Faith, fashion and social reform : a family of quaker drapers in colonial Hobart

Abstract

Religion has been largely overlooked in the study of clothing trades and fashion consumerism in the dress history of colonial Australia. While the majority of colonial society used fashionable dress to display wealth and rank, for plain religious sects such as Quakers (the Religious Society of Friends) rejecting fashion signalled their morality. Australian Quakers' relationships with fashion in their personal wardrobes or businesses are underexplored. In the nineteenth century, three generations of the Mather family were respected drapers, philanthropists and members of a staunch Quaker sect in Hobart, Tasmania, the stronghold of colonial Australian Quakerism. This thesis examines how Quaker belief was performed in the Mather drapery shops by exploring the Quaker notion of consistency between internal beliefs and outward practices, and the prerogative of Quakers to act as moral role models for society. It demonstrates how the Mather family drapers upheld their religious testimonies of plainness, pacifism and integrity while maintaining successful stores. This thesis reasserts the agency of Quaker retailers in the clothing choices of non-Quakers. Research was conducted from an interdisciplinary 'new dress history' and material religion approach. Sources included dress objects, correspondence, diaries, photographs and advertising. Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus was applied to explore the way Quaker belief and discipline created a moral atmosphere in the drapery store, and Michel Foucault's theory of panopticism accounted for how this atmosphere was projected on to Hobart society through their customers as a disciplinary strategy. This thesis argues that underlying the negotiation of faith and fashion was the drapers' desire for the improvement or perfectibility of society through selling certain kinds of dress. I have called the process by which this occurred 'convinced consumption'. This is the first study of colonial Australian Quaker drapers, making it an original contribution to Australian dress history and Quaker studies.