Young boy photographed in Leeds, England, c.1895
Dr Clare Rose is one of the leading experts in the history of childhood in Britain, with special expertise in children’s fashion and gender differentiation in the past. Her Children’s Clothes Since 1750 made groundbreaking use of unpublished retail catalogues and surviving garments to investigate the clothes actually worn by children in the past.
Clare Rose’s PhD, Boyswear and the formation of gender and class identity in urban England, 1840-1900 (University of Brighton, 2006) examined thousands of unpublished documents and images to establish the ways that fashion shaped boys’ appearance in Victorian Britain. Her research investigated the photo archives of Dr Barnardo’s Homes, and unpublished collections of manufacturers’ designs and retailers’ catalogues, to show that boys’ fashion was big business even before 1900. She demonstrated that boys’ sailor suits were not seen as miniature uniforms, but as fashion garments with highly un-nautical trimmings.
Clare Rose is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth, University of Sheffield, and a member of the Society for the Study of Childhood in the Past and the Society for the History of Childhood and Youth. She has spoken on the history of childhood to the University of Bologna, Colonial Williamsburg, the Valentine Museum, Richmond, Va., and the Pasold Research Fund.
Childhood History Publications
- Continuity and Change in Children’s Clothing, 1885-1920, Textile History 42 (2011)
- What was uniform about the fin-de-siècle sailor suit? Journal of Design History, 23 (2011)
- Making, Selling and Wearing Boys’ Clothes in late Victorian England, (Farnham: Ashgate, 2010)
- Raggedness and Respectability in Barnardo’s Archive, International Journal of Childhood in the Past 1 (2008) , pp. 136-50
- The novelty consists in the ornamental design’: design innovation in mass-produced boys’ clothing, 1840-1900’, Textile History vol. 38/1 (2007), pp. 1-24
- Alla ricerca della cenciosita (In search of raggedness) in Tiziano Bonazzi (ed.), Riconoscimento ed Esclusione, (Rome: Carocci Editore, 2003) pp. 157-180
- Children’s Clothes Since 1750, (London and New York: T Batsford/Drama Press, 1989)