51462303 Fashion in Medieval France 184384110X

spine 21.5 A06/04/07

HOW can a distinction be made between a culture organized around fashion, and one where the desire for novel adornment is latent, intermittent, or prohibited? This book is the first to offer a comprehensive working theory of how fashion systems organize social hierarchies, individual psychology, creativity, and production.

Medieval French culture supplies the context for this case study of ‘systematic fashion’, demonstrating desire for novelty, rejection of the old in favor of the new, and criticism of outrageous display. Texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries describe how cleverly-cut garments or unique possessions make a character distinctive; they even offer advice on how to look attractive on a budget, and spin fantasies of gaining enough spending money to shop for oneself.

Such descriptions suggest fashion’s presence, yet accepted notions date the birth of Western fashion to the mid-fourteenth century revolution in men’s clothing styles. A fashion system was surely present prior to this ‘revolution’ in styles, to facilitate such changes: abundant evidence for the existence of such a system is cogently set out in this study.

SARAH-GRACE HELLER is an associate professor SARAH-GRACE HELLER is an associate professor SARAH-GRACE HELLERof Medieval French at Ohio State University.

Jacket: Guillaume de Lorris, ‘Roman de la Rose’, c. 1350 (Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 324,f. 2v).

Medieval Clothing and TextilesEdited by ROBIN NETHERTON and GALE OWEN-CROCKER

Historical dress and textiles, always a topic of popular interest, is now established as an academic subject in its own right. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, a new series devoted to the subject (vol. 3 at this time the most recent), includes in-depth studies from a variety of disciplines as well as cross-genre scholarship, representing such fi elds as social history, economics, history of techniques and technology, art history, archaeology, literature, and language.

Vol. II Clothing descriptions in an early Irish poem in relation to archaeological fi nds; the Latin inscription embroidered on the Bayeux Tapestry; cloth-making in 12th-century French romances; medieval Paris as an international textile market; the cost of sartorial excess in England; textile cleaning techniques at a German convent in the 15th century; jewelled animal pelts as fashion accessories in the Renaissance; the social signifi cance of the embroidered jacket in early modern England.

Vol. III Domestic textiles in Anglo-Saxon England; clerical vestments in the Anglo-Saxon church; representations of saints in Opus Anglicanumvestments; colour changes in Flemish luxury woollens, 1300–1550; the fi nishing of English woollens, 1300–1550; the signifi cance of poverty and richly decorated garments in the Vita Christi of Isabel de Villena; 15th-century instructions for fi ngerloop braiding; categorization of multiple-strand bookmarkers; children’s clothing in the Lisle Letters, 1533–40.

www.boydell.co.ukwww.boydellandbrewer.com

BOYDELL & BREWER LtdPO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US)US)US

Fashion Med France.indd 1 09/04/2007 20:47:51

Gallica

Volume 3

Fashion in medieval France

heller, fashion in medieval Fran1 1 30/01/2007 15:13:31

Gallica

issn 1749–091X

General editor: sarah Kay

Gallica aims to provide a forum for the best current work in medieval French studies. literary studies are particularly welcome and preference is given to works written in english, although publication in French is not excluded.

Proposals or queries should be sent in the first instance to the editor, or to the publisher, at the addresses given below; all submissions receive prompt and informed consideration.

Professor sarah Kay, department of French and italian, Princeton University, 303 east Pyne, Princeton, nJ 08544, Usa

The managing editor, Gallica, Boydell & Brewer ltd., Po Box 9, Woodbridge, suffolk iP12 3dF, UK

already Published

1 Postcolonial Fictions in the ‘Roman de Perceforest’: Cultural Identities and Hybridities, sylvia huot

2 A Discourse for the Holy Grail in Old French Romance, Ben ramm


Fashion in medieval France

Sarah-Grace Heller

d. s. BreWer


© sarah-Grace heller 2007

All Rights Reserved. except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast,

transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner

The right of sarah-Grace heller to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the

copyright, designs and Patents act 1988

First published 2007 d. s. Brewer, cambridge

isBn 978 1 84384 110 4

d. s. Brewer is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer ltd Po Box 9, Woodbridge, suffolk iP12 3dF, UK

and of Boydell & Brewer inc. 668 mt hope avenue, rochester, nY 14620, Usa

website: www.boydellandbrewer.com

a catalogue record for this title is available from the British library

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

Typeset by carnegie Book Production, lancaster Printed in Great Britain by

antony rowe, chippenham, Wiltshire


contents

acknowledgements ix

introduction 1

1 Sine qua non of a Fashion system 15

2 The Birth of Fashion 46

3 desire for novelty and Unique expression 61

4 Words for Fashion 95

5 The desire for spending money 120

6 The development of shopping 148

7 The seduction of the Well-draped Form 172

Bibliography 181

index 197



For my parents, Tom and mary heller



acknowledgements

a significant portion of the work on this book was made possible through the generous support of the ohio state University college of humanities. Thanks go to diane Birckbichler, Judith mayne, and all the other members of the ohio state University department of French and italian for their continued support, and to my many wonderful colleagues at the center for medieval and renaissance studies, particularly rebecca haidt, Graeme Boone, sarah Johnston, heather Webb, nick howe, and many others who have lent interdis-ciplinary perspectives and enthusiasm. a great debt is owed dick davis, a mentor, friend, and inspiration, for his attentive readings of the manuscript in all its stages. The manuscript was also much strengthened thanks to the comments of sarah Kay, editor of this series. Grateful thanks for early and continued guidance on the project go to susan noakes, F.r.P.akehurst, and Kathryn reyerson of the University of minnesota, and ronald martinez of Brown University. at Grinnell college, i would like to thank vic verrette for showing me the romance language path, ellen mease for her challenging introductions to critical literature, and Pip Gordon, who made me come upstairs from the costume shop. For their daily sustenance and patience, i thank my parents, Tom and mary heller, and Kyle Baith and lucia myrtle, whose arrival coincides with that of this book.



introduction

scholars, particularly in art and costume history, have argued and accepted that fashion was not really born before around 1350. Those who are familiar with the old French literature of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries may find that astonishing, since very concise descriptions of fashionable clothing abound in that corpus. Take for instance an opening passage in one of the most famous and influential of thirteenth-century texts, Guillaume de lorris’ Roman de la Rose (c. 1225–40). The narrator-protagonist sets the scene in may. The earth and all the bushes are pleased to wear new clothes:

avis m’iere qu’il estoit mais .. .el tens ou toute rien s’esgaieque l’en ne voit buisson ne haiequi en may parer ne se veilleet couvrir de novele fuelle.li bois recuevrent lor verdure,qui sunt sec tant come yver dure;la terre meïsmes s’orgueillepor la rosee qui la mueille,et oublie la povretéou ele a tot l’iver esté;lors devient la terre si gobequ’el velt avoir novele robe,si set si cointe robe feireque de colors i a .c. peire;l’erbe et les flors blanches et perseset de maintes colors diverses,c’est la robe que je devise,por quoi la terre mielz se prise.1

it seems to me that it was may .. .That time when everything grows gaybecause you see no bush nor hedge

1 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose (lines 45, 49–66). Translations are my own throughout, except as noted. dates of medieval works are rarely certain, and often extensively debated by scholars. dates given in this book are nearly always approximations, relying either on the most recent scholarship or to the selective chronology in Krueger, Cambridge Companion.


2 sarah-Grace heller

that fails to put on fine arrayand clothe itself in new leaves.The recovering woods green outafter being dry as long as winter lasts;earth herself makes herself splendidblushing moistened by the dew,and forgets the povertyshe dwelt in all winter long;This makes vain earth swell up so proud,she wants to have a brand new gown.she is skilled at making stylish robes,because her palate has two hundred hues:the grass, and white and dark blue flowers,and blooms of many varied colors.such is the robe that i describein which the earth takes so much pride.

The topos of praising nature and spring in descriptions of the locus amoenus (pleasance) is a classical one, and the theme of the reverdie or the may-tide reclothing of the earth in green is commonplace in medieval lyric poetry.2 What is remarkable in Guillaume de lorris’ version of the trope is earth’s pride in her splendor, and her skill in ordering new clothing, metaphors imposed on the natural cycle of spring from the register of a commercial economy where new clothes were exciting, prized, and where the stylish elite distinguished themselves by devising them according to their tastes and means.

as the dream tale continues, the narrator enters the spring day, preparing to enter the world (and fall in love) by dressing himself well, curiously sewing his sleeves in a zigzag stitch:

de mon lit tantost me levé,chauçai moi et mes mains lavé;lors trés une aguille d’argentd’un aiguillier mignot et gent,si prins l’aiguille a enfiler.hors de vile oi talent d’alerpor oïr des oisiaus les sons,qui chantent desus les buissonsen icele saison novele.cousant mes manches a videle,m’an vois lors tot sol esbatant . . .3

straight away from bed i rose,i washed my hands, put on my chausses,4

2 curtius, European Literature, pp.195–200; schulze-Busacker, “Topoi”, pp.433–5.3 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 89–99.4 old French terms indicating under-layers of clothing such as chausses (close-fitting

leggings worn under robes primarily by men, of silk, wool, or leather), braies (undergarments


then drew out a silver needle,from a charming needle holderand set to drawing thread through its eye.i felt like going outside the wallsto hear the song of birds, whose callsare heard above each bush and treein this brand-new season.sewing on my sleeves with zig-zag stitches,rejoicing, i set off alone .. .

These details are worth remarking, first for their prominence at the very beginning of the work, and also for their emphasis on artifice. spring does not wear a dress of light greens and fresh floral tones as one might expect, based on observations of nature. her new gown contains hundreds of different colors but especially pers and in some manuscripts inde,5 dark shades of blue: prized, popular and costly dye colors in the thirteenth century. The lover-narrator does not describe himself as simply dressing, throwing on some clothes in the insou-ciant style one might expect from observing the habits of some young men. he specifies sewing his sleeves with a silver needle drawn from a handsome and stylish case, as well as the type of stitch he uses: an ostentatious zigzag, not a more modest lateral stitch as seen on some extant sculptures, nor something invisible, or quickly done in slap-dash slipstitches.6 The zigzag requires significant sartorial proficiency and ambidextrous ability, especially for a person sewing on a garment while wearing it.

in the occitan romance known as Flamenca (c. 1260–80), the protagonist Guillaume dresses himself with noteworthy attention to sartorial detail after a dreamed meeting with the god of love. so dressed, he gazes towards the tower where his beloved is imprisoned:

em braias fon et en camisa;un mantel vert ap pena grisaa mes sot si a la fenestra.li tor estai a la man destra.Tant cant si poinet a caussarno.l poc ges hom la tor emblar.Tot bellamen si vest e.s caussa,e non ac sabbata ni caus[s]a,mais us bels estivals biais

which could be roughly translated as breeches or drawers, of linen or hemp), and chemises (undershirts or slips, also of linen or hemp) have no exact modern equivalent, noted by i leave them untranslated to avoid confusion, and to emphasize their distinct styles.

5 daniel Poirion’s edition, which follows the Z manuscript family (base text B.n. fr. 25523, close to the earlier manuscript B.n. fr. 1559 of the late thirteenth century) reads “D’erbes, de flors indes et perses” for line 63. Poirion, Le Roman de la Rose.

6 cf. the figures in Quicherat, Histoire du costume, pp.185, 90. on the term “zig-zag”, langlois, “vizele”.

inTrodUcTion 3



que foron fag ins a doais;caussas de sais non causserasi ben hom tant non la[s] tirera.7

he was in braies and a chemise.he placed a green cape lined in grey squirrelunder him on the window sill.The tower was on the right-hand side.as he worked to put on his chausseshe could not turn his gaze from the tower.he dresses in elegant clothes and chausses:he wore neither work shoes nor slippers,but fine lightweight pointed bootsthat had been made in douai.he would never wear a pair of silk chaussesunless no one could peel them off.

in his dressing Guillaume does not merely dress. The narrator makes it clear that he does not blunder indiscriminately into just any sort of trousers. his are distinctive leggings. They set him apart from all the other mediocre young lovers who would wear any breeches as long as they were of a rich fabric. Guillaume’s chausses must fit him distinctively, displaying his individual body and all its virtues, even to the point where they hinder easy dressing by their tight fit, emphasized twice in the passage. his shoes, too, are distinctive. They are imported from a named merchant city, douai, having the exotic effect of being a prestigious possession imported from the right place. his boots are not reputed for comfort, or one-size-fits-all (like slippers) or utilitarian (like sabots or heavy work shoes); rather, they are lightweight and carefully styled. he is portrayed as a man who can casually throw a rich fur-lined mantel of luxurious fabric over the windowsill. This portrait conveys that he has wealth: that much is incontestable. sumptuous and fashionable are not necessarily synonyms, however. does Guillaume not clearly have his own personal style here? he follows aristocratic modes of sumptuous dress in all respects, but what the author emphasizes is his distinctive interpretation of the standard elite model. The thirteenth-century ideal hero is repeatedly represented as an individual who strove for distinction in appearance. is that not fashion?

The examples of fashion in noble male characters in thirteenth-century literature are numerous. men, it should be noted, were at the forefront of consumption and display through the middle ages (and arguably up to the late eighteenth century), having primary control of finances and selection, contrary to the notion that ornament and shopping have ever been the exclusive domain of women. While the invectives of moralists and satirists are often directed at the vanity of women, this was often motivated by rhetorical tradition or compe-tition for financial control, and can give a false impression of the degree to

7 huchet, Flamenca, lines 2192–203.


which they were free to consume. With that caveat, women and people of lesser status such as the bourgeoisie or courtly companions, indeed whole towns, were engaged in the pursuit of the new, the stylish and the distinctive. This atmos-phere of generalized desire for the new, perceptible in the passage quoted above from Guillaume de lorris in which all the hedges and bushes wanted new clothes in keeping with the desires of the allegorized springtime, finds an urban echo in Philippe de remi’s Jehan et Blonde (c. 1230–43). in honor of the initiation of the protagonist Jehan’s rule as count, the entire town is dressed up, and its townspeople of all social stations with it, all taking a newfound pride in appearance:

Qui donques veïst desploiierToiles de lin et couvrir ruessi dru que nus n’i voit les nues,et es costés par les fenestresPendre drap d’or et tant d’escarlateQui ne sont pas fourré de nate,mais de vair, de gris et d’ermine!entour dammartin n’eut mescine,vallet ne bourgois ne bourgoisea qui li quers mout ne renvoiseQuant il voient tele leur vile:“ceste feste n’est mie a guile”,Font cil qui voient l’apparoil,car mout erent en grant tooilles jens Jehan d’apparillier 8

Then anyone would see the displaying oflengths of linen, dressing up the streets,so many that no one could see the clouds;and hanging by the sides of the windowsso much cloth of gold and scarlet woolens –not lined in matted furs,but in squirrel, miniver, and ermine!in dammartin there was not a servant girl,a valet, a townsman nor a townswomanwhose heart did not rejoice greatlywhen they saw their town so:“This celebration is no trick,”so say all who see the display,for it had been with great painsthat Jehan’s people had dressed up the town.

The hanging of cloth in the streets for a triumphal entry was both a common practice and a descriptive trope in the middle ages. in this particular text, the

8 Philippe de remi, Jehan et Blonde, (lines 5644–59).

inTrodUcTion 5



villagers collectively cover their buildings and streets with the same fine fabrics which they wear, the same types of fabrics which Jehan gives as gifts to two dozen new knights and to his family members, all now raised out of poverty by his triumphant adventures. They seek to improve their town using the same methods which people would use to show that their social status had improved: by showing off brightly dyed, fine-quality, expensive textiles. What is important in this particular example is the demonstration of how successful this improvement method is, emphasizing the admiration that the improved appearance solicits from all onlookers: their hearts were gladdened to see the splendor. efforts to improve appearance receive positive attention. The romance supports the fantasy that novelty, unique style and ostentatious appearance will garner approval and increase an individual or group’s social importance.

Beyond the narrative fantasies of romance, extant historical documents such as the French royal sumptuary laws promulgated in 1279 and 1294 testify to interest in new clothes and the status they imply on the part of many social groups. men of wealth receive the greatest number of privileges in these attempts at regulating visual status according to income. in 1279, after attempting to limit the number of daily meals for noble men and clerics to three, the statutes address the number and cost of new fur-lined outfits (“pairs of robes”, signifying the whole layered ensemble of cote, surcoat, and mantle/cape) such men would be allowed annually:

il est ordené que nus ne dux, ne cuens, ne prelaz, ne bers, ne autres, soit clers soit lais, ne puisse faire ne avoir en un anz plus de iiij paires de robes vaires, ne dont l’aune de Paris conte plus de xxx s. de tournois, se il n’avoit plus de vij mile livrées de terre à tournois, et cil n’en pourrait avoir qu v au plus, et que nus escuiers, combien qu’il soit riche homs, ne face ne n’ait que ij paires de robes par an, se n’avoit iiij mile livrées de terre par an tournois ou plus, ou se il n’estoit fiuz de cel qui les eut, et cil ne puit avoir par an que iiij paire.

[it is ordered that no duke, count, prelate, baron or anyone else, whether cleric or layman, may have made or possess in a year more than four pairs of robes lined in vair fur, nor whose cloth costs more than 30 sous tournois, if he does not have more than seven thousand pounds tournois a year in rents, and if he does he may not have more than five; and that no squire, no matter how powerful a man he might be, may have made or possess more than two sets of robes per year, unless he has four thousand pounds tournois a year in rents or more, or unless he is the son of a man who does, and as such he may have no more than four sets.] 9

however, companions, wives, clerics, and town dwellers are not neglected. The ostentatious materials they were consuming and the number of new outfits they wished to have per year are clearly a cause for concern. This concern would

9 duplès-augier, “ordonnance somptuaire”.


appear to be an increasing one, as the statutes of 1294 give this issue specific attention, forbidding vair, miniver, and ermine fur as well as gold, precious stones, crowns of silver and gold for the bourgeoisie. The finest furs were denied to clerics of lower status, except on their hats. Wives of noblemen of various levels of status were allowed as many outfits as their husbands in four different statutes. another statute sets the limit at one new outfit a year for unmarried women, or noblewomen who are not chatelaines or in possession of two thousand pounds in rent a year. compare these, however, to the eighteen statutes that concern men primarily or exclusively, or the six that treat gifts of clothing given to the companions or squires of noblemen and prelates. men had more freedom to select, consume, and also decide what others would wear. overall, these laws reveal shifts in fabric prices, income thresholds, and consciousness of the complex social ladder over the course of a quarter century, as well as desire on the part of many social groups to have more new changes of clothing in a year. They also speak of a social reality underlying the desires and fantasies represented in narrative works. accelerating consumption was real, not a mere poet’s dream. These regulations will be treated in further depth in chapters 3 and 5.

The search for the ultimate in visible, social distinction, seen in sources from the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries in northern and southern France, is more important than it might initially appear. since the period self-described as the renaissance, the middle ages have often been presented as antithetical to all that is modern: an age of darkness, total lack of progress, and barbaric social practices. The renaissance is reputed to be the age of the birth of the individual, the beginnings of modern science and of the vital world market-place. The existence of fashion in thirteenth-century French literature undermines this notion of a clear watershed of cultural development. attempts to gain social recognition – and even love – through public display of individual taste and refinement characterize the actions of many members of modern society. if such attempts also characterize thirteenth-century French society, some assumptions about the definitions and dating of “renaissances” and modernity deserve re-examination.

That descriptions of ideal clothing expressing degrees of uniqueness, personal distinction and attraction appear in vernacular romance books is not mere happenstance. medieval fashion and written or poetic expression must be studied together because fashion and expression are intrinsically linked. This book argues that fashion is above all a conceptual system, not merely a visual one. no object is inherently fashionable. it does not have any value until declared desirable or useful in a social situation. Fashion is a result of a subjective, individual judgment, which must, paradoxically, be agreed upon by a group. it relies on communication for its existence. if a judgment is not communicated, the object remains only an object, never gaining (or losing) social importance and not realizing much, if any, of its potential role for symbolic communication in human relationships. The assertion that fashion and

inTrodUcTion 7



expression must be studied together has important consequences. some readers may be surprised to find that this is a book about fashion without pictures. But before simple items become items of fashionable consumption and imitation, they must be worked upon by the value-conferring power of words. Before something is fashionable, it must be desired, and that desire must be advertised to a group. Words are crucial evidence for locating the growth stages of a fashion system, and they will constitute the primary object of this study.

one of the first problems a study of fashion must confront is the staggering quantity of publication on the topic. Fashion has after all constituted its own genre of journalism for several centuries. only in recent years have scholars taken it seriously as an object worthy of study. Previously, when fashion was discussed it often appeared as a by-product of investigation into some other problem. moreover, when it has been addressed, disciplinary interests and methods have limited the questions writers have asked about the nature of fashion, and the sources at their disposal: sociologists have produced markedly different theories from psychologists, anthropologists, or novelists. despite the many diverse contributions, a comprehensive working definition of fashion is still needed. This is the focus of chapter 1, which proposes to develop a synthesis of fashion’s mechanisms, adopting a rigorously interdisciplinary approach to arrive at something more holistic and widely applicable.

Fashion, while far from the mere frivolity which has characterized some analysis of it, is undeniably fickle, paradoxical, and complex. Formulating a working definition of what a fashion system is and how it functions presents many challenges, which this book attempts to resolve by describing a set of ten criteria for determining such a system’s presence in a culture. although these criteria are numbered for the sake of easy reference throughout the study, they should not be understood in a linear manner or as ranked in order of importance. They are rather a kind of matrix, each one related to several others. at times the presence of one criterion is highlighted, but if fashion plays a dominant role in a society, the criteria must implicitly be functioning together.

chapter 1 will examine the rationale and contributing scholarship for each principle or criterion. here they are, in brief:

(1) a fashion system produces a relative disqualification of the past, due to a particular concept of time that privileges the new. in contrast would be a traditional society, where greater value is placed on the old and respected than on the new and innovative in various kinds of social problem-solving (everything from how to educate scholars to how to govern the polis to what to wear).

(2) in a fashion system, there is society-wide desire for constant, systematic change, as opposed to a social system where change is sporadic and irregular.

(3) Fashion represents a means of individual expression within a framework of social imitation.


(4) in societies where fashion is present, consumption and appearance play a significant role in the emotions and the human subconscious. a fashionable society features an esthetic cult of the self, encouraging unique and distinctive consumption in the interest of developing one’s confidence and increasing one’s value in the eyes of others.

(5) in a fashion system, change occurs in superficial forms rather than in major ones. The surface details of a relatively constant, slowly evolving silhouette are what are open to change and thus become outlets for self-expression through visible personal choice. radical attempts to alter major silhouettes (for example changing a garment form, such as substituting men’s trousers for skirts) are met with great resistance.

(6) Fashion systems follow a theatrical logic of excess and exaggeration. Fashion is theatrical in that it necessarily involves conspicuous consumption. it is a performance, requiring an educated audience to be effective. The phrase “logic of excess and exaggeration” refers to how incremental changes in details accumulate, eventually developing a fashionable form to an extreme point at which time a dramatic switchback occurs. Trendsetters move either towards greater conservatism or towards greater audacity in order to preserve their distinction; less savvy imitators may exaggerate a fashion past the point of distinctive discretion to the point of appearing gauche, excessive, or awkward.

(7) Words constitute the economy that gives and denies fashionable value to forms. in this way, fashion is performative, the result of the right person declaring something fashionable in the presence of the right audience. This point is important, because it dictates the need to study fashion through texts and words conveying fashionability and desire to consume, innovate, and express individual distinction.

(8) in a fashion system, criticism is constantly aroused by the rejection of the past and the tendency for continual changes. criticism and disapproval help to perpetuate the system by establishing an old view or product, or somehow a contrary one, against which to innovate and create something new.

(9) a fashion system places value on pleasure, making seduction a social norm. consumption of fashionable objects is seen as a means of gaining attention and approval, and from those things, pleasure.

(10) Because a major goal in a fashion system is consumption at the greatest possible level, when such a system is established there is a gradual movement towards equalization of appearances and accessibility to all social groups. Fashion has frequently been called a democratizing force for this reason. individual groups (groups based on socio-economics, profession, gender, race or ethnicity, and so on) create methods of maintaining distinction, but the possibility remains open for social mobility based on the ability to create objects worthy of consumption or based on the skillful manipulation of impressive appearances. By making all things

inTrodUcTion 9



subject to change, a fashion system eventually destabilizes most sacred institutions, making them open to experimentation.

