a young lady” of her 1750s girlhood and her wedding suit. Mrs. Powell wedding suit, 1761, W.183:7–1919, Victoria & Albert Museum Stores. The Shelburne Museum in Vermont holds forty-nine sketches of fashions by an anonymous woman documenting the years 1784–1805.

⁵⁹ Rothstein, Nathalie, ed., Barbara Johnson's Album of Fashions and Fabrics (London, 1987)Google Scholar.

⁶⁰ See for example, Rothstein, Barbara Johnson, 10–11, 15.

⁶¹ Rothstein, “Textiles in the Album,” in Barbara Johnson, 33.

⁶² Martha Dodson's Account Book, 1746–1765, Museum of London.

⁶³ Ehrman, Edwina, “Dressing Well in Old Age: The Clothing Accounts of Martha Dodson, 1746–1765,” Costume 40 (2006): 28–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁴ Mitchell, Brigitte and Penrose, Hubert, eds., Letters from Bath, 1766–1767 by the Rev John Penrose (Stroud, 1983)Google Scholar, 25, 28, 39, 49, 58, 68, 86, 181. The sartorial adjustments the family were forced to make are discussed in Adams, Suzanne, “Purchasers from the Parsonage: Observations on Bath Dress and Reactive Shopping by the Penrose Family, 1766–1767,” Costume 39 (2005): 79–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁶⁵ Williamson letters, M/10/4/54, Bedfordshire Record Office (hereafter BRO).

⁶⁶ Margaret Cater to Mrs. Williamson, 25 Nov 1776, M/10/4/36, BRO. See also Margaret Cater to Mrs. Williamson, 15 Nov 1778, M/10/4/55, BRO.

⁶⁷ J. Scrimshire, Pontefract to E Parker, Alkincoats, 22 Oct 1753, DDB/72/123, Lancashire Record Office (hereafter LRO).

⁶⁸ The bill describes the silk as “New flowered gro'd Gros detour Broc'd Column.” A remnant is held in the Kay-Shuttleworth collection, Gawthorpe Hall, Lancashire, and reproduced in Ashelford, Jane, The Art of Dress: Clothes and Society, 1500–1914 (London, 1996), 156Google Scholar.

⁶⁹ J. Scrimshire, Pontefract to E Parker, Alkincoats, 9 Sept n.y., DDB/72/137, LRO; J. Scrimshire, Pontefract to E Parker, 24 June n.y., DDB/72/147, LRO. Scrimshire advised Parker to adapt her formal sack to get more use out of it: “[M]ake it for a hoop for the brides visit and then only take some of the fullness out of the sides and it is a negligee.” J. Scrimshire, Pontefract to E Parker, 20 June n.y., DDB/72/13, LRO. Tabby is a strong plain weave silk. In heavier weights it was suitable for stays.

⁷⁰ A. Pellet, London, to E. Parker, Alkincoats, 1 June 1754, DDB/72/91, LRO.

⁷¹ Bowen/Pellet London to E. Parker, 11 June 1754, DDB/72/92, LRO.

⁷² Bessy Ramsden, Charterhouse, to Mrs. Parker, Alkincoats, 30 March 1765, DDB/72/184, LRO.

⁷³ E. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats, 12 November 1776, DDB/72/288, LRO.

⁷⁴ B. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats, 12 November 1776, DDB/72/288, LRO; B. Ramsden and W. Ramsden, Charterhouse, to E. Shackleton, Alkincoats, n.d., DDB/72/285, LRO.

⁷⁵ William and Bessy Ramsden to E. Shackleton, 3 April 1766, DDB/72/191, LRO.

⁷⁶ See A. Vickery, “Women and the World of Goods,” 274–301.

⁷⁷ Elizabeth Shackleton's Diary (1779), DDB/81/35, f. 73, LRO.

⁷⁸ Thomas Parnell, “Elegy to an Old Beauty” (1722). Frontlets were leather straps that purported to smooth away wrinkles.

⁷⁹ George Woodward, “Celia Retiring,” 1803, hand-colored etching, 803.00.00.13+, LWL. For further discussion, see McCreery, Satirical Gaze, 235–36.

⁸⁰ A bill presented to Duke of Bedford for French cosmetics purchased by his fourteen-year-old daughter included face and hair powder, curling tongs, hair grease (both goose grease and bear grease), products for lips and eyes, boxes for patches and pestles, and pots for mixing and storing makeup. See G. Scott Thomson, The Russells in Bloomsbury, 1669–1771 (1940). Judith Noel requested her sister Mary buy “a Pot of Pale Rouge from Ogilvyes” in 1783 and asked in 1785, “Pray how do they do the Curls? & how many of each side? Is it true that they are hung like a Cork Screw? I have shaved my head for an inch deep on the forehead to make it come quicker.” Elwin, Malcolm, ed., The Noels and the Millbankes: Their Letters for 25 Years, 1767–92 (London, 1967), 220, 258Google Scholar. For recipes, see The Ladies Dictionary: Being a General Entertainment for the Fair Sex (London, 1694), 220, 227Google Scholar. On hair, see also 208–13, and on powders and perfumes, 399.

