Enabling Politeness: Perfumers and Male Self-Fashioning in Britain, c. 1750–1800

Abstract

Perfumers have long been associated with the manufacture and sale of cosmetic products for women in the eighteenth century. This article argues, however, that the place of perfumers as retailers of goods for men has been overlooked and that they were, in fact, key enablers in the construction of polite masculinity. In so doing, it also raises broader questions about the gendering both of particular types of retail and of shop spaces.