This dissertation is a comparative study of the labor in department stores and fashion retailing at the turn of the twentieth century in Sheffield and Cologne. I argue that these stores were industrialized workplaces that were built on the skilled labor of women. My study shows that lower-middle-class identity existed as a material reality built by people’s belief in it rather than explicitly clear economic conditions. My work attempts to bring questions of gender to social and labor history and to bridge the divide between ideas of production and consumption by focusing on the workers in retailing. The primary methodology is comparative, but this study is also supported by methodologies and theories in gender studies. The comparative lens provides insights into the similarities between the two national contexts which supports a discussion of the western European middle classes and their social position. Differences between the contexts highlight the malleability of the department store form as an industrialized employer. Furthermore, a gendered approach to labor history gives store employees and owners agency in the productive retailing process. Three of the four chapters focus on different aspects of department and fashion stores. The first presents my broad argument about the social and cultural capital fashion retailing work provided and the ways in which this aspect outweighed other considerations for workers. The second argues that the spatial aspects of stores and cities directly impacted people’s experiences and understandings of retailing. The third and fourth claim that shop employment was skilled and included tangible and intangible aspects, both of which were vital to success. Ultimately, this study resituates department and fashioning stores within larger industrialized contexts of labor and distribution.
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