The opinion that fashion, as we now know it, did not exist before the fourteenth century, a view studied in chapter 2, appears primarily in the work of scholars concentrating on visual evidence of the history of dress. While the contribution of these scholars is indisputably important, it risks misrepresenting many aspects of fashion history. For the thirteenth century, visual evidence is limited to cathedral sculptures, some funeral bronzes, and a moderate number of miniatures – fewer than in subsequent centuries when miniature painting and elaborate book production became more fully developed spheres of consumption. When images are few, rough, or decayed, visual scholars tend to find little fashion. From what images they have, they attempt to decide what was fashionable: pointed shoes, long sleeves, neckline brooches and so on. The problem is that fashion is not simply the sum of all the noticeable or repre-sentable objects. it is above all the desires that motivate the production, display and placement of those objects. a fashion system is never static: it is its nature to solicit constant change. Where there are static and rigid codes of appearance which censor visual display, it is not present as the defining, shaping force it has come to be in many urbanized areas of the West. To study fashion’s presence we must look beyond visual images to expressions of desire for distinction, uniqueness and admiration.

The notion that words constitute the economy of fashion (criterion 7) dictates in different ways the approaches of several of the book’s later chapters, which study specific aspects of emerging French fashion system over the “long” thirteenth century (c. 1160–1330). chapter 3 explores expressions of the desire for novelty (criteria 1 and 2) in vernacular narratives, looking at occasions when characters get new clothes and how they are described as attempting to create unique appearances (criteria 3, 4 and 5) and impress others by so doing (criteria 6 and 9). chapter 4 studies the role words play in a fashion system from a philological standpoint, examining a set of old French and occitan words related to cointerie, describing stylish, elegant, desirable objects and behavior, which have not previously been recognized as linked to the semantics of fashion. This section obviously focuses on criterion 7, but also touches on criteria 3 and 4, examining how cointerie signals personal and social distinction; on criterion 6, as lovers stage themselves for public approval; on criterion 9, as the term is linked to sexual appeal; and on criterion 8, looking at how fashion arouses anxiety and criticism. after establishing that most of the criteria are in play in French urban society in this period, the book turns to some of the sociological mechanisms involved in the development of the nascent fashion system. chapter 5 examines representations of the need for personal spending money in vernacular texts, essential for making distinctive individual choices in display, something that is impossible when a gift system is dominant or when coin is too scarce to allow for shopping. This section enters into analysis of criterion 10 to some degree, looking at how access to fashionable distinction


is opened up to groups beyond the highest elite. shopping is the topic of chapter 6, which studies representations of how new things were obtained and whether individual choices (criteria 3, 4 and 5) could be expressed in those transactions, looking at the roles played by different members of the social hierarchy. it also looks at how shopping began to occur in different geographies such as noble manors or emerging commercial cities such as Paris. moving beyond these relatively abstract studies of the desires for consumption expressed in texts, chapter 7 turns to look at the specific materials and styles characteristic of the thirteenth-century look, which has been dismissed as simple, undeveloped, and unisex by some, celebrated as elegant by others. This last chapter briefly surveys how newly available and more abundant materials were employed to create an attention-getting profile.

international trade and the desire for the exotic are clearly key aspects of fashion, so an apology is due for limiting this book’s scope to a case study of nascent fashion in France. it is worth remarking that the French have arguably seen fashion as worthy of serious inquiry longer than have the scholars of other national traditions, and indeed seem to have long been significantly self-conscious about a national preoccupation with fashion.10 The importance of fashion to French cultural identity can, for instance, be observed in montaigne’s remark that he would excuse “in our people” the fault of not having anything better to do than perfecting their own manners and customs, since that is “a universal vice”, but he had to complain about the particularly French “indis-cretion” of constantly changing opinions about clothing,11 or in the eighteenth-century Dictionnaire sentencieux, which defined fashion as “ways of dressing, writing and behaving which make the French twist round and round in a thousand different ways to make themselves out more gracious, more charming and often more ridiculous.” 12 suggesting a crucial link between writing and the mentality of fashionable consumption, some of the earliest – and some of the most lucid – theories of fashion have emerged from what we would now consider the literary realm, although these contributions are not often recognized by fashion historians. honoré de Balzac sought to describe

10 When herbert Blumer issued his “invitation to sociologists to take seriously the topic of fashion”, his bibliography was slim, limited only to english-language works. Blumer, “Fashion”. sima Godfrey contrasted the intricate association “if not collusion” of “the heady world of French letters and the bodily world of fashion” with the anglo-american perspective, which lacks such a close association. she suggested that it is easy for a “familiar sort of puritanical discourse” to condemn both fashion itself and Gallic critical theory as trivial and passing, “mere fashion.” she offered a different argument, one which is really a call for study: “it is not that the French read their letters lightly – loin de là – but that they read their fashion, and have consistently done so in modern times, seriously.” see Godfrey, ‘Fashion and Fashionability’, p.12. see also Wells, “of critics and the catwalk”, p.72. on fashion still making many american academics uncomfortable, see steele, “The F-word”. sumner, Folkways, pp.184–5.

11 montaigne, Les Essais, 1. 329.12 caraccioli, Dictionnaire critique, s.v. “mode”.

inTrodUcTion 11



the life of leisure in his Traité de la vie élégante,13 calling “la fashion” a necessary ingredient in the life of “l’homme qui ne fait rien.” The poet and art critic charles Baudelaire defined fashion in the course of defining beauty and modernity in his essays on constantin Guys, promoting this little-known artist by describing how he captured the “spirit of modern life.” 14 While the tradition of French authors theorizing fashion has particularly flourished since the nineteenth century,15 it also includes such earlier figures as montaigne and, as this book argues, even medieval French writers such as Guillaume de lorris.

While certain French fashions have indisputably reigned supreme in the West, in the thirteenth century and at other times, it is readily clear that cultural hegemony does constantly shift, particularly where fashion is concerned, and that France is certainly not europe’s only fashion capital. italy’s role in the development of european fashion can hardly be denied.16 italians such as dante would contest France’s cultural hegemony in later generations,17 and milan’s runways now compete with those of Paris. The evidence of consumption found in sumptuary laws began to appear in France and italy in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries (the first extant law is from Genoa in 1157), spreading through much of the rest of europe thereafter.18 Joachim Bumke has described the influence that French fashions in clothing, armor, and courtly literature had on German practices, estimating that this influence was most marked in the years between 1170 and 1220, but extended from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, arousing the contempt of moralists.19 surrounding regions such as england, Burgundy, and Flanders also both imitated and outpaced the French at various points in the middle ages and later. Ultimately, France can still be considered the defending fashion capital over the centuries. antoine Furetière illustrated this long-held position in his 1690 Dictionnaire universel, in his definition of the word Mode: “said particularly of the manner of dressing following the customs of the court. The French are constantly changing fashion. Foreigners follow the French fashions, except for the spanish, who never change fashions.” 20

Francocentrism is peculiarly common even among modern French theorists, in contrast with the generalizing tendency common in anglophone and other scholarship. For instance, claude Javeau’s reasoning that sociological research on fashion was important rested on its illumination of many aspects of French

13 Balzac, “Traité de la vie élégante”, pp.211–57.14 Baudelaire, Peintre de la vie moderne.15 see Fortassier, Les écrivains français et la mode, pp.43–57.16 Placing the birth of italian fashion ahead of that of France, steele, Paris Fashion,

pp.17–18.17 Brownlee, “The Practice of cultural authority”, pp.258–69.18 heller, “sumptuary legislation”, pp.121–36; Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy,

pp.23–6.19 Bumke, Courtly Culture, pp.79–82.20 Furetière, Dictionnaire universel, s.v. “mode.”


culture.21 Pierre Bourdieu, in the preface to the english version of Distinction, apologized for the “Frenchness” of the book, referring to both its methodology and its empirical object, the Parisian haute bourgeoisie which, having directly inherited the habits of the ancien régime court society, had no counterparts elsewhere “at least for the arrogance of its cultural judgments.” 22 examining the mechanisms of distinction in France, both in medieval court cultures and among the early bourgeoisie, has importance for understanding the evolution of the Western fashion system. For all that other peoples have imitated the French, the French themselves have long imported materials and amalgamated styles from other european capitals and more distant parts of the world.

This book, then, directs its queries towards the written record, asking: did fashion exist in the French middle ages?

To answer that question, it begins with another: what is fashion?

21 “le vêtement joue dans notre culture un rôle capital. Un grand nombre d’éléments de notre mode (m.) de vie s’ordonnent autour du vêtement et des changements qui lui impose la mode (f.).” Javeau, “Quelques réflexions”, p.250.

22 Bourdieu, Distinction, pp.xi–xiii.

inTrodUcTion 13



1

Sine qua non of a Fashion system

although it is one of the most commonplace terms in the modern lexicon, “fashion” proves difficult to define, controversial to analyze, and moreover tends to inspire demonstrations of scorn or devotion. There is the impression both that it exists to different degrees in different times and places, and that today’s urban fashion is more urgent and omnipresent than that of former days or less developed areas. Yet when it comes to declaring where fashion is absent, such as in primitive, ancient, or medieval cultures, scholars who know those cultures will frequently claim its presence. To come to terms with this problem and be able to speak with a common analytical vocabulary, there is a need for a set of criteria that represent the basic necessary conditions that must be present if fashion’s various aspects coalesce to become a dominant system in a culture, a “fashion system,” to appropriate roland Barthes’ term.1 such criteria would help explain many of the otherwise inexplicable behaviors and products found in fashion-dominated cultures. They would offer a structure for analyzing trends in many objects of consumption, and in particular a way of perceiving the value of objects produced in great imitative quantities which were obviously popular in their own time, but which have been dismissed by later generations as derivative and unoriginal.

Though long considered a superficial frivolity, when fashion becomes systematically embedded in a society it connects many levels of life – from the collective economy to personal psychology – in a self-renewing cycle of creativity and production. its existence in a culture has far-ranging significance.

most commentators on fashion up to fairly recently have characterized it as either trivial or decadent. it was long classified among the minor arts, those not making lasting contributions to civilization, ranking even lower in status than the decorative arts. individual fashion trends, such as vogues for tight leggings or sewn sleeves, may not produce lasting contributions to society, but i would argue that the mechanisms of trade, creativity and production that various vogues bring into being have shaped economies and cities. Fads may be minor, but fashion systems have a major bearing on civilization. This argument contrasts with the sociologist William Graham sumner’s categori-zation of fashion as a mass phenomenon “on a lower grade than mores,” a

1 Barthes, Système de la mode.



force that makes the contemptible seem acceptable by covering “both absurd-ities and indecencies with the aegis of custom.” 2 many have condemned fashion as irrational, a dismissal that ultimately testifies to fashion’s complex and paradoxical functioning. Fashion is nothing if not complex, some even say mysterious.3 in herbert spencer’s ten-volume Synthetic Philosophy, covering subjects from biology, psychology, and sociology to morality, he acknowledged that to leave out fashion would “leave a gap,” but excuses his hesitation before the subject, saying “Fashion is difficult to deal with in a systematic manner.” 4 Jennifer craik has observed that fashion’s “slipperiness” as a concept has made it attractive to post-modernists.5 Jean Baudrillard called fashion the most inexplicable thing in the world, while in the same breath calling it the key to understanding all the mechanisms of culture.6 Baudrillard displays a notable example of an ambivalent attitude towards fashion, at times arguing that consumption is a social ill, a symptom of decadence. it is important to disengage the discussion of consumption from the level of moral polemic. it is a social system that involves controversy as part of its functioning, so best to understand it as such rather than to engage in controversy while discussing it.

Fashion’s paradoxes must be embraced as fundamental, constituent parts of its functioning. Gilles lipovetsky has called for deeper examination of fashion as a critical problem of great import for understanding the directions in which human society is evolving, warning that fashion is a problem that has been solved too easily and that two-dimensional explanations of it must be discarded.7 elizabeth Wilson has likewise insisted on the need to discard any theory that does not allow fashion to be at once organized and contradictory, rational and irrational, omnipresent and popular and yet highly complex.8 The seeming irrationality and incomprehensibility are aspects of the mechanisms of fashion which allow it to function and flourish in a culture. complaints about them point to fashion’s very presence.

Ten criteria defining the existence and workings of fashion

i propose a definition of fashion that bases evaluation on ten key criteria or principles. i stress that this is a definition of fashion as a dominant social system regulating social, economic, and psychological interactions in a culture, rather than the simple impulse towards ornament. Fashion as a dominant social system would satisfy all the criteria, in one way or another. some non-fashion

2 sumner, Folkways, 184–5.3 For example, Blumer, “Fashion”, p.282; veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, p.122.4 spencer, Ceremonial Institutions, p.205.5 craik, The Face of Fashion, pp.7–8.6 Baudrillard, Pour une critique, p.82.7 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.11–12.8 Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, pp.9–13, 47–66.


systems will of course meet some of them. in the following sections, each of these points is explored in greater depth, with consideration of some of the critical debates regarding each one. The reader is invited to view each principle as a spoke in a wheel, or threads in a web, rather than as presented in order of importance or developmental appearance.

1. Relative disqualification of the past produced by a new concept of time

Fashion is fleetingThe importance of time for the concept of fashion is prominent in dictionary definitions of the term, and as such offers a place to begin this list of principles. Terms such as passager in French, “fleeting” or “of a specific place or time” in english, are typical qualifiers. The Oxford English Dictionary gives, among other definitions, “a prevailing custom, a current usage; esp. one characteristic of a particular place or time,” and “the mode of dress, etiquette, furniture, style of speech, etc., adopted in society for the time being.” 9 a fashionable society is distinguished by the presence of desire for novelty. The most obvious conse-quence of a desire for the new is a disregard or animosity toward the old, a notion of obsolescence.

Rejection of the recent pastsometimes fashion can be detected by the presence of tension between those interested only in novelty and those calling (usually in vain) for greater reverence for the past. such a tension is present in montaigne’s essay “des coustumes anciennes,” where he complains of the French indiscretion of being blinded by the authority of the styles of the moment, changing opinions every month, instead of judging for oneself.10

Baudelaire poured scorn on anyone who plunged too deeply into the past. For him this meant losing memory of the present and abdicating the privileges conferred by circumstance, forfeiting the originality derived from time’s stamp on experiences.11 The emphasis on modernity in the subtitle of Baudelaire’s work, Constantin Guys: peintre de la vie moderne, reveals the importance he attached to time, and specifically to the present.

9 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edn (oxford: clarendon, 1989), s.v. “fashion.” cf. “a prevailing usually short-lived custom, usage or style”, s.v. “fashion” in Webster’s Third International Dictionary, (new York: merriam, 1966). The robert offers, “3e. Goûts collectifs, manières passagères de vivre, de sentir qui paraissent de bon ton dans une société déter-minée,” and more specific to clothing, “4e. la mode. habitudes collectives et passagères en matière de vêtement,” Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française, (Paris: robert, 1987), s.v. “mode.”

10 montaigne, Essais, 1:329.11 Baudelaire, Peintre de la vie moderne, pp.53–4.

SINE QUA NON oF a Fashion sYsTem 17



one of the important symptoms of a developing fashion system is dissatis-faction with the recent past, and a need to be free of the constraints of tradition. Fernand Braudel defined fashion in this vein as “a search for a new language to discredit the old, a way in which each generation can repudiate its immediate predecessor and distinguish itself from it.” 12 herbert Blumer’s analysis of fashion’s complex relation with time is worth quoting in entirety:

[F]ashion serves to detach the grip of the past in a moving world. By placing a premium on being in the mode and derogating what developments have [?] left behind, it frees actions for new movement. The significance of this release from the restraint of the past should not be minimized. To meet a moving and changing world requires freedom to move in new directions. detachment from the hold of the past is no small contribution to the achievement of such freedom. in the areas of its operation fashion facilitates that contribution. in this sense there is virtue in applying the derogatory accusations of being “old-fashioned,” “outmoded,” “backward” and “out-of-date.” 13

From this point of view, Baudelaire’s condemnation of painters transfixed by the rules of the past shows a kind of productive spirit, as much as a more destructive spirit of rejection. The freedom and eventually the imperative to reject items of recent production, even those still serviceable, opens up the possibility for much greater production. a fashion system is characterized by constant production, and by the ideal of constantly increasing production.

Fashion is inseparable from “a relative disqualification of the past,” in Gilles lipovetsky’s terms.14 a fashion system is initiated when a society begins to reject the past’s importance, which he called fashion’s “historical radicality,” believing that this makes fashion a key force in the social operating system of “modernity.” Both fashion and modernity are founded on a view of time in which the present and immediate future are more important than the past.15 The paradox of this criterion is that the rejection of the past is highly dependent on awareness of it.

Time in different culturesThe view of time is one of the key distinguishing factors between those societies where a fashion system governs social activity, and those where desire for novel adornment is only a latent force. From the idea of fashion’s rejection of the past it followed for lipovetsky that fashion cannot exist in traditional societies where social superiority is accorded by ancestral legacy, where social continuity is highly valued and styles are dictated by reverent repetition of forms inherited from the past. a culture’s view of time has deep psychological roots and permeates the culture on all levels, as Blumer observed. a fashionable society

12 Braudel, Capitalism, p.236.13 Blumer, “Fashion,” p.289.14 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, p.39.15 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.70, 37.


must have a forward-looking concept of time, rather than being bound by a notion of the sacred, for example, which will inhibit their willingness to discard old practices, beliefs, and attachments in favor of being up-to-date.16 contrary to the perspective that fashion is characterized by a specific view of time is the notion that fashion is universal, and therefore all societies may be studied in terms of fashion. This, for example, is implied in sumner’s assertion that fashion exists among the “uncivilized,” and that “all barbarians and savages” were “guilty of fashion.” 17 such a view is illustrated by histories such as François Boucher’s 20,000 Years of Fashion that equate all differentiation in ornament with fashion.18 more recent ethnographers prefer not to take the barbarism of “smaller societies” (the term aubrey cannon uses instead of “primitive” or “traditional”) for granted. What cannon labels the main elements of fashion – emulation, comparison, and differentiation – are observable or inferable in most cultures. if, however, systematic fashion is defined by the rapid changes in emulation and differentiation observable in industrial or production-oriented systems, then many smaller societies would be excluded by virtue of the sporadic or circumstance-based nature of the changes that occur there.19

The invention of the mechanical clock in late thirteenth-century europe, a sign of a growing need to measure time with precision, affirms that the high middle ages were a crucial period in Western fashion’s development.20 This book proposes that there was a period in the early to central middle ages in europe when a fashion system did not exist, followed by a period in which one begins to appear. it will not presume to analyse other cultures, but rather propose a method that might be applied to them.

2. Constant, systematic change

Quantifying a rate of changeThat change is characteristic of fashion goes almost without saying. The problem is to define the type and rate of change that make a fashion system distinctive. consider veblen’s three requirements for fashionable dress: there must be conspicuous consumption, conspicuous waste, and it must be “up-to-date.” like montaigne, veblen found this principle obvious but mystifying. The regular discarding and renewal of wardrobes certainly increases waste, but veblen admitted that using waste to explain the need for constant change was inadequate, because “it leaves unanswered the question as to the motive for

16 Blumer, “Fashion”, p.286.17 sumner, Folkways, p.186.18 Boucher, 20,000 Years of Fashion.19 cannon, “The cultural and historical contexts of Fashion,” p.23.20 on dating the invention of the mechanical clock, see Gimpel, La révolution industrielle

du Moyen Age, pp.141–60.




making and accepting a change in the prevailing styles, and it also fails to explain why conformity to a given style at a given time is so imperatively necessary.” 21 some twentieth-century theorists solved the quandary by ascribing motives to the realm of the unconscious, the level of the human make-up where reason does not enter, classifying the desire for novelty among the things lost to observation. veblen attempted to explain the motive for fashion’s constant change by remarking upon the relief people feel at finding something different from what went before, and in feeling “reputable” once again.22 Ultimately, he did not pursue the problem, fashion not being his main objective.

Time features prominently in Baudelaire’s definition of fashion as a permanent, successive attempt to reform nature. he described beauty as having a dualistic nature, comprehending an eternal element that was invariable and excessively difficult to determine, and also a relative element: “the epoch, the fashion, the morality, the passion.” This second part of beauty and art is transitive, and its “metamorphoses are so frequent that you are not allowed to scorn them or refuse them.” 23 he intuited that fashion’s power derived from its constant and regular transformations.

Frequency of novel consumption in different cultureslipovetsky argues that societies in which change in dress habits occur at isolated moments (such as foreign conquest) lack fashion, because in those cases variation does not proceed from an autonomous esthetic logic, but from occasional foreign influences or the relationship of cultural domination.24 When a culture changes its dress to adapt to the influence of conquerors, this may proceed from a political logic, or a simple logic of survival. it could be an economic logic, as well, if new goods are suddenly introduced at an appealing or prestige-granting price. The autonomous esthetic logic of fashion, in contrast, produces abrupt and seemingly capricious changes that are much harder to explain from a historico-political or economic perspective.

change falls clearly under the rubric of fashion, narrowly defined, only when it becomes a complex system demanding regular renewal of change. however, evaluating this except as an expert on a particular culture proves tricky. For instance, in lipovetsky’s view, ancient roman practices of cosmetic use, acces-sorizing with jewelry, and regularly changing hairstyles would not qualify as fashion, because this was still a far cry from the “permanent debauchery of eccentricities” of modern Western fashion. The drive to create and acquire new styles must instead be well entrenched and permanent, continually reproducing itself so as to hold sway over production, trade, and the prevailing esthetic. Theoretically, that makes sense. as malcolm Barnard observes, it is difficult

21 veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, p.122.22 veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, p.125.23 Baudelaire, Peintre de la vie moderne, pp.29; 49; 104.24 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, p.31.


to define fashion without defining it in relation to “anti-fashion”.25 however, it seems unlikely that we will ever have enough evidence to say whether the ancient romans lived in a permanent, continuous quest for curious baubles. elizabeth Wilson argues that “the view that ancient culture was static may be outmoded.” 26 it can be said, at least, that in this example, the continuous roman demand for new finery did diminish with the many disruptions of trade and the transition from urban to rural living that occurred in late antiquity and the early middle ages. constant novelty requires consistent market availability. Fashion systems and urban commercial development are linked.

3. Fashion provides a means of individual expression within a famework of social imitation

A system of expressionone of the most significant consequences – and stimuli – of constant variation and innovation in a culture is personal choice, which leads to personal expression. expression in a fashion system engages two key parties: the purveyors or producers of variation, and the consumers. This dual system of expression is part of what keeps a fashion system in perpetual motion. like criterion 7, this principle links fashion conceptually to words. chosen items of display are critiqued by the group, which decides whether the display is accounted acceptable, noteworthy, unremarkable, or outrageous.

This system of expression is peculiarly paradoxical. social pressure to stay within the bounds of the familiar sets limits upon individual expression, but these very limits contribute to maintaining continual, systemic fashion motion. expression must occur within the confines of social imitation. a slight distinction in variation is perceptible, legible, and appreciated. Too great an alteration to familiar models is received as outlandish, radical or simply impossible to comprehend. in this way fashion keeps itself in a state of evolution characterized by hairpin turns, constantly balancing its movements rather than moving towards infinitely extravagant variation.

