Dressed to Kill: British Naval Uniform, Masculinity and Contemporary Fashions, 1748–1857

Description

Detailed analysis of the naval uniform and its historical, social, and economic contexts.

Dressed to Kill provides an extensive catalog of uniforms from the collection at London’s National Maritime Museum, accompanied by a selection of patterns that examine the construction of the garments as well as personal papers, diaries, and other period artifacts. Amy Miller demonstrates the significance of male fashion and uniform in the forging of a national, hierarchical, and gendered identity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. 

This fully updated and expanded second edition of the 2007 publication contains additional research that provides a greater understanding of the political and social changes that influenced not only what the Royal Navy wore, but why they wore it. Parliamentary records, newspapers, and museum archives give a greater contextualization of the relationship that naval uniform represented—the confluence of politics and economics, fashion and popular culture.