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Originally Posted by Rupert
My understanding is that 'Sunday best' generally meant your newest set of clothes. They weren't of a different, more formal style, just newer. If you were well-off you might have enough sets that your 'best' was only used for church and a few other important functions until your worst set wore out and you got a new 'best' and your old 'best' just became your least worn day-to-day clothes. Everyone else, well they just hoped nothing horrible happened to their better set of clothes.
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Layering was also a thing - you might well have a higher end gown or other outer layer that went on over your more regular stuff, replacing a work smock or what have you. Ironically I just trimmed off the bit about linen, but I recall a statement (I think from a Ruth Goodman book) that a major difference between rich and poor was how often you could change your linen: outer layers might be very rarely washed, but you changed linen as often as you could afford as this was your underwear layer. The more fresh linen (and laundry) you could afford, the less you stank and the higher your status.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Agemegos
Before the Industrial Revolution thread and cloth required so much labour to make that they were were eye-wateringly costly. Look over any brief history of industrialisation and see how many of the transformative breakthroughs involved ginning, scouring, carding, spinning, weaving, and fulling. Then there is making: before the invention of the third-world sweatshop it was common for a working man to own only one or two pairs of trousers. Sunday Best was a luxury.
Nowadays we are used to a price for clothes in relation to wages that is, historically speaking, fantastically cheap
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This would also be why a lot of the start of the colonial era revolved around cloth - especially in North America, woollen blankets were a major trade good as the European market could provide cloth at wholesale prices that matched the top of the range available in North America at the time … blankets were just a handy format that the locals then took and reworked for their convenience. The African trade was a little trickier as heavy woollen cloth was much less in demand down there … that took importing dyed cottons from India. India, unsurprisingly, didn't have much interest in European cloth so it made more sense to invest in local production and become a seller.