The role of imitationThe respective roles of imitation and free choice in fashion’s processes have been the object of considerable theoretical discussion over the past several centuries. Understanding the necessary paradoxical equilibrium between conformity and choice is key: privileging one of these forces is what leads to controversy. one point upon which most theorists have long agreed is that fashion constitutes a system of social regulation and pressure based on emulation or imitation. imitation is often postulated to be the very essence of fashion

25 Barnard, Fashion as Communication, pp.10–17.26 Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, p.16.




itself, a view that becomes reductive when taken as the sole explanation of a fashion system’s workings. For instance, spencer traced the difficulty of dealing with fashion’s mutations to the two possible motives behind imitation: reverence for the one imitated, or the desire to assert equality with him. reverential imitations are associated with subordination, while competitive imitations characterize a state of comparative independence.27 But ultimately it can be difficult to distinguish one motive from the other, and this kind of dual-valence formulation omits a great deal. cannon critiqued its neglect of the psychological side of fashion, such as the desire to create a positive self-image. The focus on status mobility also obscures more subtle distinctions such as those of personality, skill, and wealth.28

The negative and positive aspects of conformity fascinated simmel, who devoted much of his theory of fashion to the discussion of imitation and its opposite, differentiation. Where imitation is a productive factor, he saw it repre-senting one of the fundamental tendencies of human character: that which contents itself with uniformity, with the adaptation of the special to the general, which he held to be positive. he considered the prominence given to change, individual differentiation, independence, and relief from generality the negative and obstructive side of imitation.29 The description of fashion as a universal phenomenon generated between the poles of the demand for social adaptation and the need of differentiation does not explain why people feel the need for differentiation in such a personal manner, even to the point of considering it a key to identity and mental health.

a more subtle explanation expands the principle of imitation to include the principle of personal selection. Blumer emphasized that for fashion to appear in a culture, the area in question must be open to new models or social forms: people must see the potential in new things and feel that they will be able and allowed to adopt them. Beyond that, there must be the possibility of choice.30 There is further the need for a certain level of available wealth, intellectual sophistication, and training in choice, offering a more precise and more sensitive description of the complexity of the “fashion process,” as he called it. By outlining conditions by which fashion will not become a systemic process, for instance where innovation is prevented or there are limitations placed on new models or personal and social development, he demonstrated how fashion is better conceived as a system with some fragility and variability, rather than as a universal phenomenon. one could give examples such as soviet-block countries, isolated frontier settlements, or hamlets of fundamental conservatism, where new models are not regularly introduced and choice is not allowed or not available. some inhabitants may have desired the new and different, but

27 spencer, Ceremonial Institutions, pp.205–6.28 cannon, “The cultural and historical contexts of Fashion,” p.24.29 spencer, Ceremonial Institutions, p.133.30 Blumer, “Fashion,” p.286.


such desire was not the operational mode. The fashion system was not initiated or reinforced by the dual forces of choice and conformity.

Fashion as social controlThe pressure to conform has been celebrated and also assailed by thinkers who saw in it a powerful tool of societal manipulation. For those who envision fashion as a trickle-down system, where people only imitate their betters and fashion is imposed by the dictate of a dominant class, fashion is an insidious force of collective mind control. it is possible to take a less dark view of fashion by realizing that it flows not only from elite to imitators, but in many other directions as well. (see below the discussion of class, criterion 10.)

some, such as Baudrillard, have taken a pessimistic view of the role of fashion and consumption in society, believing that the arrival of capitalism diminished the unchallenged moral dominance of the church, leaving society without a collective ideology to curb the spreading “exacerbation of individu-alisms.” 31 in 1970, Baudrillard feared that the free market economy had virtually disappeared in favor of monopolistic, state, and bureaucratic control – a view open to question given how the economy has evolved, but which demonstrates the profound contradiction of the society of consumption: the system is forced to produce more and more consumer individualism, which it is at the same time obliged to restrain with greater and greater force.32 This account accords much power to distant and mysterious bureaucratic forces. as alan hunt said, “any account that ignores the fact that people make decisions on their own account will be incomplete.” 33 Fashion is not a conspiracy. it is too complex and widespread to have been created at the whim of a single ruling group. it is more true to say that those in power would like to harness it, and that they probably have more resources to participate in it; but ultimately, total control over the production of desire in consumers remains elusive. cannon offers the example of the canadian fur traders. history, told from the european point of view, has emphasized the natives’ dependence on the traders. The analysis of requests for beads, however, suggests that traders were often at a loss to predict the trends in bead demands, which often lasted only a few months or a year and had passed by the time shipments of requested merchandise actually arrived.34

31 many medievalists would challenge such a view as an exaggeration of the medieval church’s power. For instance, observing that the preachers of the high middle ages constantly complained of people not frequenting the churches, Zink, La prédication en langue romane avant 1300, p.119.

32 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, pp.117–28 and passim.33 hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions, p.55.34 cannon, “The cultural and historical contexts of Fashion,” pp.29–35. hunt offers

other examples of where “the industry” has failed to make the changes it proposed, such as the “hemline battle” of the 1920s, when women refused to let their skirts down, despite having been told that “hemlines were lower” several years in a row.




There is difficulty in reconciling the respective roles of choice and conformity. Baudrillard struggles with how consumers’ individualism works in contradiction to, and yet hand in hand with, a limiting factor of some kind, such as regulation by a bureaucratic authority. he believes that consumption is a powerful tool for social control: by granting consumers the freedom to consume, the “powers that be” gain through the breakdown of collective solidarity.35 social control is associated with fashion often enough that it merits inquiry, but Baudrillard’s categorization of the freedom to consume as an elaborate construct manipulated by capitalists does not account for all the aspects of fashion’s processes.

The “tyranny of fashion” is a commonplace expression, as is the notion of the fashion slave. The imperative to change is experienced by many contem-poraries in a given social milieu as a social obligation to adapt and assimilate, or be ridiculed or excluded. lipovetsky questioned the condemnation of fashion as tyranny and mind control, arguing that fashion derives from individuals’ own desire to resemble those whom they judge superior, rather than from any sort of oppression derived directly from an arbitrary superior power.36 individual choice cannot be manufactured. Witness the many fashions introduced by designers or stores that have failed. at the heart of fashion’s power as a social system, a principle granting freedom of expressive choice to each individual works symbiotically with the pressure towards conformity. Fashion’s appeal, and its durability as a system, are rooted in the potential for individual expression that it affords. There is also significant appeal in the social mobility afforded to those who excel at achieving the balance between conformity and individu-alism, between sophisticated novelty and vulgar excess. as lipovetsky put it, fashion’s great originality is in linking global mimicry with the freedom of small choices and minor personal variations.37 it is the opportunity for individualism on the humanly manageable scale that makes fashion profoundly appealing enough to be perpetuated.

Fashion grants a feeling of security to individuals by offering a mostly familiar silhouette or form (see criterion 5). at the same time it grants a sense of uniqueness – something that comes to be highly valued and to assure a sense of personal well-being under fashion’s reign. it grants a sense of personal power in offering choices, for example of color, texture and detail, if not garment silhouette; of versification and rhyme, if not generic form; in medieval heroes’ home towns, if not their necessary level of battle prowess; in heroines’ words and adventures, if not the color of their hair or skin. imitation theory must be balanced with a theory of choice, which in the past has been more closely linked to psychological concerns, the subject of the next criterion.

35 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, p.119.36 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.44, 45.37 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, p.51.


4. Choices are influenced by individual human emotions, the subconscious, and the sense of self

The emotional appeal of fashion defies logica personal fashionable choice can produce a range of complex feelings in both consumer and audience, from pleasure to embarrassment, from allure to irrita-bility. The couturier Ted lapidus captured the affective aspect of fashion saying that designers do not dress clients, but subjectivities: the insecurities, the affec-tions, the anxieties of a great mass of people.38 many of the conditions for fashion’s existence include the idea of desire, making the role of emotions in fashion a key element to consider. The importance of human choice and reception in fashion brings into play one of fashion’s most frustrating qualities: it does not change and vary along predictable, linear, rational lines.39 on the contrary, there is a very human quality to this force that defies simple containment or straightforward logic.

The psychology of fashionWhile it is problematic to apply Freudian-style psychoanalysis to all cultures, the field of psychology has made significant contributions to the study of fashion by introducing the notion that it involves subconscious motivations.40 influenced by the first wave of psychoanalysis, veblen denied that the need for dress is experienced consciously as “a naïve propensity for display of expend-iture.” 41 on the conscious level is the need to live up to an accredited standard of taste and reputability. he classified dress as a “higher or spiritual need,” beyond the apparent venality of the demand for conspicuous consumption and waste.

The psychologist J.c.Flugel showed a similar appreciation of the religion-like power of fashion, musing after mallarmé that fashion is a “goddess, whose decrees it is our duty to obey rather than understand: for indeed, it is implied, these decrees transcend all ordinary human understanding.” 42 Flugel classified the deeply felt reactions to being inappropriately dressed such as shame and nausea, ascribing the emotions to the fear of arousing contempt or displeasure in others under the rubric of modesty.43 For the psychologist Gregory stone, a person’s dress helps the individual’s appearance conform to the social

38 “Un couturier n’habille pas des clients, il habille des subjectivités: les inquiétudes, les tendresses, les anxiétés d’une masse d’hommes et de femmes.” Quoted in Bourdieu and delsaut, “le couturier et sa griffe,” p.12. For anecdotal examples of fashion and personal confidence in academic settings, see steele, “The F-Word.”

39 see also sumner, Folkways, p.185.40 For a summary of the uses and problems of using psychoanalysis to study fashion,

steele, Fashion and Eroticism, pp.13–48.41 veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, p.119.42 Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes, p.137.43 Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes, pp.60–1.




expectations of a milieu, preventing the paralysis of embarrassment. it also “mobilizes his activity,” preparing him and those with whom he interacts for his role and behavior.44

studying children’s earliest desire to wear specific clothing, stone’s survey group responded almost unanimously that their earliest self-conscious appro-priations of clothing were those of their peer group, in contrast to clothing imposed by a mother or other authority figures.45 These could be viewed as the earliest manifestations of a desire for fashion in an individual’s lifetime. stone’s study construes fashion as the psychological impulse on the one hand to emulate peers, and on the other to establish a separate identity from that imposed by parents. While these alone are insufficient to account for the larger sociological effects of fashion, these observations do support a number of other criteria discussed here. rebellion against parents is a form of individual expression within a framework of social imitation (criterion 3), and rejecting dress imposed by parents is a way of rejecting the immediate past (criterion 1).

Fashion as self-expressionin societies regulated by fashion, finding ways of representing the self becomes a preoccupation absent in societies where fashion is latent. This quest for expression returns to the premise that words constitute the values in the economy of fashion (criterion 7). like the principle that a society of fashion privileges the present over the past (criterion 1), this notion helps distinguish between societies where fashion is central or marginal and thus contributes to the argument that fashion is not universally present.

Fashion’s role in the historically perceived rise of the value of uniqueness and individuality is explored by lipovetsky, who says that far from being contrary to the affirmation of personality, as people love to say, fashion is founded historically on the value and legitimacy of the individual and his or her unique personality. in his view, the error of previous theories lay precisely in having considered the questions of fashion and of the representation of the individual as unrelated, when they are one and the same.46 The historical milieu where he saw the pursuit of individualized appearance first becoming a passion and a legitimate aspiration was the court culture of the late middle ages. it is noteworthy that he locates the early stages of the development of self- representation in the middle ages; nowhere does he mention the “rise of the individual” associated traditionally with the renaissance, such as artists beginning to sign their works, or patrons seeking to immortalize themselves. What he called “the creation of the esthetic cult of the self” consists rather in

44 stone, “appearance and the self.”45 stone, “appearance and the self,” pp.411–12.46 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémere, pp.54, 67–9.


the growth of the right to present oneself as an individual, with unique features, mannerisms and traits.47

The traditional historical moment of the beginning of the great Western drive to represent the self, celebrated by Burkhardt and michelet, is the renaissance. stephen Jay Greenblatt’s study, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, reexamines the accepted notion that the concept of the individual is the hallmark of that period. he begins from the notion that in sixteenth-century england, there was both a sense that “selves” existed, and a sense that they could be fashioned.48 “Fashioning” for Greenblatt denotes the self-consciously artful, manipulable process of representing and even designing human identity, in contrast with fashion as a social system that comprehends many acts like fashioning, among other processes, both conscious and unconscious. Greenblatt observed that there is considerable empirical evidence that self-fashioning occurred before the sixteenth century. moreover, there may even have been less autonomy in the sixteenth century than before, which supports the idea that fashion existed before the early modern period. he observed that self-consciousness was widespread among the elite of the classical world, although it was discouraged by the augustinian tradition of christianity that dwelt on the sinfulness of pride and vainglory. Greenblatt upholds the idea that a successful alternative to the dominant christian doctrine calling for renunciation of the self and the worldly desires was not fully articulated until the early modern period, but he also points out that when it is said that there is a “new stress on the executive power of the will,” it must be recognized that this was in response to “the most sustained and relentless assault on the will.” This implies that where the will and self-expression are not experienced as being in danger, they need not be so forcefully expressed: a simpler or less searching form of representation of the self would suffice. This view also implies that self-fashioning had been well established previous to the period he studied.49

Fashion as self-expression to counter restrictionThe possibility for a new kind of representation of the self that a fashion system offers has important consequences for certain groups, such as women, whose self-expression has been restricted in many societies. While it is important to recognize the role that gender can play in the fashion system, this role is so

47 he looked to an increase in subjective identity and the will to express individual uniqueness, giving the examples of the increased presence of intimate confessions in poetry, formulas declaring an author’s identity in chronicles and memoirs, and later the taste for realistic portraits and autobiographies and also the rupture with the traditional anonymity of death in the fourteenth century. L’empire de l’éphémère, p.68.

48 Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning, pp.1–9.49 Greenblatt also remarked that self-fashioning functions without sharp distinction

between literature and social life. it follows from this that self-representation occurring in writing is on a par with fashioning the self through appearance. literature, therefore, is an appropriate place to look for evidence of fashion because it is a natural site for “fashioning,” for representation.




variable that it cannot be formulated as any particular kind of general principle. steele suggests that fashion offers a compromise between the real and the ideal self one would like to present or become.50 This more flexible notion is more likely to hold true at the level of generalization. it ties some of the psychological appeal of fashion to criterion 10, which describes how a fashion system promotes an equalization of appearances and thereby destabilizes existing status codes.

simmel saw unprecedented development of individuality occurring in Germany in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, citing great inroads upon the “collectivistic regulations of the middle ages by the freedom of the individual.” Because women were denied access to this individualistic development, to freedom of personal action and self-improvement, simmel believed that they sought redress by adopting “the most extravagant and hypertrophic styles in dress.” 51 he saw italian women as having all the freedom that German women lacked, but scholars of late medieval italy have come to a conclusion parallel to simmel’s on Germany: that increasing splendor in women’s dress at this period arose because women had wealth, but few productive economic or political outlets. Their need for self-expression was channeled into the ostenta-tious use of wealth.52 For all that women’s freedom and desire for self-expression are notoriously difficult to measure quantitatively, these studies show examples of two societies where fashion appears to have had a dominant, shaping role, leading scholars to sense the presence of a general belief that self-expression was necessary and important for personal well-being. Where women could not engage their minds and fortunes in political or philosophical debate or leadership, the fashion system offered another area where they could express themselves and feel power: their personal appearance. This kind of tension would probably not have occurred in a society where fashion was not the primary social shaping force, because the need for self-expression would not have been perceived as a norm.

Fashion is often construed as an exclusively feminine preoccupation. While that has and should certainly be questioned,53 gender undeniably plays a role in how fashion manifests itself in each culture. Fashions themselves are very frequently restricted to one gender or the other, even in societies where there is relative equality between the sexes. Theorizing any more specific role for gender in a general theory of fashion is problematic. many writers on fashion in the last two centuries have included description of the place of gender in the mechanics of fashion, only to be proven wrong within a generation.54

50 steele, Fashion and Eroticism, pp.39–48.51 simmel, “Fashion,” p.144. see also Greenfield, “sumptuary law in nürnberg.”52 Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, pp.111–32; chojnacki, “The Power of love,” p.133;

hughes, “regulating Women’s Fashion.”53 see introduction; also craik, Face of Fashion, pp.176–203; Wilson, Adorned in

Dreams, pp.117–33.54 For example Baudrillard, La société de consommation, pp.138–42; simmel, “Fashion,”

pp.141, 143, passim; Brenninkmeyer, The Sociology of Fashion, p.50; devleeshouwer, “costume et société,” p.179. veblen’s theory of vicarious consumption, i.e. that women are


Women’s power to earn money and to control their own affairs can vary markedly from one municipality to another, and from one decade to another. Gender specificity is a variable of fashion rather than a constitutive principle of it. it must be examined with the context of each particular fashion system rather than on the theoretical level.

Self-observationWhile fashion indicates a looking outward, as individuals compare themselves with others and decide whom to imitate and whom to mock, fashion also entails an inward gaze as each individual assesses his or her own place in the hierarchy and considers what changes need be made to improve his or her position. lipovetsky referred to this as “auto-observation esthétique,” a new, unprece-dented kind of self-observation.55 This psychology is a counterpoint to the outward-looking type of moralizing criticism discussed in criterion 8. Under the conditions of fashion, each person is allowed to become their own metteur-en-scène, designing an individual public persona (on this, see also criterion 6, on fashion’s theatricality).

The idea of unprecedented self-observation carries within it equal potential for benefit and harm, in another of fashion’s seeming contradictions. it promises greater self-knowledge, social sensitivity, and the development of many artistic and technological outlets of expression, as well as a climate of relentless self-criticism.56 Baudrillard saw a generalized narcissism as the outgrowth of whole societies seeking to express individuality with tools provided by mass-production and marketing.57 Ultimately, the effects of self-representation are vast and complex, and the evaluation of their merits depends upon the perspective of the beholder. Good or bad, self-representation, self-criticism and self-improvement, narcissism and self-hatred are all consequences of long-term presence of fashion’s dominance in a culture.

The next principle follows from 3 and 4, discussing the forms that novelty and choices may take in order to satisfy the demands for both self-expression and imitation.

a display object for their husbands, falls apart in the age of the massive entry of women into the job force, Theory of the Leisure Class, pp.106–9, 121, 125–7.

55 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémere, p.44.56 For instance, lipovetsky, writing on the outcomes of the sexual revolution, saw women

growing more and more implacable in their self-criticism (e.g. leading to eating disorders) as society criticized them less and less from the outside (e.g. following the emergence of taboos on shows of misogyny). lipovetsky, La troisième femme, p.184.

57 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, p.313.




5. Change in superficial versus major forms

The scope of choice permitted by a fashion systemin a fashion system, consumers are offered choices between details rather than basic forms. likewise, creators of products are rarely allowed to alter familiar forms radically, but are obliged to express their ideas by producing their own version of the familiar. in this way, fashion is paradoxically characterized by both constant change and relative stasis. in a fashion system, one should expect to see rapid, frequent modifications of surface details such as ornaments and accessories, but less frequently reshaping of the general form or silhouette. This criterion will be particularly important in evaluating the presence of a fashion system in its early stages, as in the middle ages.

Basic silhouettes resist change. attempts to alter them too abruptly are greeted with vehement criticism (itself a sign of fashion, criterion 8). social superiority, perceived in terms of family reputation and tradition in non-fashion systems, becomes visible in subtle outward signs with the initiation of a fashion system.58 The theory of the social power of minute signs explains in part why novels and romances are full of description: tiny details are eloquent under the reign of fashion, whereas large-scale, ostentatious gestures code more negative things such as inexperienced composition, lack of intellectual subtlety, the blunders of fools and fops, the lack of self-identity associated with fashion victims rather than those who know how to speak with the power of signs.

Fashion is like wisteria, which blooms on old wood: each new season’s growth is produced on the stems of the previous year. new fashions grow out of their immediate predecessors.59 Baudelaire observed that if an impartial observer could page through every single fashion all the way back to the origins of France, there would be no surprises: the transitions would appear as smooth as evolution in the animal kingdom, without a lacuna.60 changes occur slowly by small increments in real time, but, like the growth of plants when shown in a time-lapse sequence, they appear radical when compared at the rate of an image per year, decade or century. This is very important when judging the cycles of fashion from a limited number of images, such as historians of costume must do for the middle ages. many have located fashion’s birth at a point where a major change in silhouette seems to occur (see chapter 2), but Baudelaire observed that where fashion exists, changes occur not as shocks or radical disappearances but as a process of evolution. in this process, wrought by many, many small personal choices made on the daily level, revolutions do not come out of the blue. changes that appear too radical are not assimilated into the larger picture.

58 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.35–6; 40.59 cf. Blumer, “Fashion,” p.283.60 Baudelaire, Peintre de la vie moderne, pp.23–4.


Baudrillard coined the term “plus petite différence marginale (P.P.d.m.)” to connote the search for differentiation within the context of repetition.61 The display of P.P.d.m. implies cultivating the small qualitative differences that symbolize style and status.62 This process occurs in the society of “combinatory personalization,” where consumption is portrayed ideologically as a way of finding and showing true personality and uniqueness. This is basically a paradoxical ideology: consuming mass-produced, monopoly-controlled goods or services in order to find one’s own individuality. in attempting to present a personalized image, what people are really doing is not seeking out objects and goods in themselves, but rather differences, the small but distinctive differences that the objects are represented as representing.

Propriety and variabilityin another paradox, fashion requires strict yet constantly yielding limits on the range of possible change. as Blumer put it, “By establishing suitable models which carry the stamp of propriety and compel adherence, fashion narrowly limits the range of variability and so fosters uniformity and order, even though it be passing uniformity and order. in this respect fashion performs in a moving society a function which custom performs in a settled society.” 63 The result of changes occurring on the minimal rather than maximal level is that resemblance between moving and settled societies may be difficult to discern, as both will exhibit signs of uniformity and order. The distinction between them will lie in the encouragement of widespread individual desire for variability, as well as the force producing that encouragement, fashion as opposed to custom.

Function of the trendsettersuccessful leaders in a fashion system maintain their rule not by radical distance from the populace, but by cultivating commonalities. robert devleeshouwer gave a striking example of how this principle of fashion can transform something like the institution of monarchy, noting that the few monarchs who survived the second World War are tolerated only because they cultivated a bourgeois persona instead of a military one, so that their appearance varied little from that of those on the street.64 such a description evokes the thirteenth-century French king saint louis, who crusaded with his men and spurned competitively sumptuous dress in favor of sober riches.65

61 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, p.181.62 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, p.128.63 Blumer, “Fashion,” p.289.64 devleeshouwer, “costume et société,” p.169.65 see Jean de Joinville, “la vie de saint louis,” pp.205–8. another example is a story

reported in autumn 1999, when the chief executives of Time Warner and america online publicly signed a merger agreement: the older ceo of the longer-established company wore an open collar and sports coat (the casual dress of the younger generation) while the younger ceo of the newer corporation wore a sports coat and tie, trying to “speak” the idiom of




Fashion’s process of translating inner feelings and personality into outward signs implies that for fashion to exist and function, people in a given society must be trained to act as audience to one another. only a trained audience will be properly receptive to the small signs expressing difference and character, and only people aware of their audience will attempt to develop such a language of signs: this is fashion’s theatricality, the next criterion.

6. Theatrical logic of excess and exaggeration: conspicuous consumption

Fashion requires an audienceamy spindler expressed fashion’s theatricality in a meditation on modern clothing fashion:

clothes are really identifiers of each person as a performer in his own life. and a lot of what we wear has to do with who is going to be looking. remember miss lonely hearts in alfred hitchcock’s “rear Window”? she is rendered a pathetic character just by the knowledge that she would dress up in her “boyfriend clothes” and then spend the evening alone. clothes without an audience are poignant reminders of how little we ever wear for ourselves.66

Fashion only functions where there is a suitably educated public (to understand the scene in “rear Window,” we have to know what “boyfriend clothes” look like and what they connote) of sufficient size to constitute an audience. once that audience is constituted, a fashion system allows all audience members to be performers in their turn: all are allowed to make impressions with their entrances and exits. at other times, their appearances will go more or less unnoticed as they are obliged to act as audience to another performer’s choices.

Exaggeration and Reactionall fashion’s logic centers on display. Given that it is a force that allows the construction and maintenance of social hierarchy through subtle outward signs, it follows that the fashionable elite maintain lofty status by continually seeking to change a detail of their appearances by one degree (as opposed to many) in order to remain constantly distinctive. social inferiors may be distinguished from the elite either by their backwardness (for example, lacking the audacity of the newest proportions) or by their excessive foppishness (lacking the dignity of the newest austerity). The cumulative effect of continual one-upmanship, as

established respectability: each wearing what the other was expected to wear as they attempted to merge their powers and to appear to be leaders attractive to consumers and investors.

