Title: Market à la mode
First published: 1997
Description: In Market a la Mode, Erin Mackie examines the role that two periodicals played in the growth of fashion and how they influenced their readers. She traces the commercial context in which The Tatler and The Spectator operated, focusing on the processes of commodification, fetishization, and revisions of gender identity.

By championing "natural" fashion against the hoop-petticoat, domesticated women against the sophisticated woman of the world, the polite and aestheticised imagination against the illusions of fancy and enthusiasm, and the decency of bourgeois against the depravity of aristocratic taste, The Tatler and The Spectator advanced modern standards of British culture.

Mackie's study makes clear that fashion publications, far from being commentaries on passing trends, assumed a leading role in defining women's legitimate sphere of activities as well as in the development of commerce as recreation.
Subjects: Aesthetics, British, British Aesthetics, Commercial products in literature, English essays, English periodicals, Ethics, Modern, Fashion, Fashion in literature, History, History and criticism, Literature and society, Middle class in literature, Modern Ethics, Sex role in literature, Social life and customs, Spectator (London, England : 1711), Tatler (London, England : 1709), English essays, history and criticism, England, social life and customs, Fashion, history, Tatler (london, england: 1709), Ethics, modern, 18th century, English essays--history and criticism, English essays--18th century--history and criticism, Literature and society--history, Literature and society--england--history--18th century, English periodicals--history, English periodicals--history--18th century, Fashion--history, Fashion--england--history--18th century, Aesthetics, british--18th century, Ethics, modern--18th century, Pr925 .m26 1997, 072/.1/09033
Places: England
Time periods: 18th century
LC classification: PR925 .M26 1997