Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Reports: A Sourcebook compiled by Rictor Norton

The Latest Fashions

25 June - 2 July 1720
The number of our new gentry encreases here every day, and new cloaths and new coaches appear in our streets in a much more extraordinary manner than ever was known before. The demand for servants is very great, so that the good are very hard to be come at. People giving almost any wages for those who seem fit for their turn; and the good opinion those sort of people naturally have for themselves, rising upon the demand there is for them, makes it the more difficult to keep them, after they have got them; how long masters must submit to such treatment cannot be known; but ’tis thought some new regulations of that matter, by authority, would be universaly acceptable to the publick. (London Journal)

ADVERTISEMENT Monday 27 July 1724
L. Morris, at the Blue Peruke next the King’s-Arms Tavern on Ludgate-Hill, does accommodate Gentlemen with Perukes at the following reasonable prices, viz. The lightest Tyes that are made, and intirely neat strong English Human Hairs at 4l. 10s. those that are very light and but little inferior at 4l. from that price down to 50s. proportionable to their colour and bulk. He declines making a tedious harrangue as is usual with advertisers, and believes he speaks more to the purpose when he offers to forfeit any of his perukes that is, by any of the trade, proved to be any ways adulterated; or to exchange any Gentleman’s peruke that does not answer their expectation, and that has not been apparently abus’d; his profits (as he has computed) are but small, but the encouragement he has and still hopes to meet from those Gentlemen that are pleas’d to make use of him, may make his returns so considerable as fully to answer the end of this undertaking. (The Daily Journal)

3 February 1739
We hear the Ladies intend to wear lace this summer, and the Gentlemen likewise design to wear lace in their shirts, not only to be distinguished from the common people, but for the encouragement of the lace-trade. (Read's Weekly Journal)

(Texts have been modernized with regard to capitalization, italicization, and punctuation, but original spelling has been retained. This edition copyright Rictor Norton. All rights reserved. Reproduction for sale or profit prohibited. These extracts may not be archived, republished or redistributed without the permission of the compiler.)

CITATION: Rictor Norton, Early Eighteenth-Century Newspaper Reports: A Sourcebook, "The Latest Fashions", 31 December 2005 <http://grubstreet.rictornorton.co.uk/fashions.htm>

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