66 spindler, “What Your clothes make of You,” p.87.


the fashionable alter inch by inch the volume and contours of their appearances, is often exaggeration and excess.67

an inverse movement is also possible. a point of excess may be reached when for someone wishing to remain in the avant garde the preferable direction for change is towards austerity or “naturalization.” even movements towards natural forms are in absolute terms no less artificial or staged, no less a product of fashion’s ideology.68 despite seeming to reject ostentation, fashions touting natural features or simplicity still adhere to the logic of theatricality. For a theory to prove durable, it must account for the sudden reversals of extravagance in the direction of simplicity that appear periodically in the history of fashion.69

Bourdieu scrutinized the process of incremental exaggeration and “under-exaggeration,” observing that where the petit bourgeois or nouveau riche “overdoes it,” betraying his own insecurity, bourgeois discretion signals its presence by ostentatious sobriety and understatement, “a refusal of everything that is ‘showy,’ ‘flashy,’ and pretentious, and which devalues itself by the very process of distinction.” 70 masters of the system are those capable of demon-strating distinction with confidence. This is how hierarchy functions in a fashionable society: a betrayal of insecurity sends any performer in the system to the bottom of the social heap. an awkward word or visible fidgeting with an uncomfortable garment can end a presidential campaign or a job interview. The master of fashion maintains power by continually mastering the code of behavior, and then additionally by altering it slightly to maintain the code’s value as a tool of distinction.

lipovetsky’s principle of theatricality, an esthetically founded notion, is a more satisfyingly complex alternative to the reduction of veblen’s conspicuous consumption. lipovetsky conceded that fashion cannot be separated from conspicuous consumption, agreeing that demonstrative expenditure is one of fashion’s defining traits. however, he refuted the notion that people enjoy fashion and follow the latest styles simply in order to position themselves socially, and that fads are nothing more than a manifestation of the desire for social prestige. on similar grounds, he rejected Bourdieu’s theory of distinction as too focused on class consciousness and on the desire to appear aristocratic.71

67 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.38–44.68 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.40–1; Baudrillard, La société de consom-

mation, pp.126–7.69 criticizing veblen for not providing a satisfactory explanation of why fashion

sometimes takes completely opposite turns, see Bell, On Human Finery, p.183.70 Bourdieu, Distinction, p.249. he gave an example from his survey research: “When

asked how they would dress if ‘invited to dinner by their husband’s boss’, 33% of the wives of junior executives or office workers (32% of the manual workers’ wives, 29% of farm workers’ wives) say they would ‘wear their best clothes’, as against only 19% of the wives of industrial and commercial employers, senior executives and professionals, of whom 81% say that they would change their clothes ‘but without putting on their sunday best’, compared with 67% of the middle-class wives and 68% of the working-class wives.”

71 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.66, 64.




The principle of theatricality is more able to accommodate the factors of the appeal of individual choice and the desire for newness (beyond desire simply for display).

The drama of conspicuous wasteveblen’s second explanation for the existence of fashion, the law of conspicuous waste, deserves some critique, as arjun appadurai has argued.72 lipovetsky felt it does not explain the uniquely developed state that fashion attains in the West in the last millennium, in contrast with societies where rulers may have spent fortunes on monuments, spectacles, or gift distributions.73 The negative connota-tions of “waste” make it a difficult term for use in examining fashion objectively. From a different point of view, waste may be construed as productivity, which leads to economic growth, employment, technological developments, and creativity of many kinds. Waste has a role in fashion’s theatricality as one of many ways of demonstrating social distinction. For instance, it is just as much a show of distinction and individuality – just as much an act of fashion – to drive a smaller fuel-efficient hybrid as to drive a high-consuming sport-utility vehicle. sometimes economy is just as fashionable as waste, as when men of the 1340s began wearing short doublets in opposition to the trailing robes characterized by excessive yardage worn by previous generations. There is just as much fashionable theatricality staged by the ostentatious self-flagellator constantly in public prayer as by the prince’s elaborate procession with monumental plaster arches full of fireworks, transformed to garbage by the celebration’s end. Fashion is dramatic and conspicuous. Better to characterize it in terms of drama than waste, because to maintain its sway within the limits of the possible it must alternate (although not necessarily in predictable manner) between excesses of both extravagance and austerity.

in keeping with the idea of fashion’s theatricality, if all members of a fashionable society act from time to time both as performers and as audience, one of the most important roles of the audience member is the evaluation of others’ appearances. The importance of audience reaction is the subject of the next criterion.

7. Words constitute the economy of fashion

The discussion of how fashion involves codes which give or deny value to various behaviors and displays of consumption leads to the question of how a fashion system creates “fashionability.” While there are many ways that audiences show approval or disapproval – often non-verbal, such as the raised

72 appadurai, “consumption, duration and history,” p.24; idem, The Social Life of Things, p.363. veblen himself admitted the weaknesses of his theories in fully explaining fashion’s mechanisms, Theory of the Leisure Class, pp.120, 122.

73 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, p.65.


eyebrow, the look of disgust or admiration, neglect or imitation themselves – one of the most powerful ways of giving value to objects and behaviors, and moreover one which is possible to study in historical societies, is expression through words.

in some ways, this is the most important principle of fashion for this study. my premise that words are the key to detecting fashion is a departure from much of the methodology of fashion history, with its focus on the visual. Fashion has long been casually referred to as a “language,” but only recently have attempts been made to describe how it functions as a language beyond simply trying to decode the meanings of the fashions of a particular moment. attempts to decode fashion’s language generally fail to decipher anything completely, because any given combination of fashion signs proves almost endlessly polymorphous given any change in the variables of time, individual personality, and how far unconscious motivations are probed.74 While language’s role in fashion is at times implied in lipovetsky and Blumer’s theories, neither gives it a prominent, explicit role. in a working theoretical definition of where fashion exists and how it functions, the process by which language gives value to fashion should be given major consideration.

The overarching lesson of roland Barthes’ Système de la Mode is that fashion is necessarily a creation of language. While at the outset of the project Barthes sought to work out a semiology of real clothing, what he discovered along the way was that a fashionable garment is an ambiguous entity, a simul-taneous creation of a visual system and a verbal system. it is the verbal system that gives value to a garment, labeling it “fashionable” or “out-of-date,” “outra-geous” or “conservative.” Barthes showed that fashion is an economy whose currency is clothing, but whose exchange values are fixed by language. he understood desire as an essential functioning aspect of fashion. he found desire to be a product exclusively of words: it is not the object but the name that inspires desire.75 summing up the project, he asked if clothing is capable of having meaning without words, beyond a few rudimentary indications like looking eccentric, classic, dandified, sporty, or ceremonial. he found that outside of words, there is no “essential Fashion,” no “Fashion system.” Fashion

74 an article in the New York Times Magazine, “Who am i?” (nov. 14, 1999, pp.88–9, 108–9, 118–19) presents photos of people from the streets of new York which were shown to a panel of six experts told to try to discern who the people “were” by their appearances. They were incorrect in most of their guesses. michel Pastoureau’s studies on colors and heraldry from the middle ages to the present mostly demonstrate that there is no set meaning to colors or heraldry but rather only constant drift of meaning. see his Couleurs, images, symbols; L”étoffe du diable; Les Armoiries. a prime example of how attempts to analyze the meanings of appearance cease to signify soon after they are composed is lurie, Language of Clothes. Baudrillard discussed how the “lecture des objets” was enormously complex, attributing it to the constant shifting of meaning between social categories, Baudrillard, Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, p.39.

75 “ce n’est pas l’objet, c’est le nom qui fait désirer; ce n’est pas le rêve, c’est le sens qui fait vendre.” Barthes, Système de la Mode, pp.9–10.




simply does not function as a complete system without words. he decided that to study fashion it is not reasonable to favor the real garment over the words. on the contrary, it is only logical to proceed from the word to the real.

The goal of description, Barthes reasoned, is to transform an object into language. in literature, description takes its cue from a hidden object, real or imaginary. its goal is to make the object exist for the reader. (Fashion writing of the kind found in magazines, in contrast, seeks to demonstrate the qualities of a garment represented by an image on the same page, albeit only partially visible.) Barthes gave words three functions in fashion description; these may be adapted to describe fashion descriptions in literature such as those to be analyzed in later chapters in this book. First, words immobilize perception at a certain level of intelligibility, directing the eye towards what is important to notice. (hence the danger of studying costume history exclusively from pictures, where the words are lacking to convey what contemporaries found important in them.) in literature, it follows that this function is still in play, although to a different degree: the reader is allowed to imagine any appearance whatsoever for a character until description intervenes to limit the possibilities afforded the mind’s eye. Then there is what Barthes called “connaissance”: words impart information. in fashion writing, this information may entail anything inacces-sible to the eye in the picture, such as color, small details, the back view. The “connaissance” function of words also conveys abstract functions, such as “fun/classic,” or the sanction of fashionable/unfashionable. in literature, this function exists as well, but without the benefit of an adjacent image it bears greater responsibility.76 Barthes’ third function of description is emphasis. in fashion writing, words often repeat certain clearly visible elements in the picture. The need for emphasis, in all kinds of writing, lies in the intrinsically discontinuous nature of language. language can never render an entire garment. it can only present a series of choices, of “amputations”: the limits of the described garment are not those of the real material, but those of value relative to the ensemble. For example, if a leather belt is mentioned, it signifies that the fact that it is leather has absolute importance – while other details, such as form, buckles, and so on, are so to speak amputated, relegated to the realm of the unknowable. The emphasis function of description shows the reader only what the author saw as having relevance and imparting useful information about an outfit’s fashion value.77

76 For example, if a character is depicted in a battle scene, it will be assumed that he is wearing armor. There is no need for description if his armor signifies nothing more than that he is a man in a battle scene. Words may intervene to give “connaissance” of non-inferred information: saying that his armor is unique in all the world, made in spain, not made of pewter etc., which imparts understanding of abstract functions: that he is a knight of great renown, knows generous people, that he has traveled to buy from exotic merchants, that his quality equipment gives him a competitive edge, and so on.

77 in narrative, much is relegated to the realm of the unknowable: in the medieval example, the way spurs are attached, the lacings on breeches, the color of anything that is not a prestigious dye, gloves, helmet linings: all these and more are routinely unknowable,


Barthes’ analysis primarily highlights the complex and paradoxical relation of words, fashion values, visual images, and material reality. Words are necessary to make something fashionable, but the garment (or object) can never be fully captured by them. The written garment is carried by language, but it also resists language. it is created by the play between the two. Fashion can be read, but the garment cannot. as Barthes put it, if one were to try actually to construct a garment described in a magazine, the points of uncertainty would be endless: the form, the number, disposition of white polka dots . . . This caveat is important because it demonstrates both the importance and the limits of the verbal when analyzing fashion. To understand fashion, it is imperative to go to words, for they are the “fashion-creating machine.” 78 at the same time, words permit only an understanding of exchange values, they do not facilitate a reliable reconstruction. They tell us what was important to contemporaries, what was “visible” in the sense of what was worth noticing. They also leave an infinite amount to the imagination.

Words can impart fashionability, for example whenever someone declares that “red is ‘in’” or when a hero wears something striking in a romance. Words also serve opponents of a fashion and even of consumption in general, but not necessarily with the effect of preventing or limiting fashion. The important and complex role which criticism plays in fashion must not be neglected.

8. Constant arousal of criticism

The persuasion of censureif fashion is often best detected through the evidence of words, one specific form possible evidence may take is criticism. a major identifying trait of fashion is the resistance and moralizing it constantly arouses. When Baudelaire proposed to avenge the art of the “toilette” against the inept calumnies of certain self-proclaimed “lovers of nature,” 79 his emphasis on fashion’s need for defense demonstrates this inevitable pairing of fashion and remonstrance. criticism is possible because fashion entails choices, and therefore multiple opinions that may eventually come into conflict. Where censure and rigidly imposed behaviors are in force, and where freedom to criticize is absent, fashion will not have the social shaping quality here in question.

lipovetsky embraced criticism as a key part of fashion, arguing it is a natural consequence of personal choice, and becomes one of the key elements paving the way to modern democracy (see criterion 10). he argued that the arrival of a tradition of constant criticism marks the moment when fashion really took

amputated from the emphasized pieces: the sturdy sword, the glinting helmet, the rings of the chain mail, perhaps decoration on a shield.

78 Barthes, Système de la mode, pp.14, 56–7, 62.79 Baudelaire, Peintre de la vie moderne, p.99.




root in the West. When moralists and clerical chroniclers begin to take on the habitual role of calling the latest elegance ridiculous, impractical or ugly, the fashion system comes into play.80 it follows that sporadic, localized criticism, like sporadic change, does not constitute a sign of a fashion system, but only fashion as a potential or latent presence.

Consumption and denunciation of consumptionThe fashion system paradoxically thrives on the binary opposition between consumption and the denunciation of that consumption. This was the distin-guishing trait of modern social structure for Baudrillard. he saw that, just as medieval society balanced itself between God and the devil, modern society anchors itself on consumption and its denunciation.81 it is noteworthy that this implies both continuity and discontinuity between modernity and the middle ages. Baudrillard did not discuss the middle ages elsewhere in his work, yet an awareness of that period’s significance lies clearly in the background of his thinking. he treats the modern and medieval worlds as polar opposites to summarize his point, following the popular stereotype of the non-modernity of the middle ages. however, societies of consumption existed in the middle ages, although they were not developed to the same degree as those of Western post-industrial society. Baudrillard’s general point that consumption and the criticism of that consumption go hand in hand is of crucial importance to understanding the systems of fashion, but he shows a short view of history in declaring that consumption is destroying the foundations of humanity. his theory suggests that criticism serves as check and balance to consumption, keeping a cycle in motion initiated in the middle ages in the West; it represents a criticism urging readers to examine consumption and not be its mindless victims.

9. New value placed on pleasure makes seduction a social norm

The joy of fashionWhile the goal of self-representation is often a deeply personal one, in a fashion system a closely related goal is the manipulation of the audience to accept individual will as reality. This may be called seduction, using the term in a general sense. When a fashion system is initiated, there is increased value placed on pleasure, or “joy,” to use the medieval term: one’s own and that of others, which may indirectly bring about one’s own. in a fashion system, display of fashionable appearance is thought to have a power to seduce: to attract the interest of others or awaken desire in potential sexual partners. This belief is not necessarily one occurring on the level of consciousness, more often

80 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémere, pp.42–3.81 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, p.316.


it is partly subconscious (see criterion 4). That seduction is often a goal of fashion is another principle following the logic of theatricality (see criterion 6): new, distinctive forms are represented as having the potential to attract more attention from spectators.

it is indisputable that sexuality is biologically coded to appearance in humans, animals, and even certain kinds of insects and plants. leadership qualities also have been connected to traits of striking appearance. What differentiates a fashion system from latent fashion in the case of sexual or political attraction is the widespread belief, reinforced on many levels by written, visual and other kinds of representation, that consumption and display of fashionable objects, ideas, and services enhance attractiveness.

The link between dress and seduction has also long been recognized, but often it is oversimplified. Flugel argued the ultimate cause of fashion is sexual competition.82 his idea that women are more narcissistic than men because women have a keener sexual rivalry and hurt each other by attempting to out-dress each other does not prove true in all places and periods. as to Flugel’s attempts to classify the emotional role of garments according to their genital-like traits, there is no doubt that codpieces were genuinely phallic, but i would suggest that pointed shoes developed their prominences less through conscious or unconscious imitation of male genitalia than fashion’s logic of theatricality and exaggeration. as Wilson observed, any garment can potentially be defined as erotic; the reason for changing tastes in beauty must be sought elsewhere.83

Censuring “erotic” fashionsoften the link between fashion and seduction is subject to moral criticism. Friedrich T.vischer, in his Fashion and Cynicism, defined it as a legitimate notion in abstract terms inasmuch as it represented a grouping of cultural forms valid for a certain period of time, but condemned the bustles of his time as immoral and seductive, “eine hurenmode,” because bustled skirts indecently revealed the shape of the legs and body.84 This type of criticism of fashion reveals anxiety over what is perceived as fashion’s dangerous capacity for seduction.

in a system of fashion, innovations in clothing styles regularly produce novel ways of emphasizing sexuality, from the appearance of low-cut bodices in the fourteenth century to the sixteenth-century codpiece, from the saracen-inspired veil to the open shirt. many other objects become invested with sexuality as they are linked to seduction through forms of representation. From the ivory mirrors and toiletry boxes of the late middle ages adorned with scenes from romances to any twenty-first-century product marketed with suggestive images or words, a form that advertises its own potential as a seduction aid is a product

82 Flugel, Psychology of Clothes, p.138.83 Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, p.91.84 Friedrich T.vischer, Mode und Zynismus (stuttgart, 1879), pp.102, 7; cited in

Brenninkmeyer, The Sociology of Fashion, pp.7–8.




of the mentality of fashion.85 signs of emphasis and exaggeration of the sensu-ality of appearances are another important kind of evidence to look to in detecting the presence of fashion.

The pleasure obligation and the pursuit of happinessBaudrillard observed that a kind of “magical thinking” regulates consumption, a miracle-working mentality that regulates daily life.86 This kind of psychology of fashion is linked to criterion 4 as well as this one. he placed the ideology of the pursuit of happiness as a central aspect of consumption and fashion. happiness, by definition an emotion, becomes a tool in the service of materi-alistic ideology. Puritanical thinking, which discourages all hedonistic practices as sinful, vain and wasteful, actually reactivates the process of consumption by provoking, “paradoxically and inexplicably,” the contrary response, the desire for the pleasure denied.87 (This offers some insight into the functioning of criterion 8, on why fashion arouses and thrives on criticism). The constant process of denial of pleasure and rebellion against the denial effectively describes the way that fashion is used as a system of self-reward for which the term “retail therapy” has been coined.

Baudrillard likened consumption to hysteria, in which a craving continues, never satisfied, because it is objectless: consumption is desire for happiness, continuously transferred from one object to the next, just as in a generalized hysterical or psychosomatic conversion one symptom is substituted arbitrarily for another, over and over. Treating the symptom does not cure the insatiable desire for something perpetually missing.88 consciously, people may claim that obtaining something fashionable gives them pleasure, but in Baudrillard’s view it is always a fleeting pleasure. likening fashion to a disease may overemphasize the negative consequences of consumption to the detriment of its productive consequences. in a fashion system, consumers are likely also to be producers, not merely condemned to endless consumption, but often consuming in the process of furthering their own production, buying clothes, vehicles, supplies, technology and other things in order to function better in one’s profession: this is as true today as in the thirteenth century. There are also those who, following Keat’s line, “a thing of beauty is a joy forever,” allow the fashionable object to become something which continues to grant pleasure. as Baudelaire observes, there is an interface between ephemeral and eternal beauty.

lipovetsky saw the advent of fashion as the arrival of a time in a society when pleasure becomes an individual right and a generalized expectation. seeing in the logic of fashion a glorification of frivolity and earthly pleasures, he located the emergence of western fashion in the courtly and chivalric cultures of the middle ages, where the “consecration of frivolities” and aspirations

85 camille, The Medieval Art of Love.86 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, p.27.87 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, pp.59, 105.88 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, pp.106–9.


towards earthly joys became a norm.89 When both giving and experiencing pleasure become socially acceptable and even exalted pastimes, individuals begin to allow themselves to take part in new sorts of activities: “fashionable” social activities like writing and listening to poetry, eating delicacies, engaging in drama and festivals, dressing for court or to attract a lover. Where there are signs that people began to feel that they deserved or were obligated to practice these activities, there are evidences of the presence of fashion.

Baudrillard described a “fun-morality” as characteristic of the society of consumption, but argued that its fun was not really pleasant. For him, the pleasure of the fashion system is no naturally emanating, true pleasure, but an institutionalized civic duty seemingly imposed by outside forces.90 as people spend less of their time on production in work, they spend more time on the production of their own needs and wellbeing, constantly attentive to their own capacities for consumption. There emerges an ethic of universal curiosity, the imperative to try everything, to experience every sensation.

The drive to experience the exotic, the constantly new, the different – one of the most prominent hallmarks of a fashion system (criteria 1 and 2) – is indeed accompanied by, and functions in tandem with, an ethic compelling a search for pleasure, an often fleeting, even paradoxical construct, also one often open to attack. Baudrillard’s view that the societal compulsion to try and to enjoy is fatal is an interesting echo of medieval preachers’ condemnatory views of fashionable activities like dancing or the wearing of foreign finery,91 or the views of those passing sumptuary laws to curb spending. certainly spending beyond the limits of wealth can prove fatal to an individual or to a group, as can pure hedonism without regard for limits and for other responsibilities. however, these are not inevitable consequences of the “pleasure duty,” which is just as much a spur to production, increasing trade and exchanges and encour-aging the development of such things as the arts, things which few could really deem fatal to a culture in and of themselves.

Fashion should be recognized as part of the cultural revolution of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that promoted courtly values. in lipovetsky’s view, the great invention of this revolution, beginning with the troubadours of languedoc, was courtly love, a notion which links two keys to fashion: the social setting of the court (criterion 6), and the social ethic of pleasure it fostered (criterion 9). This construct of love was created through the vehicle of a poetry that strove for formal novelty and the representation of the absolute uniqueness of the beloved. evidence for fashion emerges from a group of cultures eager for play with words and subtle variation, eager to hear songs of courtly love and seduction. lipovetsky proposed that the new representation of love in such poetry furthered

89 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.71–2.90 Baudrillard, La société de consommation, p.112. see also pp.205–10 for his discussion

of the difference between fashion, beauty, and eroticism in modern life.91 Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, pp.133–5, 201–4; Zink, La prédication en langue

romane avant 1300, p.373.




the process of the creation of the individual.92 The link between fashion and the French and occitan vernacular literature of love was greater than lipovetsky intuited as a non-medievalist, as the later chapters of this book will show.

10. Movement towards equalization of appearances: fashion, class, and democracy

Fashion as ultimately democraticThe problem of class and fashion has been left to the end. it is one that has been extensively debated. The polemic surrounding the problem reveals, as much as anything, that there are inherent flaws in our conceptions of class and social hierarchy. obviously, social hierarchies exist in almost every culture. if they did not, there would be much less compulsion to describe them. Whether clearly delineated lower, middle, and upper classes exist, however, is a more difficult question. Whether there are always ruling classes and dominated classes is also harder to say, and it is even harder to delimit exactly which individuals fall into each category. social hierarchy (a better term than “class” across time) unques-tionably has a role in fashion. Paradoxically, however, rigid concepts of social distinction and segregation by class continuously disintegrate in the climate of constant change characteristic of a society dominated by fashion.

Fashion, on the one hand, is a tool for creating and maintaining lines of social distinction. on the other, its ephemerality contributes to social equality by undermining the power of traditional appearance-based signs of prestige. it makes the signs of distinction available to anyone with the resources to obtain them and who can keep up with their ephemerality. it becomes possible to ascend the social hierarchy by appropriating the outward signs that signify social superiority. in a fashion system, distinction is constantly both threatened and nurtured by ephemerality. There is constant pressure to keep up with the times and to continue revising the rules or follow the revisions to avoid social obsoles-cence or worse, disgrace. such constant pressure often engenders, understandably enough, anxiety both from those worried about their ability to maintain their high level of distinction and from those who resist the pressure to conform yet who wish to have status. signs of such anxieties are evidence of fashion’s presence.

The triple connection between fashion’s reign, increasing social equality and democracy is a cornerstone of lipovetsky’s thesis that fashion is leading the world to a more complete form of democracy, in which politics become as frivolous as clothing fads. voters choose and discard politicians and policies at will, rather than clinging to the restrictions of party lines.93 although Jennifer

92 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.72, 75.93 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, p.47. see also sumner, who held that democracy

itself was only a fashion and was thus destined to pass away, like all other experiments in


m.Jones considered the Empire of Fashion’s most vulnerable argument its link between fashion and democracy, such a link is quite common.94

The most strenuous resistance to the linking of fashion and a movement towards social fluidity probably arises from Baudrillard, who believed that rather than characterizing real change and movement, fashion masked deep social inertia.95 it could be argued that the equality created by a fashion system is an equality based on ideology, and therefore an illusion. Baudrillard’s warning that too many people are taken in by the myths of beauty and the need to consume wrought by the media and advertising, admonishing that mindless assimilation of these myths can lead to a very vain lifestyle, serves an important function in the present fashion system. such an admonition represents more of a participation in a fashion system than a theory of fashion’s mechanisms. realizing that the imperatives of advertising and other propaganda are only attempts among many to sway public opinion denies these messages some of their power. recognizing that ideology is ideology loosens its hold considerably. Thanks to Baudrillard’s work the ideology of consumption is not so fatal as it once appeared.

Fashion’s rulersstatus, like gender, is ultimately a variable rather than a rule of fashion. Who, then, dictates fashion? some answers, such as Baudrillard’s ruling class, simmel’s dominating elite whom all must imitate, or the leisure class proposed by veblen never hold entirely true. in a fashion system, no status has guaranteed permanence. constant change is the rule for sleeve styles as much as for social prominence.

a fashion system’s “rulers” are determined not by bloodlines but by the eye, the talent for seductive staging of oneself and others.96 Baudelaire imagined

government. This view grants more social importance to fashion than to modes of government, interestingly. Folkways, p.194.

