Pre-Industrial Clothing. Clothing has always served as a richly revealing expression of differences in social status, age, wealth, and sexuality. During the period between 1750 and 1914 there was a revolution in clothing production and distribution patterns, in styles and materials, and in the meanings of fashion. Nothing like the modern retailclothing business existed before the nineteenth century. Before standard-sized ready-to-wear clothes could be bought off the rack, Europeans purchased apparel to order. To have a suit of clothes made, one visited a draper to purchase cloth by the yard, a mercer for ornaments, fasteners, and other accessories, and a tailor, who assembled the outfit to the buyer's specifications. Such a decentralized system of production was reflected in a wide division of labor in the garment industry. There were underwear makers, dressmakers, tailors for men's clothes, tailors for women's and children's clothes...