ABSTRACT
This chapter presents some closing thoughts covered in the preceding chapters of this book. The book discusses the concept of agency to analyse the relationship between gender, luxury and town. It explores the agency of the male or female consumer and the ways in which consumption choices were both the result of social constraints and a key element in the construction of individuals' or groups' identity. Among the numerous characteristics that can define luxury, the book have scrutinised some more specifically, such as exoticism, creativity, quality and rarity. The book looks at the process of production and analyses in detail how in eighteenth-century towns significant changes in female fashion created opportunities for women, despite their lower legal status, to play a much larger role as makers, agents and subjects of fashion. The proximity of Stoneleigh Abbey stimulated artisans' work in towns and villages of Warwickshire, while luxury or semi-luxury goods progressively penetrated urban surroundings in eighteenth-century Catalonia.