94 simmel, for instance, felt that “democratic times” favor fashion to a remarkable degree. he gave the example of political leaders from his time: “even Bismarck and other very prominent party leaders in constitutional governments have emphasized the fact that inasmuch as they are leaders of a group, they are bound to follow [fashion],” “Fashion,” p.141. Brenninkmeyer viewed fashion as exclusively a court privilege in the fifteenth century, an elite privilege slowly usurped by the wealthy in the nineteenth century, leading to a more and more democratic kind of fashion in the twentieth, Sociology of Fashion, pp.3, 124–73. Flugel noted that fashion implies a fluid social structure, which would permit competition between the aristocratic-minded and inferiors, Psychology of Clothes, p.140. see also spencer, Ceremonial Institutions, p.209. Jennifer m.Jones, review, The Empire of Fashion, in Esprit Créateur, 37.1 [1997], p.109.

95 Baudrillard, Pour une critique de l’économie politique du signe, p.40.96 several theorists point out that “underdogs” possessing “a good eye” seem to be the

real makers of trends. Bourdieu and delsaut favored the new contestants, comparing fashion to boxing: “dans le champ de la mode, comme dans tout autre champ, ce sont les nouveaux entrants qui, comme en boxe le challenger, ‘font le jeu.’ les dominants jouent sur le velours: ils n’ont pas besoin de recourir à des stratégies de bluff ou de faire valoir qui sont autant d’aveux de faiblesse,” in “le couturier et sa griffe,” p.9.




fashion’s “ruling class,” what he called “dandies,” to be patterned after the aristocracy, betraying the influence of contemporary struggles between the new empires and new republics. he believed that “dandy-ism” appeared in times of social instability rather than naturally accompanying democracy.97 his notion of a new aristocracy of dandies whose authority would be based not on work or money but on “heavenly gifts” implies that any group of people within a society with sufficient resources – but most of those born with talent – can reign in the society of fashion. Talent does not found dynasties of rulers, as the aristocracy does. The individuals it brings to power are only able to rule in their lifetime. The great dandy Beau Brummel, for instance, lost his position when his creditors finally expelled him from london.98 designers such as chanel rose to prominence by merit alone; her label continues to “reign” under the administration of later designers brought to her house by talent rather than lineage.99 dandies can have no more “indestructible” a reign than any other sort of authority. Talent is a surer key to success than work or wealth in ascending the social pyramids of fashion, so that the perpetual ascent of new dandies to fashionable leadership is, indeed, very likely.

Rule of the marginsFashion’s greatest innovators often come from the margins of high society, as simmel observed:

The fact that the demi-monde is so frequently a pioneer in matters of fashion, is due to its peculiarly uprooted way of life. The pariah existence to which society condemns the demi-monde, produces an open or latent hatred against everything that has the sanction of law, of every permanent institution, a hatred that finds its relatively most innocent and aesthetic expression in the striving for ever new forms of appearance.100

Whatever the current incarnation of the demi-monde might be, fashionable innovations can be seen to come from similar marginal groups in many cultures, from the sway held by kings’ mistresses and favorites, to the rage for “grunge” in the late 1980s. Whether the motive for this kind of creative self-expression was hatred should be questioned, as rebelling against established forms and scorn for the past are integral hallmarks of fashion. self-expression plays just as great a role, however, and simmel neglects it here. Following fashion’s theatrical logic, a trend-setting coup de théâtre is more powerful when it arrives from an unexpected source.

97 Baudelaire, Peintre de la vie moderne, p.88.98 see Balzac’s discussion of meeting the destitute Brummel in the Bois de Boulogne,

in “Traité de la vie élégante,” pp.228–32.99 on Brummel, chanel and others, see steele, Paris Fashion.100 simmel, “Fashion,” p 145.


in short, fashion’s dictators often, if not always, emerge from the lower ranks and work their way upward. a fashion system allows this kind of social mobility, more than demanding it. Fashion does not function only for its innovators, however. There must be people who sanction new ideas, who fund them, who second new motions with their established authority as well as greater numbers of people who simply imitate them. The demi-monde does not exist without the monde.101 The difference between this view and the contention that fashion results from strategies of class domination is that prestigious figures do not necessarily obtain their prestige from class or other inherited distinguishing factor. They are defined by being qualified to pass judgment: qualified, therefore, by their individual taste. certain prestige figures certainly have inherited class qualifications in this regard, but there are plenty of prestige figures whose position has everything to do with their wits, talent and experience, and which is theirs in spite of their class. Blumer stresses that fashion is a process of collective selection rather than class differentiation.102 The power of prestige to sway opinions is ultimately fragile.

Flexible hierarchysocieties characterized by fashion systems must have some fluidity in their hierarchies. Too rigid a social configuration will not allow either for individual expression or the related collective negotiation to innovate and accept innovation. Fashion systems feature opportunity for social distinction through appearances. This appearential distinction is the most important kind of distinction in a fashion system, more important than distinctions such as lineage. Where there are signs of social mobility, of seeking to improve one’s status through shows of talent or ingenuity, of relative equality between persons of taste no matter what their background, there is evidence of fashion’s presence.

A summary

From all these elements, an overarching definition of fashion may be offered. it is a desire for constant change shared – or resisted – by many individuals in a given society, where the creation and substitution of subtly new and different versions of standard models as objects promises social identity and personal satisfaction. Fashion can be recognized by many signs, such as rejection of the past, criticism of decayed mores and consumption, and a sense of the right or need to pursue pleasure. it is a conceptual system dependent on verbal commu-nication for its expression as much as a system of visual display. Perhaps the mark that unites the greatest number of fashion’s elements is paradox: icono-clasm and nostalgia, conformity and distinction, prestige and social fluidity.

101 see also Blumer, “Fashion,” p.287.102 Blumer, “Fashion,” p.281.



2

The Birth of Fashion

Inde ferunt, totidem qui vivere debeat annos,corpore de patrio parvum phoenica renasci . . .

Then, they say, destined to live for the same number of years,from the corpse of its father the phoenix is born again, young .. .

(ovid, Metamorphoses Xv.401–2.)

can we speak of a birth of fashion? many scholars have done so, operating under the assumption that, while dress and ornament are universal, fashion is specific to certain times and places. The birth of modern fashion has been discovered in the industrial revolution, in the rise of the department store, and with the advent of cheap print media. many costume historians have located fashion’s birth in the West in the fourteenth- or fifteenth-century courts of Burgundy or italy, or more generally with the era referred to as “early modernity.” This chapter will survey, and question, some of this dating.

The existence of so many different recorded births of fashion says something important about how fashion functions. Fashion systems constantly reject the immediate past. every new wave of innovation presents itself, like ovid’s phoenix, as newly born, even while it may be situated along what is really an unbroken (but constantly bending) thread of evolution. speaking of fashion’s birth raises the problems of searching for origins and sources, historically a preoccupation of literary historians, but one critiqued by more recent genera-tions who construe the quest for the origins of medieval texts, themes, and ideas as chimerical.1 The confusion of opinions over dating fashion’s birth(s) reveals the vanity of trying to establish a single authoritative moment of incar-nation. Better than trying to fix a single moment for fashion’s incarnation is to ask when the cultural value placed on novelty becomes prominent, and when the desire for innovation and the capacity for the production of innovation reach a critical point of becoming a constant and organizing presence.

1 Zumthor, Essai de poétique médiévale, p.21, criticizes medieval studies as excessively swollen with “the literature of origins”; the very title of dragonetti’s Le mirage des sources: l’art du faux dans le roman médiéval suggests that origins are chimerical; david hult likewise questions the possibility of finding them in “vers la société de l’écriture: le Roman de la Rose,” p.158.


Fashion is born whenever you study it

Partial or limited knowledge of earlier cultures may often contribute to perceiving a birth of fashion. For instance, when the fourth to the fifteenth centuries are popularly viewed as a monolithic cultural wasteland, there is a tendency to assume that there was no fashion in the middle ages. This results from perceiving the period uniformly as the dark ages: when everyone lived in squalor, wore rough homespun, lived a life of obscure oblivion, due to illit-eracy, suffered oppression by theological dogma, spurned classical art and literature, and never washed. such views are not informed by acquaintance with the breadth of medieval trade, or the medieval vernacular literary traditions of the twelfth century and onwards that devote attention to splendid attire. Barbara vinken, for instance, follows Georg simmel in declaring that fashion is a phenomenon of the modern, emerging in the second half of the nineteenth century as a “post-feudal phenomenon.” 2 Few medieval or early modern histo-rians would present the feudal and modern periods as contiguous. moreover, the feudal system was not the only system functioning in the period called, for convenience, the middle ages. in short, caution is in order when setting up a culture as the antithesis of a fashion system.

There is a noteworthy tendency to discover a birth of fashion in whatever period a scholar studies. For instance, Grant mccracken argued that the “first appearance of modern consumption” was a “dramatic” occurrence, taking place in elizabethan england.3 chandra mukerji located fashion’s birth in the “hedonistic consumerism” she found in europe in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. she presented medieval dress as stable and stratified up to Philip the Bold’s marriage to margaret of Flanders, which she argued created a large new center of commerce.4 This does not account for the centers of commerce thriving much earlier, beginning in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, from the fairs of champagne to the growing cities of northern europe and the mediterranean. neil mcKendrick, John Brewer, and J.h.Plumb saw the opening event in the birth of fashion as the arrival in england of cheap calico from india in 1690, ushering in a new, intensified tyranny of fashion which charac-terized the eighteenth century, manifesting itself in Wedgewood’s pottery manufacture, clothing fashions, and the development of newspaper adver-tising.5 rosalind h.Williams believed seventeenth-century French aristocrats were the first in modern society to experiment with discretionary consumption, but portrayed the Paris expositions of 1889 and 1900 as the first planned environments of mass consumption.6 Philippe Perrot noticed that a few slow traces of fashion were visible in the twelfth century, although he saw “extreme

2 vinken, “Transvesty – Travesty,” p.33. simmel, “die mode.”3 mccracken, Culture and Consumption.4 mukerji, From Graven Images, pp.170–80.5 mcKendrick, Brewer and Plumb, The Birth of a Consumer Society.6 Williams, Dream Worlds, p.57.

The BirTh oF Fashion 47



inertia” before the renaissance. around 1700 he observed courtly competition for “fashion-setting dominance,” but he placed the “true emergence of modern consumption” in the nineteenth century.7 here are but a few examples. Fashion is often discussed without rigorous definition. a comprehensive survey of all the works positing its birth in one form or another would be a monumental task.

Fernand Braudel was a pioneer among historians in the importance he placed on fashion, clothing, commerce, and consumption, recognizing that at the heart of the “great transformation” of the West occurring in the early modern period, there was a “consumer revolution.” Braudel’s attempts to locate a birth of fashion contain a number of contradictions, which are symptomatic of the historiography of fashion’s birth. While he held that “the sovereign authority of fashion was barely enforced in its full rigor before 1700,” he recognized the important economic progress made in earlier centuries, although he treats chronology loosely: to support the statement that there was “no change until the boost in the economy after about 1300,” he evoked orderic vitalis, without noting that orderic wrote around 1120–40 concerning changes that took place in the reign of William ii of england (1087–1100).8 elsewhere, he used european travelers’ accounts to substantiate his conclusions that fashion did not exist in india, china, and the islamic world, a view challenged by scholars of non-european cultures, particularly for the court cultures of china and Japan.9 inexact treatments of chronology and foreign cultures in creating “anti-fashion” scenarios prove to be problematic.

Late medieval Burgundy

The most widely accepted hypothesis dates fashion’s emergence to the appearance of a new men’s clothing style in mid-fourteenth century Burgundy. Proposed by Paul Post in the first decade of the twentieth century, based primarily on illuminations and other visual representations, and secondarily on moralist texts, it said that modern male dress first appears in France around 1350 with the revolution produced by the appearance of the short surcoat on young men, in radical opposition to the long robe, which continued to be worn by older and more venerable men. Post examined the evolution in armor, from the knee-length coat of mail to the plate armor that appeared in the fourteenth century. Under a coat of mail, men wore long tunics; under plate armor, they wore padded jerkins, closely fitted to the body. civilian clothes were basically

7 Perrot, Les Dessus et les dessous de la bourgeoisie, pp.31–46.8 Braudel, Capitalism, p.231.9 adshead, Material Culture in Europe and China; newton, “couture and society;”

steele and major, China Chic.


adapted to the forms worn under these different types of armor.10 as far as that goes, Post’s analysis is methodologically sound and quite useful. his argument that plate armor meant the rediscovery of the long-lost male waistline, however, is open to question. he said that plate armor emerged in a period when the body was being “differently controlled” because the armor corseted the male form, and that this was “more in accordance with nature.” There is nothing necessarily natural about corseting, nor does nature provide all men with waist-lines. Belts are mentioned for previous periods, if they were not always worn. in any case, his hypothesis that fashion was born with a radical change in the male silhouette, ushering in a period when frequent variation in costume becomes observable in art and artifacts, has made a very significant mark on the historiography of fashion. although Post himself did not publish a great deal, he was revered as an authority in the 1950s when costume studies were being reorganized in the direction of more rigorous methodology.11 While his theory was limited to claiming that the modern lines of tailoring for male clothing first appeared between about 1340 and 1370, his conclusions have been generalized to imply more, in part because of the dramatic impact of his use of the term “the birth of modern fashion” in describing his findings.

The dating of fashion’s birth around 1350 based on Post’s authority has been adopted by scholars such as Boucher, von Boehn, Flugel, laver, Brenninkmeyer, lipovestky, and others.12 as the idea has been disseminated, peculiar variations have appeared, especially in popularizations treating the many centuries of the middle ages as monolithic. For michael and ariane Batterberry, for instance, the world of eleanore of aquitaine and the Troubadours (twelfth and thirteenth centuries) was amalgamated with the court of Burgundy (flourishing in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries) as the “cradle of fashion.” 13

There are a number of problems with dating Western fashion’s birth in the fourteenth century. one lies in the exclusively visual focus, which neglects

10 Post, “die französisch-niederländische männertracht;” idem, “la naissance du costume masculin moderne.”

11 see the proceedings of the 1er congrès international d’histoire du costume (venise, 31 august–7 sept. 1952), introduction to Post’s contribution: “il y a 40 ans l’auteur, par sa thèse de doctorat, a élévé l’étude du costume au niveau de la recherche sérieuse dans le domaine des arts,” p.28.

12 Boucher, 20,000 Years of French Fashion, p.192; Brenninkmeyer, The Sociology of Fashion, pp.126–9; Flugel, The Psychology of Clothes, p.160; von Boehn, Modes and Manners, p.215; laver, Costume and Fashion, p.62. hunt refers to it without clearly adopting it, Governance of the Consuming Passions, pp.44, 157. revisiting the issue, Piponnier, “Une révolution dans le costume masculin au Xive siècle.”

13 “Together with the courts of Burgundy, Provence and languedoc, this sunny realm [aquitaine] would become the cradle of fashion:” Batterberry and Batterberry, Fashion, p.86. certain elements of medieval history are handled clumsily in this account. another example is the reference to outrageous fashions seen under “Philip the Fair of Burgundy (1285–1314),” on p.87, confusing the king of France (reigned 1285–1314) and Philippe le Beau of the low countries (reigned 1482–1506), or possibly Philippe le Bon, duke of Burgundy (1419–67).




the signs of desire for novel consumption in the writing of earlier periods. moreover, the treatment of fashion based on visual representations and artifacts is obliged to analyze historic costume and textiles with the aid of modern technical vocabulary. art history and the philology of apparel remain separate because there exist no medieval fashion manuals that juxtapose words and images, an anachronistic expectation motivated by the existence of such fashion manuals today. romances and other texts supply a vocabulary of color and style, but it is nearly impossible to know exactly how these terms correspond to extant images. examining representation is necessary for understanding the mechanics of fashion. Words generally precede visual representation both on the oral level and on the written. it is easiest to make something fashionable by expressing desire or admiration for it aloud. Written expressions require some greater degree of sophistication, but might also reach a wider audience; creating an image expressing fashionability requires greater time, skill, and resources.

another problem with this dating derives from the uneven chronological distribution of extant sources. There are relatively copious visual records of dress from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when manuscript painting came into vogue.14 extant manuscripts from earlier centuries are rarer, and were more rarely illuminated. When they are, figures are often biblical or allegorical, often shown in stylized historical dress rather than in anything that can be reliably considered realistic contemporary dress.15 Fashions in visual art seem to have evolved at a respectable rate from the appearance of Gothic art at saint-denis in 1144 and even before, as michael camille suggests when he links the Gothic style and the appearance of modern fashion.16 it is problematic to conclude, based on comparison of visual evidence, that in thirteenth-century France fashion did not exist and that dress styles did not change, since the development of miniature painting trails the development of vernacular expression and the increases in book production and diffusion. This should hardly be taken to indicate that desire for fashionable consumption was absent. on the contrary, vivid descriptions of dress in literary works probably stimulated the imagination in a way that made a visual translation of the description irrelevant. Whereas romance literature began to develop rapidly in

14 This was a fashion imported to France from england in the mid-thirteenth century, according to Bourin-derruau, Temps d’équilibres, temps de ruptures, p.36.

15 mane and Piponnier, Dress in the Middle Ages, pp.5–6. Georges duby mentions the astonishment of the schoolmaster at angers at the “idols” he saw on a trip to early eleventh-century aquitaine, demonstrating contemporary discomfort at figurative art, Liber miraculorum sancta Fidis, 1.13, quoted in duby and mandrou, Histoire de la civilisation française, p.132.

16 “Gothic was the first historical style totally to permeate the world of things. not just found in architecture, its pointed arches and tracery patterns appeared in everything from spoons to shoes. it is also the first truly international style, spreading throughout europe. Gothic artists were in this sense the first to create what we would call today ‘fashion’.” camille, Gothic Art: Glorious Visions, pp.12–14.


the late eleventh century, miniatures came to be common and well articulated only in the late thirteenth century, once the non-professional reading public had grown sufficiently to create a market for picture books.17 illuminated books were objects of fashionable consumption reflecting a complex system already in place, more than vehicles disseminating the desires involved in such a system’s initial stages.

Text and image

The modern publishing demand for illustrations to match text has a tendency to promote an inaccurate linking of literary passages from the high middle ages and images from the later middle ages. While the manuscript tradition clearly shows that many old French texts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were read and copied into later centuries, it should not be ignored that the culture that produced them had its unique set of styles, trends, and social issues.

an example of the problems involved in taking chronological liberties is found in christopher Breward’s The Culture of Fashion: A New History of Fashionable Dress. Breward justly critiques traditional costume history for focusing chiefly on physical form, construction, and visual representations of dress, and suggests that attention needs to be turned towards the “wider impli-cations of what might be termed ‘the birth of modern fashion’ for structures of class and gender within society, or the broader cultural and economic implications of such a ‘naissance’.” 18 in addressing this “birth,” however he begins by quoting John of reading’s criticism of english court dress around 1340, saying that contemporaries perceived a “shift in fashionable dress away from the simple, functional style previously popular amongst the european nobility, towards a French-inspired emphasis on contour and cut.” 19 he employs the findings of costume historians who “have identified the middle years of the fourteenth century as the first period of significant fashion change,” but this hypothesis is challenged by his own argument: if the english in 1340 were imitating an already-established French fashion for body-conscious cut, fashion must have already have existed previously, at least in France. While he carefully considers the problems inherent in extant medieval sources, in discussing england in the 1350s and 1360s he draws heavily on French and occitan literary and documentary sources from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.20

17 saenger, “lire aux derniers siècles du moyen age,” p.165.18 Breward, The Culture of Fashion, p.9.19 Breward, The Culture of Fashion, p.8.20 including the Romance of the Rose (c. 1225–30), troubadour marcabru (mid-twelfth

century), huon de Bordeaux (second half of the thirteenth century), Aucassin et Nicolette (late twelfth or early thirteenth century), and Étienne Boileau’s Livre des Mestiers (c.1268). Breward, The Culture of Fashion, pp.9–13, 22–34.




in all, seven of his thirteen primary sources are French. This attests to the importance of the language of fashion in French and occitan sources from the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries for any discussion of medieval european fashion. his book also demonstrates that to find detailed visual sources for illustrations, one must draw images from the fourteenth century or later. von Boehn’s Modes and Manners, like many other books and documentaries, similarly juxtaposes pictures from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries with texts from the eleventh to the thirteenth. it is a general problem with histories of fashion, which suggests that a shift in methodology is in order. stella mary newton’s Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince: A study of the years 1340–1365 stands in contrast as a model of carefully coordinated visual, textual, and documentary sources.21

other scholars have dated fashion’s appearance in the fourteenth century based on other kinds of theories and texts. The sociologist Werner sombart, believing that courts were the basis of the modern capitalist system, saw the birth of the “modern court,” and of consumerism and consumption, in avignon (as well as in some of the italian city-states) in the fourteenth century, based on accounts from Petrarch, Pope John XXii, and records of increased prosti-tution. he believed that women, specifically courtesans, were responsible for the advent of modern consumption and fashion practices. This view displays some of the gender prejudices that construe fashion as an exclusively feminine preoccupation. sombart discounted the courts of the earlier middle ages because their notions of love were not sufficiently “secularized,” 22 a view which suggests that he did not examine French and occitan vernacular texts, which are often very highly secularized.

Fashion as remodeling the body

a number of scholars have defined fashion as the will to restructure the body through clothing. anne hollander’s premise in Seeing Through Clothes is that the silhouette of contemporary fashionable clothing influences the ideal image of the nude body in Western art. The renaissance nude is upholstered like the stiff brocades and stuffed sleeves of that time; nineteenth-century nudes are corseted without the corset, and so on. she dates fashion’s beginnings at 1300 based on the emergence of observable visual fluctuations. The passage is worth quoting:

The direct reflection of fashion in the image of the nude body can be demon-strated only during those centuries of Western society when true fashion actually existed. if fashion in dress means constant perceptible fluctuations of visual design, created out of the combined forms of tailored dress and

21 newton, Fashion in the Age of the Black Prince.22 sombart, Luxury and Capitalism, pp.2, 43, 64–6.


body, then many early civilizations and much of the eastern hemisphere have not experienced ‘fashion’ as we know it. They will have undergone changes of surface fashion, such as those in different kinds of trimming, different details of hairdressing, different colors and accessories; but basic shapes will have altered only very slowly by a long evolutionary process, not dependent on any aesthetic lust for perpetual changes of form. The changes in true fashion, ongoing in the West since about 1300, demand reshaping of the body-and-clothes unit.23

hollander’s dating derives from visual sources, common enough only after about 1300 to observe constant fluctuations in tailoring. others such as susan crane have used both historical and literary texts to argue that fashion appears in the fourteenth century with the arrival of “cutting to fit,” due to the arrival of technological advances in cloth making and body-conscious tailoring, which she interprets as allowing an explosion of social meaning around clothing.24

similarly defining fashion and its appearance in terms of garment construction, but refuting the fourteenth-century hypothesis, Jennifer harris traces the earliest beginnings of Western fashion to the twelfth century. she bases her conclusions on the increasing complexity of garment construction during the twelfth century and a concurrent acceleration of change in styles of dress and hairdressing.

although twelfth-century experiments in garment cutting and construction involved manipulating fabric by temporary lacing or stitching instead of permanent seams or buttons, they nonetheless called for a great deal of ingenuity on the part of the tailor and provided the impetus which led, over the next century or so, to cutting-to-fit and functional buttons. They also reflect a sense of change and progress inherent in society at large.25

While there is less detailed and realistic visual evidence to support the existence of constant change for the twelfth century than for the fourteenth century, volume and length were clearly key features of elite dress in this period. moreover, harris touches on the importance of psychology and sociology to the arrival of a particular type of production technology. i would argue that dating fashion’s advent to the appearance of any given type of technology neglects the societal forces that brought about such a development.

The fourteenth-century trend for remodeling the body through cut, corsetry, décolletage, and padding has been studied as a radical transformation by odile Blanc. While her dating corresponds to Post’s, like newton she does not claim any sort of birth of fashion for this period, although she does discuss the “invention” of the fashionable body.26 Blanc is careful to limit inquiry to

23 hollander, Seeing Through Clothes, p.90.24 crane, The Performance of the Self, p.13.25 harris, “’estroit vestu et menu cosu’, p.99. see also idem, “Thieves, harlots and

stinking Goats” and idem, Textiles, 5,000 years.26 Blanc, Parades et parures, pp.26–32, 73, 96.




the range of the information that can be gleaned from the attitudes and relations between figures in the miniatures of aristocratic luxury manuscripts, namely the ways contemporaries conceived their garments and the relationship they had with the body. crane is similarly more concerned with how clothing is used to represent the self in this period than with the larger mechanisms of fashion.

