18th Century Milliners
The Morning Ramble, or, The Milliners Shop
© The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.
This page focuses on illustrations of milliners, including millinery shop interiors and milliners meeting privately with their clients in their homes.
Several of these images take a more satirical view of the millinery profession. Newspaper advertisements, trade cards, trial transcriptions, and other records provide useful details as to the fashionable goods that 18th century milliners sold.
Additional Resources
Of the Milliner, The London Tradesman (1747)
Of the Milliner, The parent’s and guardian’s directory (1761)
What is an 18th Century Milliner / Marchande de Modes?
The Face of Fashion: Milliners in Eighteenth-Century Visual Culture
Clockmakers, Milliners and Mistresses: Women Trading in the City of London Companies 1700-1750
Millinery and Milliners in Colonial Virginia, 1750-1780
Women Merchants and Milliners in Eighteenth Century Williamsburg
Millinery shop interiors
The Rival Milleners, 1772
A Milliners Shop: Mrs Monopolize, the Butchers Wife, purchasing a Modern Head Dress, 1772
The Unwelcome Customer, 1772
The Pretty Milleners, 1781
A Morning Ramble, or — The Milliners Shop, 1782
A Milliner’s Shop, 1787
The Man Milliner, 1793
High-change in Bond Street, ou la politesse du grand monde, 1796
Milliners en route (delivering orders to customers)
Typically, milliners carry their wares in a rectangular box with an arched top, although other shapes also appear (such as large disc-shaped boxes ideal for wide hats).
A Rake’s Progress: The Arrest by William Hogarth, 1733
Lord W— G— habited as a Milliner, 1769
The Charming Millener of ___ Street, 1771
Tommy Trifle the Male Milliner, c. 1774
Galerie des Modes, 7e Cahier, 5e Figure, “Drawing of a character, representing the marchande de mode, who carries her merchandise in the city,” 1778
An English Man of War, taking a French Privateer, 1781
A Man Millener, 1787
A March to the Bank, 1787
A Man Millener, 1787
Obediah tempting the Pretty Milliner, 1788
Old Q-uiz the old Goat of Piccadilly, 1796
Milliners in clients’ homes
Milliners often visit their customers at their dressing tables.
The Milliner by François Boucher, 1746
Les Marchandes de modes by Jean-Baptiste Mallet, 1780
Dressing for a Birthday, 1790