You Are What You Wear: Navigating New England Fashion and Politics in the 1760s and 1770s

The Custom House Maritime Museum holds its monthly Virtual First Friday event at 6:30 pm on Friday, April 2, 2021, via their YouTube channel (youtube.com/user/CustomHouseMuseum). Members can join interactively on zoom through an emailed invitation.

This month historian Dr. Kimberly Alexander will explore the social values placed on luxury and thrift in New England in the period leading up to the American Revolution. Fashion is often an indicator of not only one’s socioeconomic status but sometimes of one’s political ideology, as well. This was often the case in the 1760s and 1770s when the availability and consumption of English- and American-made goods conveyed powerful messages that signaled political beliefs.

Embargos against British goods affected the choices people made about what to wear, but so did one’s political leanings. Patriots intentionally selected homespun cloth in an effort to convey their loyalty to the colonies and to put money into to pockets of struggling American neighbors.
For example, William Dawes, who rode with Paul Revere, chose to wear a suit of American-woven cloth to his wedding despite having ample resources to purchase silk attire from British merchants.

What messages were telegraphed by a person’s clothing and how were these understood? Did everyone in society read these messages the same way or were there multiple interpretations? These questions and others will be discussed.

Dr. Kimberly Alexander is on the faculty of the History Department at the University of New Hampshire, where she is Director of Museum Studies and Lecturer. She has held curatorial positions at several New England Museums, including the MIT Museum, the Peabody Essex Museum, and Strawbery Banke. Her most recent book, entitled Treasures Afoot: Shoe Stories from the Georgian Era, traces the history of early Anglo-American footwear from the 1740s through the 1790s [Johns Hopkins University Press 2018].