The use of tailoring to remodel the body is a remarkable phenomenon, and it is undeniable that “fashion” can connote the parade of changes in garment silhouette. Tailoring is more a symptom of the type of artifice typical of a fashion system’s complex theatricality, however, as fashionable consumption encompasses far more than clothing. The desire to attract attention through altering the body’s natural contours should be understood as one desire among many.

Appearance of artistic, literary, and commercial change

While nineteenth-century archivist Jules Quicherat referred to a “radical change” in men’s dress in the fourteenth century, this was not the first such change he had remarked.27 The first occurred in the period from 1090 to 1190, which he called the “Grand siècle” of the middle ages. By associating the twelfth century with the “Grand age” of louis Xiv and the rise of the absolute monarchy, he implied that it was an era when many of the foundations for later times were laid, when many precedents were set, when new modes of living came into force which would set the standard for later times. of all the periods he discussed, he viewed the twelfth century as a time of new births, particularly in the domains of literature, art, and the industries that were the precursors of those that would differentiate modern times from antiquity.28 desire for furs attained a fever pitch, resulting in the formation of more corporations than for most other trades. The growth in silk consumption necessitated the extension of trade. new colors and dyestuffs made variety of color the law of dress, with any artifice for introducing it anywhere in the costume considered acceptable. Quicherat refers to the twelfth century as “dedicated to innovations in every matter,” as fashion regulated everything from the points on shoes that went in and out of style to men’s facial hair trends, calling it the strongest force in all of society.29

27 as noted in Piponnier, “Une révolution dans le costume masculin au Xive siècle,” pp.225–6.

28 Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France, p.151. see also evans, Dress in Medieval France, p.4.

29 Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France, pp.152–67.


Eleventh-century Normandy

For a number of costume historians, the first significant signs of Western fashion occur in the late eleventh century, notably as reported by the anglo-norman cleric orderic vitalis in his Ecclesiastical History. a radical change in men’s dress took place towards the year 1100, a movement from the short robes of the previous six centuries to long tunics.30 art historian Jennifer harris corre-spondingly concluded that during the period from the norman invasion of england (1066) to the Third crusade to the holy land (1189–92), clothing in Western europe underwent a profound transformation, first among the aristocracy but ultimately extending to the dress of the merchant and laboring classes.31

orderic vitalis is often mentioned but rarely properly examined. it is worth looking at some of the actual wording describing the changes he had seen in his day. he mentions the change in manners twice, both with regard to the young men surrounding William ii of england (1087–1100). These men wore long pointed shoes with stuffed “pulley toes,” and

longos crines ueluti mulieres nutriebant, et summopere comebant, prolixisque nimiumque strictis camisiis indui tunicisque gaudebant.

[grew long and luxurious locks like women, and loved to deck themselves in long, over-tight shirts and tunics].32

moreover, they used curling irons, covered their locks with caps, and carefully groomed “lustful” beards instead of being shaggy, like their forefathers. Further on, orderic speaks more generally of the era:

eo tempore multa malicia in terris orta est, et uehementer augmentata est. militares uiri mores paternos in uestitu et capillorum tonsura derelinquerunt, quos paulo post burgenses et rustici et pene totum uulgus imitati sunt.

[at that time great evils appeared and increased rapidly all over the world. men of knightly rank abandoned the customs of their fathers in style of dress and cut of hair; in a little while townsmen and peasants and all the lower ranks followed their example].33

These passages are striking for the number of remarks that match the criteria for the existence of fashion. The chronicler shows anxiety that the reverence

30 Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France, p.146.31 harris, “’estroit vestu et menu cosu’: evidence for the construction of twelfth-century

dress,” p.89.32 chidball, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, Book viii, ch.10: vol.4,

pp.186–9.33 chidball, The Ecclesiastical History of Orderic Vitalis, Book viii, ch.22: vol.4,

pp.268–9.




for the past was being overturned in favor of new styles. The new style is not isolated, but spreads to all social groups, bringing male appearance to a new level of social equilibrium rather than sharply demarcating one class or another. his feeling that these conditions appeared and then “increased rapidly all over the world” suggests that this was not an isolated change in style but a new attitude he sensed emerging to alter the whole demeanor of his society. The presence of his criticism shows an element of fashion in itself.

While a single author’s criticism is not enough evidence to prove that these conditions had become constant and institutionalized, henri Platelle has studied two waves of vestimentary scandal concerning men from the loire to the rhine, and in norman england.34 in chronicles and church councils from the first part of the eleventh century, first raoul Glaber (1002), then Guillaume de volpiano (1017) and siegfried de Gorze (1043) anathematize the unbridled luxury of clothing and arms, immodest short tunics, and indecent haircuts and shaved faces which first arrived from aquitaine, quickly adopted by French and Burgundian knights. orderic vitalis can be placed among a second group of clerics at the end of the eleventh century who were shocked by the long trailing robes, short beards, and curled hair of the new generation. Platelle analyzes these scandals in terms of violation of codes of appearance understood by the clerics to correspond to God-given social orders. When knights could be confused with priests or penitents, or men with women, this excited insecurity. This interpretation coincides to some degree with vinken’s contention that before “modern fashion,” there were only dress codes, intended to convey class information at a glance, which were constantly violated and so required the invention of new codes. ironically, given that vinken considers fashion “post-feudal,” the repeated complaints of male effeminacy coincide with her rather eccentric definition of fashion as transvestism, which is to say a phenomenon manipulating gender codes more than class codes.35

The difficulty with identifying fashion in the eleventh century is the relative paucity of surviving evidence. For every subsequent century the extant traces multiply, often exponentially. however, with the arrival of the twelfth century, there is enough information coming from multiple sources to begin to argue more conclusively for fashion’s continuous, systematic presence.36

The first widespread trend mane and Piponnier label “fashion” was the new eleventh-century configuration in men’s clothing. The first chronological “fashions” they speak of are those described at charlemagne’s court, but they

34 henri Platelle, “le problème du scandale,” pp.1071–96.35 vinken, “Transvesty – Travesty.”36 The Batterberrys conclude that fashion was on the verge of beginning in the twelfth

century based on their readings of saint Bernard’s writings. “Fashion in the modern sense of continuously revised modes of dress .. . was suddenly gathering steam. little more pressure would be needed to set the mechanism of changing styles into motion.” This claim on its own is weak, drawing almost exclusively on the perspective of a single person (and an ardent preacher and moralist at that), but worth retaining as a complement to other evidence. Batterberry and Batterberry, Fashion: The Mirror of History, p.85.


emphasize that the chronicler’s descriptions of rich styles are “probably simply poetic license,” that miniatures from the period are highly stylized, and that it was only queens who adorned themselves with ribbons, fancy girdles and pointed shoes.37 The appearance of the long bliaut and chainse38 in the eleventh century contrasts with carolingian styles in that they eventually spread beyond the court to become common dress for all men. according to the second criterion for a fashion system, the trends of the carolingian courts could not be described as the result of a fashion system because they did not produce constant cycles of change-seeking, but were eclipsed for a few centuries. since the eleventh-century style spread and became generalized, it better meets certain criteria for fashion.

Emergence of a cyclical economy

economic historians rarely discuss the nature of fashion, but some have had recourse to the term to describe certain changes in the european economy in the high middle ages. it is generally agreed that a period of urban growth began in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, following agricultural expansion and increased production that permitted the nourishment of a larger population. over the course of the “long thirteenth century” (for Peter spufford this would comprehend the years 1160–1330, for Gérard sivéry 1180–1315, corresponding roughly to Quicherat’s “période brilliante du moyen age,” 1190–1340) the cloth trade was the key factor leading to urban growth, increased long-distance commerce, and craft specialization, producing a new economic system.39 david abulafia dates the birth of the european fashion industry to the late twelfth century, when not only do Western merchants begin importing more eastern products such as dyes, alum, luxury cloth and spices, but they manage to create demand at muslim princely courts for Western products such as woolens, silver, arms, and timber.40 sivéry observes that in certain areas of europe – certainly not everywhere – there was a movement from a traditional economy, where price and crisis cycles depend on catastrophic factors such as weather and war, to a cyclical economy, in which prices fluctuate according to supply and demand.41 Jacques heers observes that to make a profit, the Genoese merchants working in the French markets (whose records are among the earliest such extant) had to become adept at judging tastes and anticipating desires: they calculatingly

37 mane and Piponnier, Dress in the Middle Ages, p.78.38 a bliaut was a fitted outer tunic and a chainse a chemise worn under the bliaut.39 Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France, p.178; sivéry, L’économie du Royaume de

France, p.13; Peter spufford, “le rôle de la monnaie dans la révolution commerciale du Xiiie siècle,” pp.355–95; idem, Power and Profit, p.60.

40 david abulafia, “The role of Trade in muslim–christian contact during the middle ages,” pp.8–10.

41 sivéry, L’économie du Royaume de France, pp.52–4, 101.




limited novel types of fabric or risked a drop in prices when a flooded market rendered a color or texture artificially ordinary.42 sivéry similarly asks whether records indicating price fluctuations according to city of origin and color should be attributed to improvements in dye technology. That was surely true to some degree, but cannot be the only explanation: both authors observe that fashion and demand for novelty must have had a role in the equation.43 From an economic point of view, inexplicable fluctuations in prices and periods of non-catastrophic cyclical booms and depression signal fashion’s presence in a culture. it is the only system that can explain such otherwise irrational phenomena.

Multiple births

many scholars, some probably inadvertently, assign multiple births to fashion. von Boehn dated fashion’s birth variously to the crusades, to the emergence of town life, and also at around 1350, applauding Post’s work.44 anne hollander gave the approximate date of 1300 at one point (as quoted above), but elsewhere dated the change earlier, saying, “sometime in the thirteenth century, the aesthetic impulse toward significant distortion and creative tailoring .. . arose in european dress and established what has become the modern concept of fashion.” 45 While Gilles lipovetsky works from the assumption that fashion has a beginning which can located in history, he also wavered in his dating, at times accepting the Post hypothesis, elsewhere acknowledging that for a radical change to occur, a fashion-oriented network of already highly specialized crafts and artisans had to be in place, such as clearly existed from at least the thirteenth century, when innovations in weaving, dyeing, garment construction, commerce and banking permitted increases in bourgeois fortunes which led them to imitate the nobles. When he said that the emergence of fashion is inseparable from the cultural revolution and the emergence of courtly values in the twelfth century, he also suggested that fashion was already a growing system before the “great change” of 1350.46

What becomes clear from the disagreements over dating is that fashionability is in the eye of the beholder. an observer from outside the stylish culture of this period might look at long, ample garments and think that they look clerical, or biblical, just as a young person might look at a photograph from their parents’ teenage years and not be able to distinguish the fashionable from the unfashionable people. They might see nothing obscene enough to have aroused the ire of contemporary moralists. The specialist who knows the dress of 1350

42 Jacques heers, “la mode et les marchés des draps de laine,” p.1094.43 sivéry, L’économie du Royaume de France, p.157.44 Boehn, Modes and Manners, vol.1, pp.166–257, esp. 186–7. also positing city life

as essential to fashion, Wilson, Adorned in Dreams, pp.134–54.45 hollander, Seeing Through Clothes, p.17.46 lipovetsky, L’empire de l’éphémère, pp.25, 32–3, 45, 59, 72, 76.


well might, like contemporaries in 1350, scorn previous dress as lacking fashion; but this would only serve to demonstrate the principle of rejection of the past that is fundamental to the fashion-seeking eye. The “absent beholder” creates problems as well. neglecting close examination of the evidence of previous periods can lead to the assumption that fashion was absent, following that other cliché, “out of sight, out of mind.” The medieval periods deserve to be recog-nized more often than they are as part of the continuum of developments forming modern culture.

Ultimately, this book does not hope to solve the problem of whether fashion has an identifiable birth or even the problem of whether fashion is exclusively Western. There is evidence that there are cultures and micro-cultures where fashion does not exist as a major and productive defining social force, although some desire for social competition and self-expression in personal display may be present in a more marginal or marginalized form.47 Balzac said that there could be no “élégance” in the busy life of the type of working person he called “l’homme-instrument,” because there is no freedom of time or thought to study the individual expression that is fashion.48 There may be some truth in this, although a rigorous measurable definition of “la vie occupée” would prove no doubt elusive, including some members of many different cultures and excluding others.

rather than prove that fashion was born in a particular time and place, this book hopes to show that it existed in developing stages in thirteenth-century France. it appears that it began sufficiently affecting the cultures in this area sometime in the eleventh century that significant traces of it can be found. conception, birth? This study cannot locate a single, indisputably clear moment for either one. nor can it say how long a gestation period there may have been. should fashion be understood anthropomorphically? should we understand that it had an infancy, an age when it was not capable of independent action? The conclusion to which we must return is that fashion seems to stage its own birth again and again, because a fundamental characteristic of fashion is declaring the past invalid in favor of a new, improved present. Fashion is a phoenix, constantly dying and reincarnating itself. it annihilates everything immediately previous as completely devoid of relevance and appeal, yet its general forms remain recognizable. The beholder must be wary not to fall prey to this trick of denying the past in favor of a present introducing itself with great passion as the only imaginable reality. a fashion system was initiated in some of the growing towns and courts of France in at least the twelfth century, so that, by the thirteenth century, full-blown fashionable values were in evidence. Fashion

47 For example the amish or the mennonites, who have historically scrupulously and consciously avoided fashion, or impoverished subcultures of nations where consumption is not made an option due to lack of resources, leisure time and/or social interaction. With the invention of telecommunications, few places in the world are isolated enough to be completely removed from the influence of what has become almost a global fashion system.

48 Balzac, “Traité de la vie élégante,” pp.212–15.



would stage many more would-be births in the centuries that followed, always gaining momentum with new technologies and greater populations affected. The radical change in male dress that was staged by the young men of the wealthy fourteenth-century Burgundian court could only have happened because a fashion system was already in place, just as the adoption of new italian sonnet forms in France in the later middle ages and the renaissance could only have happened because people already expected a steady diet of new poetry. From pourpoint to poetic form, fashionable objects change, always multiplying, always seeming newly invented; but the desire to consume them and invent them has been steadily present in the West for at least eight centuries.



3

desire for novelty and Unique expression

. . . li baron de six mille livres de terre, ou de plus, pourront faire quatre robes par an, et non plus, et les femmes autant.

Barons worth six thousand pounds or more in revenue may have four new sets of clothing made per year, and not more, and the same for

their wives.

(King Philip iv of France, sumptuary edict of 1294)

an important sign of a fashion system’s existence is a pattern showing regular desire for new things, with arbitrary discarding of past styles in favor of novelty. This chapter examines items whose value was expressed in terms of novelty or originality, and attitudes concerning the frequency of acquisition, with a particular view to the fulfillment of criteria 1 to 5, although the others are necessarily implicated as well and will be shown to be in evidence. Tournaments stage scenes of generosity and prizes, presenting dreams of knightly novelty and distinction as well as occasions when old and worn things can be cast off. Thirteenth-century romances begin to feature scenes of changing clothes to punctuate courtly moments, as well as to signal character development. sumptuary laws treat the desire to change clothes regularly on another social level. negative figures embody the social scorn heaped on those who refuse to embrace regular change. This chapter examines the lexicon of novelty and distinction, and also the real forms it took, such as love trinkets, floral wreaths, close tailoring, and even military apparel. as in other sections of this book, many of the examples of novel and distinctive consumption focus on male characters, although much of the invective and criticism is directed towards women’s consumption. approaching the development of fashion in terms of expressions of the desire for novelty can offer a picture of fashion as something complexly ideological, not just a parade of dress styles.

How knights get new things

in exchange for new arms and clothing (adous noviaus), noble young men – valets as well as sons of the local barons – serve at the court of the duke of


Burgundy’s daughter, Ydoine, in the romance Amadas et Ydoine (c. 1190–1220, lines 157–63).49 When the eponymous hero is to be knighted, the duke prepares a rich court, spending generously, knighting a hundred other young men with him and giving them all new equipment (lines 1306–49). The narrative offers the fantasy of a place to get new clothing and arms, essentials for earning a fortune, and thereby the means to obtain further new arms and clothing. This dream was a typical one in romances of this period, as John W.Baldwin and others have observed, and one which encouraged the generosity of great lords as much as (if not more than) it reflected certain social practices.50

The Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole (c. 1210–12 or 1227–28) 51 lingers over occasions for getting new clothes, relishing the details. Preparations for the tournament in the first part of the story, when the emperor conrad sends for the reputed young French knight Guillaume, feature new clothes and arms prominently. When Guillaume receives word he is summoned to court, his mother’s first concern is for his clothing: he must think carefully of all he needs, so that no one at court might think him poor or ill-clothed (lines 1084–8). his sister lienors has three new sets of robes to offer him close at hand: “vez la .iii. pere, por son cors,/ de robe fresche a cele perche” (see, there are three sets of new robes for him to wear, hanging on that rack, lines 1090–1). Guillaume is lucky to have in his sister the best-dressed woman in France (lines 1520, 3546), and likewise extraordinary seamstresses in his sister and mother, as the narrator says women used to be in the old days (lines 1130–9, 1148–9). The emphasis on how the women are anachronistic suggests the degree to which this is a fantasy: many young knights preparing for a first great court occasion must have lacked such ready provisions.

The tournament is time for new clothes and great display, but it is also a time when those new things are ruined.52 it creates an artificial cycle of novelty and discarding which is suggestive of the fashion system’s emergence. The narrator emphasizes how the day after the combats would have been terrible (“mout fust la chose mal alee”) if not for the wisdom of the emperor, who knew that if he sent the knights away having lost their gear and ruined their clothes they would have looted the bourgeois. in an aside, the narrator comments that noblemen have a hard life trying to gain their fortunes this way (lines 2929–40).

The noble minstrel Juglet who makes Guillaume his protégé admires the knight’s new set of ermine-lined robes, made of fine and sweet-smelling wool

49 reinhard, Amadas et Ydoine.50 Baldwin, Aristocratic Life in Medieval France, pp.98–121. cf. the reminiscence of

vivien’s new arms at his knighting, Guessard and de montaiglon, Aliscans, lines 768–72.51 on dating, renart, The Romance of the Rose, pp.x–xiv.52 cf. the battle scene in Enfances Guillaume, “lai veïssies tant bliaut de chainsil/

ronpre et coper ses peliçons hermins” (there you would have seen so many fine linen bliauts torn and ermine linings shredded), lines 1967–8, in Boutet, Le Cycle de Guillaume d’Orange.



dyed “dark as a moor” (“d’escarlate noir come meure/ ot robe fresche a pene hermine;/ mout soëf flerant et mout fine,” lines 1530–2), swearing, “ah! God! now i see a set of clothes cut in the French style!” (lines 1534–5). The emphasis on the “French” cut is a way of emphasizing distinction. French influence on trends and sartorial vocabulary was also a reality in this period, particularly in the eastern part of the German empire, as Bumke has noted.53 The narrative sets up many scenes of such admiration for new and distinctive clothing. Guillaume gives Flemish Baldwin, the knight who carried his helmet, a surcot lined in vair fur, still smelling of excellent dye as proof of its newness (lines 1816–22). Juglet admires it right away (lines 1823–4). Baldwin then shows it to emperor conrad, who asks who gave it to him (lines 1867–79). When Guillaume parades in the streets before the tournament, the women admire his beautiful surcot – and additionally his face and figure – and, impressed by his looks, wish him good fortune (lines 2308–11). Fine new clothes make the man, establishing his reputation as the knight to watch, reflecting the self-confidence of criterion 4 and the audience appreciation of criterion 6. The romance stages new clothes dramatically, setting them before a variety of audiences whose favorable impressions are a key mechanism in building up the performance.

Amadas et Ydoine plays particularly on the word “new,” which serves to build up a field of desire around the various meanings of the word. on several occasions, Ydoine sends a messenger out to amadas on the tournament circuit, dispatching new items as gifts for her love – brand new rings, belts, wimples, sleeves of pleated white linen. in return she hopes for news of him, his “nouveles” (lines 1459–68). amadas is shown putting on an elaborately described suit of fine clothes for his return to Ydoine (lines 1623–46), only to be greeted by the all the more impressively dressed valet of his lady (lines 1678–1701), who brings bad news (“nouveles,” lines 1710, 1718, 1726, 1730, 1735) of her engagement to another. “news” is a commodity, purchasable with new things by messengers in new clothes. Nouveles in both the material and communicative senses of the word are clearly desired by the hero, heroine, and supporting cast.

romances tend to portray nobles as responsible for the new clothing of others in the hierarchy, paralleling the emphasis on gifts to companions seen in sumptuary laws. Ydoine gives her valet plenty of gold and silver, and orders him to dress himself well (“or t’aparelle ricement”, line 2603) to go and get news of amadas (lines 2584, 2649). This extends the fantasy of obtaining new things beyond the topos of the hero gaining his fortune at jousting (lines 1560–1, 1595–6, 1603–6) to offer opportunity for remuneration to the faithful and intelligent servant of lesser noble rank exercising a non-military function. Guillem de nevers of Flamenca and Guillaume de dole also build their

53 Bumke, Courtly Culture, pp.79–82, 151–2.

desire For novelTY and UniQUe eXPression 63



reputations as young nobles by conspicuous vestimentary generosity towards their bourgeois hosts, with servants, and with their companions.54

Changing clothes

There are signs in Jehan et Blonde (c. 1230–43) of changing clothes for different activities, a custom which would become a standard aristocratic practice in later centuries, but one rarely made explicit in the romances of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. When the count of oxford arrives for the wedding celebration, the narrator notes that the ladies change their clothes for dinner: “dont veïssiez sales emplir;/ es chambres et es garderobes/ vont les dames cangier leur robes” (then you saw the rooms empty out; the ladies go to their chambers and wardrobes to change their ensembles, lines 5862–4). This is significant because it implies the possession of multiple changes of clothing. moreover, it suggests the invention of reasons to change clothes for multiple public appearances, creating more opportunities to demonstrate personal choices.

in Guillaume de Dole, characters sometimes change their clothing for practical reasons, but other occasions are artificial inventions of the court. Guillaume put on his new cloak after he had finished eating, the narrator carefully notes (line 1533). it is practical to keep a new mantle away from food; yet changing one’s clothes after dinner is more an act of display than of necessity. after traveling, Juglet takes off his hose (heuses) and puts on chausses (lines 948–9), trading rough legwear for something more appropriate for court. although on one level this bit of amplification is simply a way to dramatize his arrival, such decoration is not merely gratuitous. The image of changing clothes underscores the cosmopolitan opulence of the court, showing it as a fashionable world where the style of legwear has significance. after lienors triumphs in court and restores the family honor at the end of the poem, her brother takes off the fur-lined robes in which he had wept a thousand tears, and puts on lightweight samite, summer silks emblazoned with heraldic emblems (lines 5169–80). This instance carries the obvious symbolism of trading winter’s weight and darkness for summer’s freedom and rejoicing. it is also another chance to linger over the fantasy of having new clothes in fine styles and fabrics.

conrad’s court, as painted at the beginning of the poem before Guillaume’s arrival, is a stage for such fantasy. The narrator first describes the rich silk pavilions in the forest (line 193), then the lovely noble ladies in tight-laced silk dresses, worn without mantles, and their attractive accessories (lines 196–209). The men had levantine silk and fresh furs, as well (lines 232–41). When the

54 see the chapter “le chevalier dans la ville: le modèle romanesque et ses métamor-phoses bourgeoises,” in stanesco, D’armes et d’amours, pp.286–90.


emperor arrives in robes trimmed in two colors of samite, he does not want to be better dressed than the others, so he has a maiden modify his outfit, trading his laces and belt for hers (lines 242–58). The courtiers seem to entertain themselves by modifying their dress, taking off shoes and unlacing sleeves (line 261) and then sewing the sleeves back on again with thread from their alms purses (lines 272–6). moreover, as they do this, a girl who had shortened her skirts sings songs about dressing: “.. . bele aeliz .. . biau se para, miex se vesti” (Fair aeliz .. . she adorned herself well, she dressed herself better, lines 300–20). changing clothes is shown as an idyllic court pastime both literally and in song, something worthy of retaining the attention of a great emperor as well as the poet’s audience.

