George Washington, Slavery, and the New Politics of Style, 1743-1789

This innovative study offers the first full-length account of George Washington as a figure shaped through dress, appearance, and the material politics of the 18th-century Atlantic world.

Drawing on extensive archival, visual and material evidence—ledgers, tailors’ invoices, military orders, correspondence, and plantation records as well as portraits and surviving items of dress—Ballard demonstrates how clothing structured Washington’s self-presentation as planter, soldier, and emerging national leader.

Foregrounding the labor and expertise of enslaved and indentured valets, spinners, weavers, hairdressers, and artisans, the book reveals how Washington’s sartorial life depended on systems of coercion and global trade. Ballard combines interdisciplinary methods from material culture studies, art history, Black studies, and fashion theory to reconstruct how Washington used clothing to navigate rank, authority, racial hierarchy, diplomacy, and reputation.

George Washington, Slavery, and the New Politics of Style, 1743-1789 reframes foundational narratives by treating dress as a form of political thought, one which shaped militia uniforms, the visual identity of the Continental Army, and the symbolic language of the early republic. Richly documented and conceptually ambitious, the book invites scholars to reconsider the cultural formation of the United States through the textiles, bodies, and labor that made Washington visible and offers invaluable context and insights for students in fashion, American history and culture, and beyond.