Join Dr. Alanna McKnight, a fashion historian, as she demonstrates how using a 19th century Eaton’s catalogue can open up conversations about the history of fashion, women’s bodies, leisure time, exploitive work practices, and settler colonialism. Specifically, she shows two pages from the Fall and Winter catalouge from 1899-1900 and highlights the layout of the catalogue and the fashions of the period.

Dr. McKight also links this history to today’s “fast fashion” and asks us to consider how access to ready-made clothes contributed to the waste associated with fashion, and the continuation of negative labour practices.