The best evidence that French people of the thirteenth century desired changes of clothing comes from sumptuary laws, promulgated by kings Philip iii and iv in 1279 and 1294, respectively. i have argued elsewhere that in contrast with the concern for styles and types of fabric seen in contemporary laws in mediterranean cities, the French laws were concerned with regulating how many changes of clothing an individual was allowed, as correlated to annual income and social rank.55 in 1279, Philip the Bold with his council of barons and prelates ordered “for the common good of the kingdom” that great lords could have no more than four robes, meaning full sets of clothing (mantle, surcot and cote) lined in vair (two-toned squirrel) fur, if they had less than seven thousand pounds in land rents a year, and no more than five changes if their revenues were higher.56 noble women with less than five thousand pounds a year, and daughters and wives of noble men with such income, were allowed four new sets of robes per year, five if their income was greater. squires could have only two new fur-lined ensembles per year if they or their lord possessed less than four thousand pounds a year; four, if they had more. married bourgeois women were allowed only one set of vair robes per year in addition to another set of clothing, which effectively proscribed new furs for the unmarried. in 1294, Philip the Fair changed the income threshold for having four new sets of clothing a year to six thousand pounds a year for high noblemen and their wives.57 Knights could give their companions no more than two new sets of clothing a year. Knights themselves could have no more than two, by purchase, gift, or any other manner, unless they had three thousand pounds a year or more, in which case they might have three. Prelates were allowed only two sets a year, and were allowed to give only one set to their companions, although they could give them two chappes (hoods). squires could have two new sets of clothing per year, valets one. ladies and chatelaines worth less than two thousand pounds a year were not allowed more than one new set of robes per year.

55 heller, “sumptuary legislation in Thirteenth-century France, languedoc and italy;” and “anxiety, hierarchy, and appearance in Thirteenth-century sumptuary laws and the romance of the rose.”

56 duplès-augier, “ordonnance somptuaire inédite de Philippe le hardi.”57 Jourdan, decrusy, and isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises.




This highly focused kind of legislative attention suggests an important degree of concern over the increasing desire on the part of French courtiers and town dwellers to obtain new clothing, whether by purchase or gift. The kings and their councils sought to control the expansion of wardrobes. Their motives are difficult to discern with certainty, but the legislation suggests an attempt to limit the expression of novelty and variety according to income and rank. novelty and variety are construed as privileges, which according to the statutes’ logic ought to be reserved for the wealthy and prominent, but privileges that many others equally coveted for themselves. The renewal of the law in 1294, with even more intricate limitations, suggests that the1279 efforts to restrain the acquisition of new clothes had not been entirely successful. There is a legal proverb that holds that every law is born old, implying that legislation is reactive rather than proactive or preventive. The laws and the texts both show that desire for new sets of clothes on a regular, yearly basis was present in thirteenth-century French culture.

Rejection of the old: how often to change clothes

if romance texts and sumptuary edicts convey an image of a culture where obtaining new things was considered pleasurable, enviable, and was indeed happening regularly on the economic level, satisfying criteria 2, 4 and 6 for the existence of a fashion system, there remains the question of the first criterion, in which the embracing of the new entails a rejection of the old. such rejections may be seen in the didactic Roman de la Rose, among other texts. a number of the figures exiled from the courtly garden of deduit (Pleasure) are depicted in terms of opposition to newness. The figure of avarice, notably, is described at length as one who refused to acknowledge the importance of wearing new clothes, obstinately preferring to wear things until they wore out. she personifies a perversely unfashionable parsimony.

ert ele mout povrement vestue.cote avoit viez et derompue,come s’el fust a chiens remese;povre estoit la cote et areseet plaine de viez paletiaus.delez li pendoit ses mantiausa une percheite greilleite,et une cote de bruneite.el mantle n’ot pas penne veire,ainz fu vil et de povre afeire,d’agniaus noirs, veluz et pesanz.Bien avoit sa robe .x. anz,mes avarice du vestirse veut mout a tart enhastir;


car sachiez que mout li pesastse cele robe point usast;car s’el fust usee et mauvaise,avarice eüst grant mesaisede robe nueve et grant diseteavant qu’ele eüst autre fete.58

she was dressed very poorly.her cote was old and torn,as if it had been left to the dogs;the cote was cheap and threadbareand covered in old rag patches.next to her hung her mantleon a skinny clothespole,and a cote of fine brunete wool.The mantle was not lined in vair pelts,it was a shoddy, cheap affair,lined in matted, heavy black lamb.she had had the robe for a good ten years,but regarding clothing, avariceis terribly loathe to hurry.Know that it would pain her greatlyif that outfit were to wear out;if it got worn out and shabby,avarice would endure great discomfortand great hardship over getting a new one,before she had another made.

avarice personifies unfashionable behavior by wearing her clothes out, rather than wearing new things regardless of the state of the old. The passage portrays ten years as too long to keep an outfit. avarice is ostracized from courtly society for her rejection of the new. The desire to hoard is contrary to the desire advocated by the fashion system, the drive to consume and keep money and goods in circulation. The evolution of the representation of vices related to the economy such as avarice will be further discussed in chapter 5.

one of the exempla used in sermons by Parisian preachers such as Jacques de vitry offers further evidence for how long was too long to wear a style or garment. a miserly knight swore at his servant for being slow in finding his cloak, asking “don’t you recognize it?” The servant retorted that although he could not find it, he had known it well for seven years. hearing this, the other knights at the banquet laughed and mocked the knight for his avarice.59 in this

58 de lorris and de meun, Roman de la Rose, lines 207–26.59 Jacques de vitry, The Exempla or Illustrative Stories from the Sermones Vulgares, ed.

by crane. crane notes that etienne de Bourbon used the same anecdote; and in a similar anecdote in the “speculum exemplorum,” the servant says the cloak was twenty years old.




case, seven years was presented as ridiculously long for a respectable knight to keep a garment.

Promoting the new, castigating the outdated

in the occitan romance Flamenca, which caroline Jewers argues should be read as an ironic parody of northern French manners and literary styles,60 the narrator contrasts the impeccable dress of Guillem, the perfect lover, with the old clothes and neglected appearance seen in archambault, the miserable, cuckolded husband. archambault is depicted as he dresses to take Flamenca to the baths. “Una samarra fera e trida/ vest ens archambautz, e pois guida/ e vai s’en als bains, totz descauz” (sir archambault put on a long simarre outer coat that was beastly and outmoded,61 then went out, leading her towards the baths, completely barefoot, without chausses, lines 6365–8). after archambault checks the baths and finds nothing arousing his jealous suspicion, Guillaume appears.

e non an gaire demoratqu’intret Guillems tot a celat,et ac una polpra vestidaab esteletas d’aur florida;et estet li tan ben e gentque nuilla re no i si desmen;cassas ac d’un vermeil samit.62

Guillem hardly waitedbefore entering secretly,and he was wearing a robe of purpledotted with little gold stars;and it fit him so well and elegantlythat nothing looked out of place;he had chausses of a red samite silk.

in this side-by-side comparison, Guillem reads like a fashion “do,” while archambault in his unkempt old clothes and bare skin represents the “don’t.” Guillem is shown throughout the work in colorful, unique fabrics. moreover, he appears in a different outfit every time. archambault, upon succumbing to jealousy, lets his once elegant appearance go to ruin, with his untrimmed beard, uncut and unwashed hair, long nails, bare feet, and “ferocious” old clothes (lines 1325–9, 1545–60, 3894–5). such depictions instruct men to seek new

60 Jewers, Chivalric Fiction and the History of the Novel.61 The meaning of “trida” is not clear here. it is close to “tric” or “triga,” which connote

lateness, hence my rendering of “outmoded.” according to levy triga can substitute for “tigra,” tiger, which connotes something more like savage, ferocious, undomesticated. levy, Petit dictionnaire provençal-français, s.v. “tric,” “triga.”



clothes and a stylish, up-to-date appearance to be desirable to women, as well as to maintain their reputations.

The idyllic forest scene in Guillaume de Dole discussed above, with nobles ladies and knights enjoying themselves in silks and unsewn sleeves, is set against the appearance of a group of hunters bearing home game for dinner, badly dressed (“mal atirié”) in ugly grayish cloaks “which were not new this year” (“qui ne furent noeves oan”), and old, reddened, bloodstained hose (lines 429–34). although the courtiers wish they had gone hunting too (lines 425–6), the narrator reserves his positive qualifiers for the well dressed. he implies that clothes older than a year could be used for the rough sport of hunting, but not for more refined court activities.

The description of Fortune in the Rose draws two clear social categories: those who dress elegantly and opulently, like Fortune when she is happy (lines 6088–114), and those who are wretched and poorly dressed, sartorial orphans (“orfeline de robe,” line 6124), like Fortune when she frowns (lines 6119–44). Burns has observed that reason, narrating the tale, warns that misguided lovers pursue the seductions of dazzling appearance only to be tricked and deceived.63 The narrator voices a critique of what sounds like a fashion system, requiring constant potentially ruinous expenditure on multiple rich robes with variety in their decorative edgings (“toute diverses couleurs,” line 6095) and varied cleverly dyed colors (“mout deguisee couleurs .. . selonc les herbes et les graines,” lines 6096–8). a cluster of elements of the fashion system are present here: novelty, criticism, and the strategic staging of attractiveness through the choice of unique details like trim and color.

Words for novelty

as with the study of cointerie which follows in chapter 4, discovering the lexicon conveying appreciation for fashionable values is important to the process of understanding whether, and then how, a fashion system is operating in a given culture following criterion 7. as the reader may have observed from some of the passages cited above, “new” (nuef, noeve, novele, etc.) is a key word signaling desire for novelty in thirteenth-century French, especially when used in contexts of admiration and unique styling. Frais or fresche (fresh) is another.

in the Roman de la Rose, leesce (Joy) wears a chapel, a head circlet, which the poet extols for its newness and fine manufacture.

s’ot un chapel d’orfrois tot nuef.Je, qu’en ai veü .xx. et nuef,a nul jor mes veü n’avoiechaspel si bien ovré de soie 64

63 Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, pp.20–1.64 de lorris and de meun, Roman de la Rose, lines 855–9.




she wore a brand new gold orphrey circlet.i, who have seen twenty-nine,have never in my life seena chaplet worked so well in silk

The figure representing Joy displays something new and unblemished, uninhibited by the accretions of time, analogous to how the poet says joy is uninhibited by hatreds (line 830). The qualifier tot emphasizes an object’s extreme newness (“brand new”), and is found quite commonly paired with words conveying novelty. leesce is represented as a figure who enjoys her clothing and appearance (line 862). Guillaume de lorris links joy and pleasure with the wearing of fine, new accessories in a manner suggestive of several criteria for a fashion system, where novel modish display is connected to self-confidence as well as attrac-tiveness to others. The rather weak rhyming of “new” with “twenty-nine” places emphasis both on the novelty of the chaplet, putting nuef in the position of prominence, and on the uniqueness of the item, exaggerating how it stood out from the many chaplets known to the narrator.

another term for newness is fresce, meaning “fresh” but also simply “new.” it is often used to refer to colors and dyes. largece (Generosity) wore a gown of saracen purple whose hue was fresh, indicating newness of fabrication: “largesce ot robe tote fresche/ d’une pourpre sarazinesche” (lines 1161–2). The newness of the robe no doubt suited the personification of generosity, who was always giving away her possessions and apparel and would regularly need new clothes in order to keep herself suitably adorned.

in another example, the sculptor Pygmalion dresses his carved woman in many fabrics, which the poet specifies as being of fine, new colors. The Pygmalion episode includes an almost hyperbolic quantity of new clothing.

Puis li revest en maintes guisesrobes fetes par grant mestrisesde blans dras de soëve laine,d’escallate, de tiretaine,de vert, de pers et de brunete,de couleur fresche, fine et nete .. .65

Then he dresses her in many styles,in robes made with great skillof white cloth of soft wool,of scarlet, of tiretaine,of green, of blue and of brunete,with fresh, fine, clear dyes

natural fibers and dyes lose their color more easily than synthetics, rendering the age of a garment or textile more obvious, something the modern reader

65 de lorris and de meun, Roman de la rose, lines 20907–12.


must keep in mind. intense, well-distributed colors indicate newness and quality, whereas fading and discoloration indicate age, wear, and cheap dyes or fabrics (as seen in the old “grayish” hunters’ cloaks in Guillaume de Dole, above).

Freshness is represented as highly desirable in twelfth- and thirteenth-century France.66 The god of love, amors, encourages lovers to keep themselves in new apparel, refreshing it regularly: “solers a laz et estivaus/ aies sovent frais et noviaus” (get fresh and new laced shoes and boots often, lines 2137–8). oiseuse wore a fresh new chaplet of roses, as would befit a woman of wealth and leisure who had the time and resources never to wear anything old: “Un chapel de roses tot frois/ ot desus le chapel d’orfrois” (she wore a completely fresh circlet of roses over the circlet of gold embroidery, lines 553–4). Both of these characters represent models of courtly conduct. The importance they place on new, unspoiled apparel suggests social pressure towards greater levels of consumption, particularly given the didactic tone of amors’ discourse. The outfit amadas dons for his triumphant post-tournament return to Ydoine is fresh and stylishly tailored: “il est vestus, comme envoisiés,/ d’un fres bliaut qui’st entailliés” (he is dressed, looking resplendent, in a brand new bliaut with slashings, lines 1623–4).

The term “fresh” was also used in occitan to express newness. in Flamenca Guillem gives his host a rich belt as a gift, whose newness is emphasized.

Guillems ac una gran correjaen la maleta tota frescaab fivella d’obra francescha;be i ac d’argen tro ad u marc,e c’om lo pezes neis ben larc,car bella fon rica et genta.67

Guillem had a great beltin his chest which was brand new,with a buckle of French craftsmanship;there must have been a mark of silver in itnot even by a generous weight estimate,for it was richly and elegantly made

The newness seems to increase the value of the gift. it appears advantageous to give new gifts when possible, increasing one’s reputation for generosity all the more effectively. several of Guillem’s gifts are described as new. For example, declaring his gratitude for good health and wealth, he promises the chaplain a new set of garments: “e vol que vos aias del mieu/ uns vestirs blans

66 cf. the description of the Trojans: “de fer fu coverz chasuns d’els,/ de dras de seie nués e freis” (each was fully armed in steel, draped in new, fresh silk), Baumgartner and vielliard, Le Roman de Troie de Benoît de Sainte-Maure, lines 9536–7. Briseida gives diomedes a sleeve of new, fresh siglaton, lines 15176–8. see also Guillaume de Dole, lines 1531, 1826.





totz nous e fres/ ab pena d’esquirols mores” (and i want you to have from my possessions a brand new outfit of white wool, lined in dark squirrel fur, lines 3280–2). Guillem also promises his hostess materials for a new outfit.

a ma hosta, na Bellapila,quar non teis ren, ni cos ni fila,et es fort pros et eissarnida,darai una polpr’enrodidaab bellas esteletas d’aur;a lonc tems i aura tesaurcar n’aura faitas vestimentaab penas vairas, bella e genta,que.l donarai bonas et bellas,totas fresquetas e novellas.68

To my hostess, lady Bellepile,since she’s not weaving, sewing or spinning,and who is so worthy and intelligent,i will give a piece of purple clothbordered with little gold embroidered stars;it will be a treasure for a long timefor she will make a garment of itand line it with beautiful, elegant miniver,which i will give her,fresh and brand new

This passage raises some questions regarding the connotations of newness. does this suggest that, contrary to the dictates of fashion, giving a brand new gift simply meant that it would be valuable for a longer period? does a promise that a gift will have lasting value suggest that novelty and ephemerality are not principal values, therefore that there is no fashion system? it is not clear. items of “timeless elegance” are sold alongside the fad items of the moment even today. a more costly and elite kind of consumption can resist the need for frequent disposal. Guillem’s insistenced that “it was a treasure to last a long time” suggests that a rich textile’s staying power could not be assumed, implying that many such gifts would lose their worth in a few years due to passing styles. Guillem’s references to time in his discussion of a gift’s value are unusual. such comments indicate the fascination that quality and uniqueness of manufacture held for certain poets and readers of the time.

later Guillem gives his hostess another gift of purple fabric to have a bliaut made, along with furs for lining it, which he says he received from the provost of airas.69 here is an interesting case of re-gifting; yet the furs are unused, so it cannot be called recycling. Guillem promises her that if his lovesickness does

68 huchet, Flamenca, lines 3403–12.69 airas has been translated “arras,” but rita lejeune argues that it should be aires-sur-

la-lys, an important town of Flanders from the twelfth into the fifteenth century, and that


not kill him, she will have a similar gift each year (lines 3480–96). he spins a fantasy in which generous bourgeois will be rewarded with new, rich clothing on an annual basis, thanks to a social superior’s remarkable generosity, promoting a dream of fashion for the wider population yet preserving the noble’s place as trendsetter.

Details: baubles and trinkets

The gift of a new belt might seem minor next to a full ensemble of new fur-lined robes, but both types of novelty are crucial to a fashion system. The most important signs of fashion may very well be the small personal purchases rather than whole new sets of clothing, as in the choice of details rather than in radical alterations in silhouette (criterion 5). many romance passages where new things are vaunted deal with the appeal of decorative baubles and accessories.

one of the attractions of conrad’s ideal court in Guillaume de dole is the regular distribution of new things, particularly to the young knights. When Guillaume arrives, a maiden distributes garlands of blue flowers to him and his companions; the chamberlain gives them each new white gloves and belts (lines 1544–7). Guillaume offers his hostess a brooch with thirteen pounds as a gift, and a girl who sang a “new song” received his belt with a silver buckle (lines 1833–45). When the lances are handed out at the tournament, each knight receives white gloves and a stylish new belt (“corroie fresche et novele,” lines 2468–9). lienors also distributes new gloves and embroidered belts to the knights who serve her, to accompany new robes of rich cloth (lines 4342–9).

Guillem gives Flamenca’s ladies small gifts of gratitude. The term used categorically for such trinkets here, “joias,” suggests the association between baubles and pleasure, attractiveness, and seduction, conforming to criterion 9.

Poissas lur donet per lausengacordas e frontals e frezells,noscas e fermals et anellse botonets plens de musquet,e d’autras joias qu’ieu no i metqu’eron bellas e covinens.70

Then as a sign of affection he gave themcorded belts and headbands and ribbons,necklaces and brooches and ringsand little balls full of muskand other baubles i won’t mentionwhich were beautiful and elegant.

this should be read for possible political resonances. lejeune, “le caractère ‘nordique’ de certains détails de Flamenca.”





in the Rose’s Pygmalion passage, young women are portrayed as being partial to new trinkets. Pygmalion brings his statue small gifts of “choses noveles,” the sort of thing he expects a young lady to enjoy.

et li porte fleurs noveletesdon ces jolives puceletesfont en printens leur chapelez,et pelotes et oiselez,et diverses choses novelesdelitables a damoiseles.71

and he brings her new little flowers,the kind with which gay young maidensmake their wreaths in the springtime,and balls and little birdsand various new thingspleasing to young ladies.

These are in addition to many other jewels, veils, purses, and hair ornaments which he had chosen for her (lines 20932–60). The linking of novelty and pleasure in his logic is a symptom of a fashion system’s influence on Pygmalion’s thinking.

Gifts of small adornments suggest the presence of fashion, first as consumable objects in themselves, and additionally as a way to win affection, to seduce, to give and gain pleasure. camille has analyzed some extant examples of the wide variety of luxury objects produced for such consumption in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: girdles, purses, rings, brooches, chaplets and collars, some clearly intended as love gifts and adorned with images evoking romance narratives and love play.72 he argues that these beautiful fantasy objects were constructed in part to obscure the crude realities of the medieval marriage market, in which women themselves were exchanged like commodities.

although men could be the recipients of love gifts, for instance in the passages from Amadas et Ydoine discussed above, in Guillaume de Dole,73 or in the episode of the lady of escalot in the prose Lancelot discussed by Burns,74 camille argues there was a stronger gendering of such accessories as gifts for women.75 associating women with love of small accessories does become a topos. For instance, a dit known as the “Blasme des Fames” (late thirteenth century) takes up the misogynist theme derived from Juvenal and ovid, condemning certain women for their efforts to drain men of all their

71 de lorris and de meun, Roman de la rose, lines 20973–8.72 camille, The Medieval Art of Love, pp.50–71.73 The evil seneschal is delighted to receive gifts from a lady he believes to be the

châtelaine of dijon, lines 4291–300.74 Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, pp.3–11. see also Frappier, La Mort le roi Artu,

p.27.75 camille, The Medieval Art of Love, p.57.


wealth in order to adorn themselves. some manuscripts of the poem enumerate the ways that such women spend their husband’s money:

Quant ele est richement peus,e de bele robe vestue,Que la aumonsniere de soiechapeaus orfroie laz e coroie,Fermauz d’argent e boen e leaus,e les verge e les aneaus,Trois ou quatre en chascune main,lors ne prise q’un poi le vilainQui gaigna a grant sueurl’avoir done ele est a enneur.76

When she is richly fedand dressed in a beautiful gown,with her embroidered silk almspurse, orphrey circlet, ribbons, and belt,fine shining brooches of silver,and rings and circles,three or four for each hand,then she cares almost nothing for the manwho by much sweat earnedthe wealth with which she honors herself.

This passage is reminiscent of the mal marié in the Romance of the Rose and other texts like it, which portray ambitious women married to common men (“vilain,” in this case) who use the display of material objects to improve their lot. The text testifies to the allure of decorative accessories, and the social urge to consume them as experienced by certain ranks of women.

The “Blasme des Fames” makes no mention of whole sets of robes or individual garments, which would require greater expenditure. sumptuary laws restricted such expenditures for the less wealthy ranks, as seen above. There is evidence here that the desires associated with fashionable consumption were affecting a broader section of the population than just the elite, adding support to the possibility that criterion 10 for a fashion system was in place. The poem demonstrates anxiety over the use of judicious consumption for the sake of social mobility, and the subsequent destabilization of the former perceived hierarchy.

in another dit called “The Ways of Women” (“la contenance des Fames,” late thirteenth or early fourteenth century), the narrator depicts women as constantly changing their minds – symptomatic of the fashion victim, as well as the semper mutabile topos.77 as they constantly change moods, women

76 Fiero, Pfeffer, and allain, Three Medieval Views of Women, appendix, p.144. on dating of the poem and the manuscript tradition, pp.12–16.

77 Fiero, Pfeffer, and allain, Three Medieval Views of Women, pp.86–104.




correspondingly change the veils, circlets, ribbons, and arrangements used in their hair and headdresses (lines 81, 115–25, 138–9, 155–7), among other items of their dress and appearance. of particular interest is the poet’s analysis of the anxiety he viewed women as investing into the uniqueness of their appear-ances and their jewelry: “orendroit sera enviouse/ de sa voisine qui aura/ Plus beaux jouyaux qu’elle n’aura (now she will be envious of her neighbor, who has more beautiful jewels than she does, lines 66–8).” note again that the word jouyaux evokes joy, connoting the pleasure associated with accessorizing. although it is nothing new to condemn women for the vice of envy (and less directly, vanity), the poet’s depiction of the feminine psychological concern with the uniqueness of their baubles suggests the fourth criterion for a fashion system, where satisfactory fashionable display is tied to emotional wellbeing.78

et moult se tendroit fole et nices’el n’est appareillee a droit.et s’el ne l’est tout orendroit,deffait et refait de rechief . . .moult li envie quant elle otQu’autre soit mieux appareillee.

she would consider herself a foolish idiotif she were not properly dressed.When she is not, right awayshe undresses and redoes it all again .. .it provokes her greatly when she seesThat another is better dressed than her.

The feminine dressing and undressing here described make clear that a certain breadth of wardrobe was accessible to enough women in the society that the poet could make such broad generalizations. he uses the term “fame” (woman) rather than one connoting noble status, such as dame or damoiselle, although he does depict this sort of woman as one who would have a chambermaid (line 64). The selection and display of multiple baubles is painted as a regular activity for women in general, without regard for specificities of status or rank.

