Ready or Not: Custom‐Made Ideals and Ready‐Made Clothes in Late 19th‐Century America

In 1849, the "Mercantile Miscellanies" section of Freeman Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review noted that manufacturers had begun producing ready-made clothing for "all markets and for all classes of men, from the humblest laborer to the fashionable gentleman-for the toiling million as well as for the 'upper ten thousand"' ("Extensive Clothing Establishments" 348). Many historians have accepted this observation as an accurate reflection of the industry's development. A key work by Egal Feldman asserted the "universal acceptance" of readymade clothing before the Civil War (74), and another by Claudia Kidwell and Margaret Christman described the "easy acceptance" of the ready-made product in the 1830s (55). Later historians have followed their lead, as when Sean Wilentz stated that there "was some initial resistance to this noncustom work among the most cosmopolitan customers-but by the late 1840s the clothiers had changed people's minds" (120). Acceptance may not have been quite so universal and easy, however. At the end of the century, clothing manufacturers still defensively advertised their wares as being "equal to custom made" and took pains to distance themselves from the industry's past. In 1893, the Clothing Gazette recalled that "previous to the late civil war the product consisted of little else than cheap, plain stuffs...and anything like a fit was a rarity. Moreover, there was a pretty solid prejudice, not altogether unfounded, against both the product and the producers" ("Clothing Trade" 62). During the last decade of the century, advertisers still betrayed their insecurity with such carefully hedged advertising claims as: "We guarantee each of our garments to be as near `merchant tailor standards' as it is possible to manufacture in ready-to-wear clothing" (Kirschbaum 18). This essay seeks not so much to debunk earlier interpretations as to open them up for further consideration. It will briefly review the history of the men's ready-made clothing industry and then focus on the values and attitudes that clustered around factorymade clothing in the 1890s. In short, I will argue that although ready-made clothing may have achieved a certain marketplace success mid-way through the nineteenth century, the values and standards associated with the custom trade remained in play for a long time thereafter. Taken as a case study in the rise of modern consumer culture, these developments suggest neither a straightforward shift from one cultural system to another nor a neat dichotomy between "producer" and "consumer" culture. New cultural values did not simply displace or obliterate old ones, as many studies of consumer culture imply. A more complicated appropriation and recontextualization of old values occurred alongside the introduction of the new. I In the middle of the nineteenth century, several industry commentators besides Hunt lent credence to claims for the early, widespread adoption of readymade clothing.1 When Edwin Freedley surveyed the American business scene in the 1850s he concluded: "Within the last quarter of a century a most important and complete revolution has been effected in the ancient and respectable occupation of tailoring, as well as in a branch of the Dry Goods Trade, by the introduction of ready made clothing" (125). The boosterish tone of such evaluations invites some skepticism, as do their placement in publications avowedly aimed at serving the cause of business expansion. Hunt's self-proclaimed purpose was "to represent and advocate the claims of Commerce" (Hunt 144). Opposing viewpoints offered by other observers raise further doubts. In the same year that Hunt touted the widespread acceptance of ready-made clothing, a newspaper journalist sarcastically described the clothing "revolution": You may have experienced some difficulty and vexation in getting your tailor in Broadway to fit you? Pshaw! Step into the nearest clothing store on Chatham-street and slip on a coat-any coat-and we'll wager our wedding suit that it is a "splendid fit. …