Creating My Character - The Occupation

On the day of my presentation, I was vague about my idea for what exactly my Steampunk character would be - I'm pretty sure one of the answers I gave out loud was "something to do with herbs" or something to that effect. When I first started collecting bits and pieces for my costume, I really did have an incredibly vague notion, but I've been working towards rectifying that for a while now and mking sure that the costume that I've been putting together fits in with the historical representation of the occupation I have chosen as much as is possible. Then again, I will be varying from that idea quite a bit as I put everything together for the final product - this is Steampunk after all, and it's not 100% about historical accuracy.

I've decided that my character would be a shopkeeper, specifically a character that both owns and operates her own tea shop. Since tea was a product purchased by both the upper and middle classes, she would make a decent living for herself, so it would be acceptable for her to have a couple of nicer flourishes as a part of her clothing. Lately I've been doing some research about shops and shopkeepers in the Victorian era, and I happened to find a pretty interesting resource that answered a lot of my questions, and caused me to learn something new.

For instance, did you know that concrete prices weren't implemented in shops until the 1830's? This was so shopkeepers could haggle for a lower or higher price depending on their clientelle. Also most shops were owned by men and it was frowned upon for women to own them unless they were widowed and took over the shop - this being once women had the right to inherit property of course.

I was glad to learn this fact, because I had been playing around with the idea in my mind about my character being a widow. The reason for this was that I thought I could get away with a few robust choices of my costume as being items that were perhaps owned originally by her husband but then re-worn or re-purposed to fit her needs. Really, I've just been looking for an excuse to add a cool pair of Steampunk goggles to my costume. So far no luck, but if you have any suggestions for how I might achieve that, let me know in the comments below!