⁸¹ The manufacture of beauty has not received much serious attention from historians. For a narrative overview, see M. Angeloglou, A History of Makeup (1970); Ribeiro, Aileen, Facing Beauty: Painted Women and Cosmetic Art (New Haven, CT, 2011)Google Scholar. For rouge and fashion, see Cunnington, C. Willett and Cunnington, Phillis, Handbook of English Costume in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1957), 388Google Scholar; Ribeiro, Facing Beauty, 81, 182. For ambivalence around painted blushes, see Rosenthal, “Visceral Culture”; Ruth Yeazell, Modesty, 65–80. On artificial smiles, see Jones, Colin, “French Dentists and English Teeth in the Long Eighteenth Century: A Tale of Two Cities and One Dentist,” in Medicine, Madness and Social History, eds. Roberta Bivins and John V. Pickstone (Basingstoke, 2007), 73–89CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁸³ Beresford, John, ed., The Torrington Diaries, containing the Tours through England and Wales of the Hon John Byng, 4 vols. (London, 1934), 1:91Google Scholar.

⁸⁴ Kittredge, “Ag'd Dame,” 260.

⁸⁵ Matthew Boulton, Paris, to Nanny Boulton, 1 December 1763, MS 3782/16/1/F 28, Birmingham Central Library.

⁸⁶ See, for example, Thomas Hudson, “The Thistlethwayte family,” c. 1758, and Thomas Gainsborough, “Mary Little, later Lady Carr,” c. 1763, Yale Center for British Art. Pink was a bridal hue (along with blue, cream, white, and silver) judging by surviving wedding dresses from the 1770s. See Ehrman, Edwina, The Wedding Dress: 300 Years of Bridal Fashion (London, 2011), 35Google Scholar. However, the textile tokens left with infants at the London foundling hospital demonstrate that pink was not yet especially linked to little girls among the poor. Styles, John, Threads of Feeling: The London Foundling Hospital's Textile Tokens, 1740–1770 (London, 2010)Google Scholar, 48, and http://www.threadsoffeeling.com/.

⁸⁷ Llanover, Lady, Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany, 6 vols. (London, 1861–62)Google Scholar, ser 1, 3:110.

⁸⁸ Rathbone, Ambrose, ed., Letters of Lady Jane Coke to her friend Mrs Eyre at Derby, 1747–1758 (London, 1899), 134–35Google Scholar.

⁸⁹ Hayley, William, A Philosophical, Historical and Moral Essay on Old Maids, 3 vols. (London, 1786), 1:56Google Scholar.

⁹⁰ See Styles, John, “Involuntary Consumers? The Eighteenth-Century Servant and Her Clothes,” Textile History 33, no. 1 (2002): 14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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⁹² Kugler, “Decay Apace,” 73.

⁹³ Cited in Baumgarten, What Clothes Reveal, 174.

⁹⁴ Forrester, James, A Present for a Son (London, c.1775), 191Google Scholar.

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⁹⁷ A. Parker, Royle, to Mrs. Shackleton, c.1775, DDB Ac 7886, no 24, LRO. Lutestring is a light, crisp, plain silk with a high shine.

⁹⁸ Greig, Hannah, “Dressing for Court: Sartorial Politics and Fashion News in the Age of Mary Delany,” in Mrs Delany and Her Circle, ed. Laird, Mark and Roberts, Alicia Weisberg (New Haven, 2009), 80–93Google Scholar. See also Arch and Marschner, Splendour at Court.

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¹⁰⁰ By convention, duchesses were always “beautiful.” See Greig, Hannah, The Beau Monde: Fashionable Society in Georgian London (Oxford, 2013), 167–91Google Scholar.

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¹⁰⁴ The Account Book of Richard Latham, 1724–1767, ed. Weatherill, Lorna (Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar. The Latham accounts and the poverty cycle of fashion are discussed at length in Styles, John, “Custom or Consumption? Plebeian Fashion in Eighteenth-Century England,” in Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods, ed. Berg, Maxine and Eger, Elizabeth (London, 2003), 103–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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¹⁰⁶ Ottaway, Decline of Life.

¹⁰⁷ In truth, the acceleration of fashion is more asserted than analyzed. Mckendrick, Neil, Brewer, John, and Plumb, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington, 1982)Google Scholar. More concrete are Poni, Carlo, “Fashion as Flexible Production: The Strategies of the Lyon Silk Merchants in the Eighteenth Century,” in World of Possibilities: Flexibility and Mass Production in Western Industrialization, ed. Sabel, Charles and Zeitlin, J. (Cambridge, 1997), 37–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Styles, John, “Indian Cottons and European Fashion, 1400–1800,” in Global Design History, ed. Adamson, Glenn, Riello, Giorgio, and Teasley, Sarah (London, 2011), 40Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁸ Robert W. Jones, Gender and the Formation of Taste in Eighteenth-Century Britain: The Analysis of Beauty (Cambridge, 1998)Google Scholar.

¹⁰⁹ Mirror of the Graces (1811), 60.

¹¹⁰ On the invention of new categories of goods to inspire new needs and colonize new markets, see Vickery, Amanda, “Fashioning Difference in Georgian England: Furniture for Him and for Her,” in Early Modern Things: Objects and Their Histories, 1500–1800, ed. Findlen, Paula (London, 2012), 342–59Google Scholar.

¹¹¹ There were some readymade gowns and garments on the market, but because labor was far cheaper than the fabric itself, resort to the mantua maker was normal.

¹¹² Matthew Boulton, London, to Nanny Boulton, 13 May 1779, MS 3782/16/71, Birmingham Central Library.