Perusing The Paradise: Dressing in the Department Store - Kara Tennant

‘Perusing The Paradise: Dressing in the Department Store’

Kara Tennant, University of South Wales

In this paper, I consider representations of Victorian clothing and bodies in the BBC’s 2012-13 costume drama The Paradise, set in the nineteenth-century British department store. Its appearance reflects a growing interest in the history of consumer culture within mainstream television. The Paradise, for example, aired alongside its ‘rival’ ITV production Mr Selfridge (2013-present), and was followed by the three-part BBC documentary Shopgirls (2014), presented by Professor Pamela Cox, which examined the ‘strange new phenomenon’ of the female shop-worker.[1]

The Paradise took inspiration from Émile Zola’s 1883 novel Au Bonheur des Dames, and follows the experiences of Denise, an assistant in the ladieswear section of a burgeoning new store. In this case, however, the action is resituated from 1860s Paris to the  north-east of England in the mid-1870s, a decision that impacts significantly upon the costume design, as well as upon the social meanings conveyed through clothing.

Indeed, I argue that the process of dressing the Victorian body – particularly the female body – becomes centrally significant within the series. As Denise shapes and re-shapes both her own body, by wearing her new work uniform, and those of her customers, in the form of the garments that they purchase, we see new understandings of Victorian fashion and femininity formed. And these, I suggest, respond to our own, modern, culture in interesting and revealing ways.

1a: Fabricating Femininity (Chair: Sarah Heaton) – CWE 124

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[1] ‘Shopgirls: the True Story of Life Behind the Counter’ (2014), <http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/proginfo/2014/25/shopgirls> [accessed 10 December 2014].