ABSTRACT
Servants were easily distinguishable from laborers. The kind of labor performed could be read from the peculiar clothes adopted by each trade, as could the status of a laborer in his craft by glancing at certain ribbons and buttons he wore. The clothing of most urban middle- and upper-class Frenchmen and Englishmen showed a remarkable stability in cut and general form from the late 17th Century to the middle of the 18th Century, certainly more stability than in the previous eighty years. In the 18th Century home, loose-fitting and simple garments were the growing preference of all classes. There appears the first of the terms of the divide between the public and the private realm: the private realm being more natural, the body appeared as expressive in itself. The epoch’s clothes pose two problems. The first is how and why clothing became more neutral. The second is the insistence on reading personality from neutral appearances.
