Table Of ContentSartorial Practices and Social
Order in Eighteenth- Century
Sweden
The interplay between clothes and social order in early modern societies
is well known. Differences in dress and hierarchies of appearances
coincided with and structured social hierarchies and notions of difference.
However, clothes did not merely reproduce set social patterns. They
were agents of change, actively used by individuals and groups to make
claims and transgress formal boundaries. This was not least the case
for the revolutionary decades of the late eighteenth century, the period
in focus of this book. Unlike previous studies on sumptuary laws and
other legal actions taken by governments and formal power holders, this
book offers a broader and more everyday perspective on late eighteenth-
century sartorial discourse. In 1773, there was a publicly announced
prize competition on the advantages and disadvantages of a national
dress in Sweden. Departing from the submitted replies, the study opens
a window onto the sartorial world. Several fields of cultural history
are brought together: social culture in terms of order, hierarchies, and
notions of difference; sartorial culture with contemporary views on dress
and moral aspects of sartorial practices; and visual culture in terms of
sartorial means of making a difference and the emphasis on the necessity
of a legible social order.
Mikael Alm is a senior lecturer in history at Uppsala University.
Routledge Studies in Eighteenth- Century Cultures
and Societies
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Protest in the Long Eighteenth Century
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Political Economy and Imperial Governance in Eighteenth- Century
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Sartorial Practices and Social Order in Eighteenth- Century Sweden
Fashioning Difference
Mikael Alm
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Sartorial Practices and Social
Order in Eighteenth- Century
Sweden
Fashioning Difference
Mikael Alm
First published 2022
by Routledge
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Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Alm, Mikael, author.
Title: Sartorial practices and social order in eighteenth-century
Sweden : fashioning difference / Mikael Alm.
Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. | Series:
Routledge studies in eighteenth-century cultures and societies |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Subjects: LCSH: Clothing and dress—Social aspects—Sweden—
History. | Social structure—Sweden—History—18th century. |
Social classes—Sweden—History—18th century. | Sweden—
Social life and customs.
Classification: LCC GT1176 .A56 2021 (print) | LCC GT1176
(ebook) | DDC 391.009485—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004759
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021004760
ISBN: 978-1 - 032-0 4419- 4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1 - 032-0 4454- 5 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1 - 003-1 9325- 8 (ebk)
Typeset in Sabon
by Apex CoVantage, LLC
Contents
List of Figures vi
List of Tables vii
Acknowledgements viii
1 A Question Posed: Entering the Sartorial World 1
2 The Nature of Order 17
3 Disorder in the Sartorial World 64
4 The Ordering of Difference 111
5 Fashioning Difference: Conclusions 152
Bibliography 161
Index 174
Figures
1.1 Unknown artist, The Four Estates, Political Allegory,
c. 1790. 2
1.2 First page of essay No. 1 (1773). 7
1.3 First page of printed essay No. 48 (1774). 8
1.4 Pehr Hilleström, Reading at Drottningholm Palace, 1779. 12
2.1 The Table of Ranks (1714). 42
3.1 Pehr Hilleström, People from Mora in Dalecarlia,
1782–1810. 76
4.1 Pehr Hilleström, Testing Eggs: Interior of a Kitchen,
c. 1770. 123
4.2 Pehr Hilleström, The Morning Toilette: Boudoir Scene,
c. 1770. 124
4.3 Pehr Hilleström, A Lady Sitting and Reading, the
Chambermaid Bringing Tea, 1775. 131
4.4 Pehr Hilleström, Hay- Making Celebration at Svartsjö,
c. 1780. 134
4.5 Pehr Hilleström, Gustavian Style Interior with
Cardplayers, 1779. 135
4.6 Pehr Hilleström, A Maid Taking Soup From a Pot,
1770s. 136
4.7 Pehr Hilleström, The Milliner, c. 1785. 137
5.1 National dress, worn by Gustav III (1778). 152
Tables
2.1 Order of Corporate Bodies in Essay No. 29. 33
2.2 Orders of Corporate Bodies in Essays Nos. 32 and A2. 35
2.3 Order of Ranks in Essay No. 59. 45
2.4 Order of Ranks in Essay No. 60. 49
4.1 The Overlapping Intervals of Fabrics. 129
Acknowledgements
Every book is a journey, and like all journeys, there are stations and peo-
