The role of fashion in creating identity is a subject that has long been of interest to fashion and labor historians, gender theorists, and those interested in material culture and consumerism. In Stays and Body Image in London: The Staymaking Trade, 1680–1810, Lynn Sorge-English contributes to this scholarship, filling a historiographical gap on the late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century staymaking trades. Sorge-English has set herself the herculean task of meeting “the challenge Jonathan White set out when he recommended that historians ‘examine the full life cycles of objects, from their production, distribution, consumption, and use to their transmission and their arrival in the present’” (6–7). In taking up this commission, Sorge-English makes a layered argument that addresses the centrality of the stay in the lives of women from all ranks of society and provides a detailed assessment of the changing nature of stays and the staymaking trade. To this end, she mobilizes a vast amount of careful research from an array of sources, including probate inventories, books of trade, diaries, trade cards, insurance records, and the Old Bailey Proceedings. Most impressive are her carefully documented analyses of the stays themselves that feature the specifics of cut, construction, materials, overall form, and the various uses, ranging from fashion to the correction of bodily deformity.

The work also undertakes a thorough assessment of the staymaking trade, including its internal hierarchies, its place within the wider hierarchy of trades, and the hierarchies of the consumption of stays. Additionally, Sorge-English addresses the physical and spatial locations of staymaking, providing a detailed accounting of the production, access to, and consumption of stays by the denizens of all classes. She argues that the staymaking trade was distinct from tailoring and that this separation occurred in the 1680s at the same time the stay became separate from the bodice. She further asserts that “the gender of staymakers throughout much of the eighteenth century was almost exclusively male until c.1780” and that “a gradual, but definite, change began to occur in the gender of stays' designers around that time” (18–19). This provides the basis for Sorge-English's assertion “that a gender change in composition of makers was a significant factor in bringing about change in the design and form of stays, a change which signaled a radical departure from the linear, angular, masculinized form of stays . . . to a softer, curvilinear, more shapely, feminized form of stays” (187).

Although Sorge-English provides ample and compelling evidence of the alterations in the shape of the stay over the course of the eighteenth century, there is little sense of a connection to wider fashion changes, ideology, or any assessment of possible influences, beyond the sex of staymaker, in her assessment of the feminization of stays. Sorge-English argues, “[S]ince women were becoming the primary staymakers when the feminization of stays occurred, it follows that not only were they responsible for changing stays' design to be more in keeping with the female body, but also that they were indirectly responsible for establishing the dictates of fashion”(191). Although one cannot argue with her assertion that stays “laid the foundation for the eighteenth-century visual aesthetic,” she seems to press the boundaries of her evidentiary support in asserting, “[I]t is not inconceivable that mantua-makers took their cue from the new stays, and designed gowns to complement them. For if it had happened the other way round—if the neoclassical gowns had come first—stays' design need not have changed so drastically in order to be worn under the high-waisted gowns” (190). An in-depth assessment of contemporary fashions, fashionable ideals, and foreign influences would have aided the argument, as would a more thorough engagement with the historiography associated with the shift toward neoclassical fashion.

Sorge-English relies heavily on the evidence gleaned from the 1744 diary of Richard Viney, a Yorkshire staymaker of modest means who provides a wealth of information on the staymaking trade. Sorge-English states that “although Viney's experiences as a staymaker might have differed somewhat from those of urban staymakers, in the absence of any other similarly rich primary source, Viney can act as an important prism” (22). Indeed, Viney provides the entry point for many of Sorge-English's discussions, especially those related to health and stays. After the birth of their fifth son, Viney's wife developed problems with her breast that required significant attention, repeated lancing, and poultices. Sorge-English relies on evidence from Seguin Henry Jackson's Cautions to Women (1798) and Mrs. Lloyd Gibbon's A Treatise on the Use and Effect of Anatomical Stays (1809) to suggest that Viney's wife may have been plagued by inverted nipples caused by the wearing of stays (107–8). The historian of medicine might view with suspicion Sorge-English's tendency to accept eighteenth-century medical advice at face value. Her discussion of the health effects of stays needs a wider engagement with the dominant medical attitudes of the period and the discussions of straight lacing's negative effects on both bodily conformation and health that were becoming prevalent in the second half of the eighteenth century. She also relies heavily upon the books of trades to uncover contemporary attitudes toward body molding, claiming, “[W]riters of the books of trades put forward a view that the female body was intrinsically flawed, was unacceptable in its natural state, and in need of changing” (97). One also wishes that she had connected these notions with wider social or cultural attitudes toward the body and provided other evidence to support these claims.

Overall, the work suffers from its author's own ambition; in her attempt to illustrate the full life cycle of the stay, Sorge-English's argument sometimes lacks depth. Although she has mobilized an impressive amount of research, and undertaken a study of enormous size and breadth, she often neglects to contextualize and connect the information to wider happenings or social and cultural factors that might have impacted their development. Occasionally, she even makes claims that push the limits of her evidence. For instance, her assertion that because Viney made his wife's stays after her pregnancy despite their straightened circumstances, “it is likely that, whenever possible, those from all classes wore stays during pregnancy, during their post-partum recovery period, and beyond” (111). Despite these issues, Stays and Body Image in London is a valuable resource for those interested in material culture, fashion, gender, and labor history, and opens up a number of research avenues for others working on eighteenth-century material culture.