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REVIEWS
| Ready-Made Democracy: A History of Men's Dress in the Early Republic, 1760–1860. By Michael Zakin (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. x plus 296 pp.).
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| For much of the twentieth century, the Brooks Brothers men's clothing company seemed to offer a bastion of stability and tradition amid the frenetic, market-driven world of New York City clothiers. To its customers, members of New York's business classes, it offered elegant surroundings, gracious personal service, and impeccably made men's suits whose styles—heedless of fashion—never appeared to change. The suits all looked the same (and so did the men who wore them). But the firm conveyed the impression that each suit had been individually fitted for each customer. The brothers were craftsmen, not capitalists. To underscore that message, the firm commissioned an official corporate history which portrayed the founding brothers as members of a long line of fine tailors. |
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In fact, that history was based on a fiction, as Michael Zakin shows in this complex, richly argued study of the development of New York's men's clothing industry before the Civil War. Examining the economic, social, and cultural practices which accompanied this development, Zakin finds not an industry which evolved out of a timeless artisanal past, but one which wholeheartedly embraced (and did much to shape) modern capitalist labor, production, and marketing practices. The origins of the men's clothing business in America were neither elegant nor gracious, but were self-promoting, exploitative, and crass. Moreover, Zakin suggests, the industry played a role in enforcing (albeit without appearing to do so) a kind of male conformity which helped to strengthen and consolidate the hegemony of market capitalism. |
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