Enfilade

From Colonial Williamsburg:

Symposium on Historical Dress | Well Suited: The Work of the Tailor, 1640–1840

Online and in-person, Colonial Williamsburg, 5–7 November 2026

In-person registration due by 16 October; virtual registration due by 7 November

The 2026 symposium, Well Suited, examines the tailor’s trade, convening an international group of historians, curators, tailors, makers, designers, and scholars to explore the history, craft, and cultural significance of tailoring from the eighteenth through nineteenth centuries. Presentations examine military dress, enslaved and working-class clothing, women in the tailoring trade, international fashion exchange, reconstruction methods, and the technical practices of historical garment making, alongside broader themes of identity, labor, and colonialism.

Keynote presentations by Mark Hutter (Master Tailor, Colonial Williamsburg) and Tom Mahon (Tailor and Head Cutter, Redmayne) offer reflections on the evolution of tailor traditions and the enduring role of the tailor’s craft.

Military and martial dress emerge as a major theme throughout the program. Steve Baule examines the role of military tailors in British regiments in colonial America, while Matthew Keagle explores evidence of tailoring practices embedded in eighteenth-century military clothing. Tim Logue traces the influence of Central European Hajduk, Pandour, and Hussar dress on fashionable menswear, and Zack Pinsent investigates the origins, symbolism, reconstruction, and rediscovery of the Windsor Uniform. International and diplomatic wardrobes are further explored by Timothy Long and Gabriella de la Rosa in a new study of George Washington’s black velvet jacket at Sulgrave Manor.

Several presentations examine tailoring within systems of labor, enslavement, and colonial exchange. James J. Broomall considers the relationship between ready-made clothing and slavery in “The Fabric of Enslavement,” while Kathrin Breitt Brown studies garments produced for enslaved workers at Mount Vernon. Laura Beltrán-Rubio reimagines the colonial Andean tailoring trade through Indigenous research methods, and Michael Weil explores tailoring along the Spanish frontier in colonial Texas. Together, these lectures illuminate tailoring’s role within global systems of trade, empire, and labor.

The symposium also highlights tailoring as a deeply personal and local craft shaped by records, surviving garments, and workshop practice. Kirsten Hammerstrom analyzes a Philadelphia tailor’s ledger from 1763 to 1773 to reveal patterns of alteration, repair, and identity formation, while Henry Cooke uses the William Waine papers to reconstruct working-class clothing production and commercial life in colonial Boston. Brenda Rosseau traces three generations of the Figgatt tailoring family across Maryland and Virginia, and Michael Ramsey examines the overlooked business of making Scottish plaiding hose.

Technical reconstruction and experimental making form another important focus of the symposium. Rowan Brenzie reconstructs an 1820s men’s coat to study period drafting systems and fashionable silhouette, while Wilson LeCount and Emma Cross present new research into the construction of leather breeches. Kristen E. Stewart investigates John Randolph’s buckskin breeches, and Margaret Perry with E. Katherine Hargrove reconstruct mid-eighteenth-century orthopedic stays through experimental archaeology and embodied practice.

Questions of gender, fashion communication, and women’s participation in tailoring are addressed in several talks. Chloe Chapin examines nineteenth-century tailor’s plates as tools for advertising and codifying masculinity, while Hannah Rumball-Croft explores tact, touch, and propriety in relationships between male tailors and female clients. Karin J. Bohleke and Nicholas Sekela revisit the career and influence of nineteenth-century tailoress Amanda Jones, whose innovative drafting systems challenged assumptions about women’s labor and authorship within the trade.

Together, these presentations demonstrate the richness of tailoring history as a field that bridges material culture, social history, technical skill, and embodied practice, offering new perspectives on the makers, wearers, and meanings of clothing across the Atlantic world and beyond.