ple along the way that helped making it what it became. Uppsala Uni-
versity and the History Department are my academic Heimat. The daily
interactions there have given me wind in the sails and called me to harbour
to think again when needed. Among all those dear to me, some should be
mentioned by name: Henrik Ågren, Alexander Engström, Peter Ericsson,
Tobias Larsson, Jonas Lindström, and my favourite colleague and much-
loved companion in life Gudrun Andersson. There have been many sta-
tions and people along the way. In an early stage of the project, Dagmar
Freist invited me to Oldenburg University (Germany) and the conference
‘Praktiken der Selbst- Bildung im Spannungsfeld von ständischer Ordnung
und gesellschaftlicher Dynamik’. The research seminar of the School of
History at Queen Mary, University of London (UK), has been a recur-
rent station, with invitations by Miri Rubin and Amanda Vickery. Simi-
larly, Ewald Frie and Daniel Menning at Tübingen University (Germany)
opened the doors for me to interact and discuss the project with senior and
junior historians there. Jari Eiola at Jyväskylä University (Finland) invited
me as a keynote speaker at the 14th Gustav Wasa Conference (‘Between
Body and Mind’), which resulted in new colleagues and valuable input
to the project. That was also the case at Newcastle University (UK), and
the generous arrangements made for me by Helen Berry. Durham Univer-
sity (UK), where I spent the autumn of 2018 as a Matariki Fellow, made
its mark on this book as well as my heart. Among all friends and col-
leagues there, I want to name Andy Beresford, Claudia Nitschke, Lindsay
Macnaughton, Dario Tessicini, Lucy Turzynski and Liz Waller. I offer my
collective thanks to all organizers and participants at the ESSHC ‘Social
Inequality’ network: its panels and sessions have been a recurrent forum
for me to present and discuss the project, in Vienna 2014, Valencia 2016,
and Belfast 2018. A final thanks to everyone involved at Routledge, not
least the series editors Elaine Chalus and Deborah Simonton, for their
valuable comments and critique at the very last station of the journey.
This work was supported by Riksbankens jubileumsfond (The Swedish
foundation for humanities and social sciences) [grant number RFP12–
0385:1] and the Department of History, Uppsala University.
1 A Question Posed
Entering the Sartorial World
Would a national dress, adapted to the Swedish climate, and different
from those of other nations, help rectify changes in fashion and illicit
trade? What inconveniences could such a reform entail? And could, per-
chance, such inconveniences, presenting themselves at the time of the
reform, be outweighed by advantages won in the longer run?
Thus ran the question posed by the Royal Patriotic Society in Stock-
holm in late October 1773. The public was invited to submit their writ-
ten responses, with a set prize of a gold medal of 30 ducats’ weight for
the winning entry, which was to be named by the Society. The call was
published in one of Stockholm’s leading newspapers—Dagligt Alle-
handa—and a few days later in the Government organ Inrikes Tidningar
(The London Gazette’s opposite number in Sweden), making it public
throughout the kingdom.1
It is a seemingly dull question, dwelling on all- too familiar economic
and sumptuary concerns on the need to stem public consumption and
to direct it away from foreign goods and on to domestic produce. How-
ever, the result was spectacular from the historian’s point of view. By the
deadline of 24th January, around 70 essays had been submitted, ranging
from briefs of two pages to downright tracts of 78 pages.2 Far from dull,
the essays provide source material of a rare kind. As the authors pre-
sented their thoughts on a national dress, and—specifically—when they
discussed its purpose and suggested its design and realization, they came
to reflect on deeper issues of the social order, its constituent parts, and
how these parts were to be properly visualized sartorially.
Departing from these essays, this book addresses three key aspects
of late eighteenth- century social practices in and through dress. Firstly,
social culture. As the authors proposed designs for a national dress and
specified how it was supposed to be worn by different social groups, they
effectively projected how they imagined contemporary society and its
social order. How did late ancien régime commentators, on the very verge
of the collapse of that social order, perceive the society in which they
lived? Secondly, sartorial culture. As the authors elaborated on the need
