This book demonstrates the primacy of touch, smell, taste, sight and sound within the retail landscape. It shows that histories of the senses, body, and emotions were inextricably intertwined with processes and practices of retail and consumption. Shops are sensory feasts. From the rustle of silk to the tempting aroma of coffee, the multi-sensory appeal of goods has long been at the heart of how we shop. This book delves into and beyond this seductive idyl of consumer sensuality. Shopping was a sensory activity for consumers and retailers alike, but this experience was not always positive. This book is inhabited by tired feet and weary workers, as well as eager shoppers. It considers embodied sensory experiences and practices, and it represents both a celebration and interrogation of the integration of sensory histories into the study of retail and consumption. Crucially, this book places breathing, feeling human bodies back into the retail space.
1. Introduction: Shopping and Sensing: Embodied Experiences of Retail
and Consumption; Serena Dyer.- 2. 'To Rub the Nose in the Tea': Smell, Taste,
and the Assessment of Quality in Early-Nineteenth Century Tea Retail; Mathew
Mauger.- 3. An Assault on the Senses: Cultural Representations of the
Victorian Village Shop; Lucy Bailey.- 4. Women, Shopping and the Politics of
Sitting Down; Stephanie Rainesl.- 5. Comfort and Safety: Shopping Spaces in
Nineteenth-Century Amsterdam and Brussels; Anneleen Arnout.- 6. The Customer
Set Free: Shopping Under Iron and Glass at the Bon Marché; Amanda
Sikarskie.- 7. The Cry of Silk: Fetishism and Erotomania in Au Bonheur des
Dames; Wendy Ligon Smith.- 8. "Behind the Scenes of a Retail Shop": Sensory
Experiences of LivingIn, 1880s-1920s; Alison Moulds.- 9. Synergy and
Dissonance of the Senses: Negotiating Fashion through Second-Hand Dealing,
Seconds Trading, Jumble Sales and Street Markets in 1930s London; Cheryl
Roberts.- 10. 'A Seductive Weapona Necessary Luxury': Shopping for 'Designer
Perfume' during the Interwar Period; Lucy Moyse Ferreira.- 11. Be My Baby:
Developing Sensory Experiences for Teenagers in British Fashion Retail,
1945-1975; Bethan Bide.
Serena Dyer is Lecturer in History and Material Culture at De Montfort University, UK.