Gifts of trinkets and baubles are of course not a radical innovation of the high French middle ages. ovid was a (somewhat sardonic) proponent of gift-giving, and many literary instances of twelfth- and thirteenth-century advice on giving are direct borrowings from him. straight from the Art of Love are passages in the Rose such as the god of love’s order to give trinkets to his beloved’s servant so that she will speak well of him (lines 2543–7, Ars

78 cf. lotario dei segni (Pope innocent iii), De Miseria condicionis humane, 16.29–38; here lines 134–7, 140–1.


Amatoria. ii.255–60),79 and ami’s advice to bribe guardians or gatekeepers (Ars. iii.651–8). however, the specific suggestions of wreaths of flowers, purses, hair ornaments or small jewels (Rose lines 7401–11; also 12396–400) are Jean de meun’s invention, based on real items of his own time. la vieille’s advice not to love poor men – even great poets not being worth more than a few drinks (Rose lines 13586–90) – dramatizes ovid’s lament that costly gifts are sought more than poets (Ars. ii.275–80). The French poets take the theme of gift-giving and the amplification of specific items considerably further than their roman model.

Flowers: cheap, fresh fashion

Flowers represent another significant form of fashionable novelty consumption in the thirteenth century, one that required less expenditure than robes, like the baubles just discussed. The god of love in the Roman de la Rose says that a lover can be cointe without spending lots of money by keeping himself in wreaths of flowers, which are inexpensive (lines 2145–52), if he can’t even afford small details like gloves, silk purses, and belts (lines 2143–4) let alone a constant supply of new shoes or well-tailored clothing. The fresh wreaths of flowers sported by oiseuse and Pygmalion’s statue have been mentioned above, like those in Guillaume de Dole. The dit called “le Bien des Fames” says that women inspire the composition of new poems, performance of music and songs, and the fabrication of floral chaplets by those who love them (lines 71–4).80 Floral wreaths of this kind are common in romances from the thirteenth century and later. it would be easy to mistake them for a mere poetic convention, especially given the symbolic implications of wearing and exchanging floral chaplets as love tokens in works with floral titles like the Roman de la Violette or the two romances called the Roman de la Rose. however, floral hats were an economic and social reality, in France and across europe.81 The Livre des Métiers of Étienne Boileau (1268) shows that the makers of floral hats (chape-liers de fleurs) were an established guild in Paris by the later part of saint louis’ reign. They were allowed considerable rights and tax exemption because their trade was associated with the higher echelons of society (“leur métier est franc et . . . est établi pour servir les gentilshommes”).82 note that the statutes indicate service to “gentlemen,” so the floral trade should not be considered

79 in Ars Amatoria i. 351–74, ovid tells lovers to sway the maid with promises rather than gifts in order to gain access to the attentions of her mistress and to have the maid speak well of him. in this passage there is no mention of gifts for the maid. Goold and mozley, Ovid, The Art of Love and Other Poems.

80 Fiero, Pfeffer, and allain, Three Medieval Views of Women, p.110.81 camille, The Medieval Art of Love, pp.54–6; innes and Perry, Medieval Flowers,

p.43.82 Étienne Boileau, Le livre des métiers, pp.198–9.




something entirely dedicated to women’s consumption. alice Planche has studied the vogue for floral hats in romances and other texts, which stayed strong into the fifteenth century and beyond.83

Floral chaplets or garlands were an object of courtly fashion that Guillaume de lorris used thematically in constructing allegories. The god of love, cointe beyond mortal ken, wore not just a wreath but an entire robe entirely made of fresh flowers (lines 874–94). his chapel de roses was so attractive and natural that it was completely covered with birds (lines 895–901). This passage suggests how fresh flowers were coveted as a fashion item. amors recommends that lovers wear them, and then with his immortal powers, he himself is able to wear them to the ultimate degree.

There is a complicated layering of symbolism in the use of floral wreaths in the Roman de la Rose. deduit wore a wreath made for him by his love, leesce: “Par druerie et par solaz/ li ot s’amie fet chapel/ de roses, qui mout li sist bel” (as a sign of true love and pleasure his lover had made him a chaplet of roses, which suited him very well, lines 826–8). it is noteworthy that leesce is then described physically in terms of roses herself: “el resembloit rose novele/ de la color sus la char tendre,/ que l’en li peüst tote fendre/ a une petitete ronce” (she resembled a new rose in the blush on her tender flesh, which could have been torn on a tiny little thorn, lines 838–41). The wreath she makes becomes a symbol of the gift of her body, which she offers her lover. When the narrator encounters the rose garden where he will find the rose of his desire, he observes that the roses were so fine and pleasing that any man who could pick one should cherish it deeply, and that he would have loved nothing so much as to make a chaplet out of them (lines 1649–52). The god of love recommends that lovers be cointe: one sure way to do that was to wear fresh wreaths of roses. The lover’s innuendo transforms this tool for gaining women’s attention and admiration into a mark of his sexual prowess. he dreams of wearing symbols of all the young women he had “deflowered.” This associ-ation of flowers as symbols of love or sexuality is reinforced by amors’ robe, composed of every variety of flower in the world, hence every sort of love imaginable. The gift of a chapel de roses to Bel acueil (Fair Welcome), offered by courtoisie (courtliness), largesse (Generosity), and Faux semblant (False appearance) through the intermediary of la vieille (the old Woman), is an offensive strategy taken by love’s barony on the lover’s behalf (lines 12351–711). When Bel acueil finally accepts it, it inspires la vieille’s speech introducing him/her to “the bath in which venus makes all women bathe” (lines 12721–2), the initiation into feminine desire and the ways of social sexual (and economic) relations. The gift of a wreath of roses was laden with significance in the context of wooing, as camille has argued.84 Bel acueil’s ambiguous gender – the figure is grammatically masculine, but represents the receptive

83 Planche, “la Parure du chef.”84 camille, The Medieval Art of Love, p.53.


aspects of the feminine rose – effectively reflects the receptivity of both men and women to fashion’s trappings.

The chaplet of roses was an available poetic symbol because it was present materially in the society. Guillaume de lorris plays on that symbolism: he does not invent either the theme or the vogue for floral ornaments. The making of floral wreaths was an organized industry in Paris. This is clear, moreover, as Jean de meun often treats wreaths of roses more prosaically, simply as coveted fashion items. The mal marié includes wreaths of flowers in his list of things that would not make women look more beautiful “if men had the eyes of a lynx,” that is, if men could see past fashionable artifices. neither furred mantles, nor surcoats, coteles, veils or wimples nor jewels, “ne por chapiaus de fleurs noveles,/ ne leur semblassent estre beles” (nor wreaths of new flowers would make them seem beautiful to them, lines 8911–12). his denial implies that most people believed that wreaths of new flowers did in fact enhance attraction. Pygmalion seems to have thought so. la vieille’s flattery of Bel acueil, her claim that she never saw a wreath look so well on anyone, certainly contributes to the gift’s acceptance (lines 12700–5).

Floral wreaths constitute an important preliminary kind of fashion in the sense that they are ephemeral and disposable. in a time when robes and fine jewels were a great expenditure, floral ornaments were a kind of affordable costume jewelry. The technology of fabric manufacture was developing steadily at this time, trade was expanding, there seems to have been demand for more changes of clothes and new clothes whenever they could be attained. nonetheless, demand precedes supply. Flowers were cheap and readily available, as the god of love points out. They could easily be arranged in different styles, satisfying the desire for originality. The word “new” is constantly associated with them. The ephemerality that lends itself to their fashionability also makes them an appealing symbol of the temporality of young love. it helps translate the ovidian “carpe diem” imperative to women to grant their lovers’ wishes before their beauty fades and the chances for love are gone.85 Fashions are dependent on words and representations, just as successful metaphors draw on familiar images. The symbolic use of the floral chaplet in the Roman de la Rose does not diminish the likelihood that floral wreaths were an item of fashionable consumption. on the contrary, the fascination with discourses of appearance and cointerie seen in the Rose suggests that the authors would have been likely to favor a trend item as an image to weave into their many-layered picture of love and society.

85 Ars Amatoria iii. 65–98. see also Flamenca, lines 6207–320, where Flamenca paraphrases this passage; esp. “car domna es plus leu anada/ que non es rosa ni rosada” (for woman fades sooner than rose or dew), lines 6289–90.




Distinctive personal choices

a fashion system encourages the creation of multiple models for consumption and allows the possibility for personal expression as individuals may choose between multiple options. in this chapter, some signs of unique personal choices in medieval French literature have been discussed, including the cointe and original chaplet worn by oiseuse (lines 549), the body-conscious tailoring seen on deduit (lines 821–3), Franchise (lines 1208–21), and on the sewn sleeves of several figures, as well as the right to self-expression that the mal marié resents his wife having. The following section will examine ways that unique or original clothing and accessory choices were presented as reflecting favorably upon the wearer.

in Flamenca, the narrator lingers extensively on the male protagonist Guillem’s appearance and personal taste on several occasions. one such moment, when he stands at his window in half-undress and stares out at Flamenca’s tower, was discussed in the introduction. another occurs at the moment of his first private meeting with Flamenca, at the baths. it is worth quoting the entire passage to give a sense of the breadth of detail given.

el man portet una candella;camis’e bragas ac de telade rens, ben faita e sotile per corduras e per fil;blisaut portet de cisclatonben fait e fronzit per razone tiran per lai on si ten;et estet li mout avinenli corregeta don s’estrein,tro al som del bliaut atein.caussas hac de pali am florsobradas de mantas colors;tan ben e tan gen si causseronque disseras c’ab el nasqueron.Un capell lini, ben cosut,ab seda e moscat menutac en son cap, non per celarla corona, mais per gararsos pels de la cauz qu’es el trauc.Fin’amors l’a donat un paucde son tenc, mas non l’estet mal:tam be.s [es] ab lo naturalques assas plus belz ne semblet.86

in his hand he carried a candlestick;his chemise and drawers were made of cloth



from reims, well-made and fineboth in their seams and for their thread;he wore a well-made siglaton silk bliaut,which was cleverly pleatedand clung where it was seamed.and looking very elegant on him wasthe belt with which he cinched his waist,it hung down to the hem of his bliaut.his leggings were of silk with flowersembroidered in many colors;they fitted him so well and so noblythat you would say they were born on him.a linen cap, well-sewn,detailed with silk and fleckshe wore on his head, not to hidehis tonsure but to protecthis hair from the chalk in the passage.True love gave him a pallor,but it did not look bad on him:it went so well with his natural lookthat he seemed all the more handsome.

The first of the noteworthy example of Guillem’s distinction in this passage is the candlestick he carries. candles have their utility in underground passages, undeniably, but they were also luxury possessions.87 his possession of a luxury light source announces his status. moreover, it serves to illuminate his appearance at the important moment when he presents himself to Flamenca, who is not willing to undress for him sight unseen or without an interview (lines 5803–8). The narrator takes pains to show that Guillem stages himself carefully for this meeting. This is a demonstration of savoir faire, a performance of the hero’s identity as ideal lover. There is implicit evidence in this description of desire to impress by means of appearance, desire to be a nonpareil.

Guillem models many items that reveal the uniquely well-built aspects of his body. The bliaut is one such item, sewn tightly at the sides and pleated to have fullness and display copious fabric use around the hips.88 his leggings

87 Favier, De l’or et des épices: Naissance de l’homme d’affaires au Moyen Age, pp.317–43. Wax candles are prohibited to the bourgeoisie in item 13 of Philip iv’s 1294 sumptuary law.

88 The use of the term bliaut is itself interesting. it may be a deliberate archaicism. costume historians generally agree that the term as well as the pleated style passed from usage by the early thirteenth century, harris, “estroite vestu et menu cosu,” p.182. it reappeared in the early fourteenth century, but designated a new style, enlart, Manuel d’archéologie française, vol.3: Le costume, p.38. The term is uncommon in the south. This may accord with what seems to be a calculated back-dating on the part of the author, who is believed to have composed the text in the last third of the thirteenth century but who, with his scrupulous use of the liturgical calendar, sets the romance in 1223 or 1234. huchet, Flamenca, pp.9–13; lejeune, “le calendrier du roman de Flamenca.”




(caussas) are another noteworthy item, molding perfectly to his limbs. This is the second instance where he is shown as having impeccably built-to-fit chausses. When he first arrived in Bourbon, the narrator said of him that he would not wear anything but the finest form-fitting leggings, “caussas de saia non caussera/ si ben hom tant non la(s) tirera” (he would not wear chausses of silk unless no one could pull them off, lines 2202–3). Whereas loose clothing may be worn be people of different sizes and easily exchanged through the used-clothing system, highly tailored garments only fit the person for whom they were made. shapeless clothing has the effect of normalizing bodies, even to the point of creating a kind of anonymity, a social camouflage. in contrast, clothing tailored to an individual’s every curve advertises unique identity. it reinforces the notion that some bodies – and the minds determining how to clothe them – are distinctly superior.

The narrator of Flamenca presents a fantasy of conspicuous consumption.89 Guillem’s dressing choices go beyond furnishing a little color for the romance. They establish his worth as a romantic hero. They also have a pleasure function in the text, supplying readers with a kind of imaginary currency with which to clothe themselves in their imaginations. Guillem’s power to make tasteful, attractive dressing choices is an ideal towards which the reader may aspire. The fact that he is shown as distinctive in his dressing indicates that perfectly fitting tight pants were not what one would find on everyone in the streets or court of the rouergue, nevers, or Bourbon in the 1270s.90 rather, it shows that both author and his imagined audience were interested in dreaming about fashionable consumption.

Made to measure

significant attention is paid to the high quality of the seams on all Guillem’s garments, from his undergarments to his bliaut to his hat to his form-fitting chausses. readers living in the era of mechanized industrial stitching may take seams for granted, but achieving uniformity in hand stitching demands practice, care, and time. making hand stitches lie smooth and flat is also a challenge, requiring the needleworker to maintain overall control of the whole drape of the garment while manipulating the needle and thread. Good stitching is the mark of the consumer who can afford it, and with the discernment to distinguish the

89 Guillem’s leggings would fit Thorstein veblen’s requirement that fashion and conspicuous consumption demonstrate enforced leisure and “incapacitate” the wearer for “all useful exertion.” his comments arose in a discussion of his condemnation of “our tenacious attachment to the skirt” because “it is expensive and hampers the wearer at every turn,” which would apply to Guillem’s voluminous bliaut as well, despite veblen’s claim that women’s dress “goes even farther than that of men in the way of demonstrating the wearer’s abstinence from productive employment.” veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class, p.121.

90 Bourbon and nevers are the settings of the romance, which scholars have conjectured was composed in the rouergue area. see huchet, Flamenca, p.13.


good work from the mediocre. it is a sign of someone who cares enough to spend the time to seek out the best. The Paris métier statutes uphold the impor-tance of good stitching for professions such as the chauciers and embroiderers, requiring double thread and small stitches (“petiz poins souffisant”).91

The passage’s emphasis on Guillem’s choice of specific, high-quality fabrics further underscores his distinction. his undergarments were made of a “muslin” from reims; his bliaut was of eastern siglaton silk;92 his chausses were silk embroidered with flowers, a doubly rich choice, showing taste both in fabric and in decoration; even his cap was fine linen, rather than more common hemp, and was carefully textured in silk. as will be discussed in chapter 6, fine new garments were not bought ready-to-wear but required a complex process of choosing fabrics from a draper or mercer, then notions and trim, and having them cut by a tailor and sewn by his assistants or stitchers (couturiers) or a seamstress in the household.93 Fabric selection was an area where personal taste could be exercised. it is emphasized that Guillem’s invisible underwear was of a specific kind of fabric: “toile de reims.” The addition of a specific place name adds to the prestige of a textile or other object. specificity increases fashionable value by creating categories of distinction. it was not simply toile, ordinary plain weave; it was woven in a place worth mentioning. it was fabric that had made a journey in order to enter the hands of a knight from nevers currently residing in Bourbon. The rhetoric of a fashion system requires that choices be made conspicuous (criterion 6). specifics about fabric, weave, dye, and provenance all provide a lexicon for advertising evidence of choice.

it is interesting that the description begins not with what would be most visible, but with Guillem’s underwear (“camis’e bragas”), which would have been almost entirely concealed by the other garments described. The chemise and braies were generally not a publicly visible part of an ensemble before the fifteenth century.94 describing them shows attention to detail, particularly intimate details, since Guillem hopes Flamenca will see his fine undergarments when she commits to the liaison they have arranged. This passage represents the second glimpse of his undergarments in the text. he was shown in an earlier passage standing at his window staring towards her tower in a state of undress: “em braias fon et en camisa” (he was in braies and a chemise, line 2191), with a mantle draped over his shoulders. nudity was rarely represented in this period, and rarely favorably. showing a character in the relative undress of the chemise seems to have been one of the more titillating poses an author could choose

91 Boileau, Le livre des métiers, p.114, art. 3; lespinasse and Bonnardot, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris XIVe-XVIIIe siècle, vol.2, p.168, art. 8.

92 on siglaton” see michel, Recherches sur le commerce, la fabrication, et l’usage des étoffes, vol.1, pp.220–36. it was a high-quality silk, a little heavier than cendal, used more as an outer fabric than a lining. The word is derived directly from the arabic siklatun, denoting the choice silk of Baghdad manufacture, serjeant, Islamic Textiles, pp.29, 202.

93 mane and Piponnier, Dress in the Middle Ages, pp.27–32.94 Burns, “ladies don’t Wear Braies,” p.66.




for a character. Women in bed or making love in romances were often said to be “naked in a chemise.” 95 régnier-Bohler has argued that in the romance tradition, masculine nudity is less charged with desire than feminine nudity. Given the particularly well-developed sensuality of Flamenca, however, the unusual glimpses of Guillem’s undergarments are probably intended to heighten the atmosphere of seduction. They are suggestive of what he will be like as a lover, following the principle that fashionable consumption heightens attractiveness (criterion 9). in short, Guillem’s underclothes show that if he were peeled like an onion, each layer removed would only reveal another level of good taste. he was seductive to the core.

The passage as a whole suggests that a display of personal style and good taste were considered to be of the first order of necessity for the successful fin’amant, a hypothesis confirmed by Flamenca’s reaction. she says to Guillaume,

Bel[s] segner, mais dieus m’a cobitqu’ieu si’ab vos, ja non diresquan de mi vos departiresque perdas ren per mon autrei,quar tam bell e tan gent vos vei,e tan cortes e tan adregque per fin’amor et per dregaves mon cor lonc tems avut,e ve.us lo cors aissi vengutper vostre plazer autrejar.96

handsome lord, since God grantedthat i be with you, you may never say,when you take leave of me,that you have lost anything by my consent,for i find you so handsome and so elegantand so courtly and so refinedthat by True love and by rightyou have had my heart for a long time,and here is my body which has come hereto grant you your pleasure.

she consents to trust him with her body based on his handsome, elegant, noble appearance. This romance demonstrates cointerie’s high potential for soliciting positive reinforcement (see chapter 4). The young man who stages himself as

95 To give one example, in a dream Flamenca offers herself to Guillem saying “Bel[s] segner,/ ve.us m’aici ben a vostra guisa/ tota nudeta en camisa” (handsome lord, here i am at your bidding, naked in my chemise, lines 6128–30). see also mane and Piponnier, Dress in the Middle Ages, pp.99–102; régnier-Bohler, “imagining the self: exploring literature,” pp.367–73; idem, “le corps mis à nu.”



a nobleman of impeccable style and taste is promised a great reward: love and sexual gratification from the most beautiful of women. Whether women regularly behaved this way is less important than the existence of discourses promoting an ideology of socially advantageous care for personal appearance. There is certainly a discourse of distinction present in whatever occitan court milieu produced this extraordinary manuscript. men were encouraged to fantasize about the positive effects of fashionable appearance.

as a parody of French literary (and, it could be argued, fashionable) conven-tions, Flamenca represents an apotheosis, a non plus ultra of vestimentary scenes occurring regularly in its old French precursors. For instance, amadas’s valet dressed him in distinctive items whose careful, individual tailoring is emphasized:

Garinés l’a mult bien cauciéd’unes cauces bien decaupees,de noir et de vermel bendees,mult bien seantes a son voel;si ot lasnieres ou braioel,Qui n’estoit pas povre ne vis . . .97

Garinet dressed him very wellin well tailored chaussestrimmed in black and red,with a very flattering fit, to his pleasure;and he had ties around his braieswhich were not at all cheap or vile . . .

cut-to-measure garments are viewed as similarly flattering in Enfances Vivien, for instance, where the title character is dressed sumptuously by his bourgeois adoptive father in imported silk from “outre mer” sewn with a design in gold thread, all made to measure (“a sa mesure bien taillie et ovré,” lines 868–74). These clothes brought out his innately noble looks: “molt par fu beaus, cointes et acesmés” (he looked thoroughly handsome, stylish and well-dressed, line 883).

Military uniqueness

The vernacular literature of the middle ages suggests that the battlefield and other chivalric arenas were places where men strove for distinction in dress, as well as in valiance. Yet soldiers are now often imagined as intrinsically uniformed men, no matter what the period (see, for example, the costuming in films such as First Knight or Lady Hawke, where the knights of the round Table wear matching costumes, or the lord’s henchmen sport black leather).

97 reinhard, Amadas et Ydoine, lines 3756–61.




however, the military uniform as we now conceive of it only emerged in the seventeenth century in europe.98 Until the arrival of reliable synthetic dyes around 1860, colors would vary from soldier to soldier, as did the cutting of uniforms, which was often done by private tailors.99 The history of the notion of the uniform and of combat apparel in a larger sense is worth interrogating with respect to fashion. it offers insight into the functioning of criterion 3, fashion’s tricky balancing of individual distinction and social conformity.

The uniform is often considered antithetical to fashion, as a strict enforcer of conformity. military and school uniforms have been promoted as a solution for preventing the distracting effects of fashion on minds that ought to be concentrating on greater things, eliminating some amount of preening and competition while effacing economic and status differences.100 Yet James laver theorized three competing principles governing fashion, military as well as civilian: hierarchy, utility, and seduction. The latter point suggests how uniforms have often been seen as enhancing to a man’s masculinity.101 even when color and style are prescribed in later centuries, good tailoring is held to make a man look distinguished in military wear.

To what degree did the notion of the “uniform” exist before the modern era? chronicles from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries begin to mention important occasions when the bourgeois of Paris were given new clothing cut from fine silk, and the whole city was hung with lengths of silk. in 1254, for the knighting of louis iX’s son Philip, the civic ministers were to receive “novis vestimentis . . . de pannis brodatis, sericis, cendalis, aut vestibus aliis, secundum praeceptum et dispositionem praepositi Parisius” (new garments made from embroidered fabrics, silks, cendals, or other garments, according to the regula-tions of the Prévôt of Paris). The miscellaneous list of fabrics does not suggest great concern for uniformity, although the concern for following the provost’s rules suggests the importance of following craft regulations and possibly setting up a visual hierarchy for the occasion. The emphasis is more on the newness of the garments, and the variety and splendor of the materials, suitable for a memorable ceremony. different terms were used a century later. in the time of King Jean ii (1350–64), at his entry into Paris, the members of each métier (craft guild) sported similar matching robes (“chascun mestier d’unes robes pareilles, et les bourgeois de la dicte ville d’unes autres robes pareilles”).102 such bourgeois “uniforms” began to develop a fixed code, designed for ceremonial use, distinct from daily wear.

98 Boucher, 20,000 Years of Fashion, p.286; Geoffrey Parker, The Military Revolution.99 Thomas s.abler, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress, pp.18–19. dronsfield and

edmonds, The Transition from Natural to Synthetic Dyes.100 Fussell, Uniforms; linda lumsden, “Uniforms and dress-code Policies.”101 abler, Hinterland Warriors and Military Dress, pp.13–17; laver, Modesty in dress,

p.72.102 Chronica Normaniae, sub anno 1254, ed. duchesne, Hist. Norm. script. antiqui,

p.1011; Chronique de Saint Denis, ed. Paulin Paris, 6. 2, cited in Fagniez, Etudes sur l’industrie et la classe industrielle à Paris, p.50.


at another level of society, the church attempted to impose a sort of uniform on its religious from late antiquity, requiring the professed to relinquish secular clothes and put on a modest appearance. The nuns and monks in a convent or monastery were to be provided with robes of undyed wools by the abbot. This by no means amounted to a uniform in the modern sense, however. Bonnie effros provides several examples of women who had taken the veil but were buried in rich secular clothing.103 The constant repetition of statutes regarding religious dress over the centuries suggests that the regulations were regularly ignored. moreover, the manufacture of identical clothing requires technology – control of fiber availability, dye lots and weaving; oversight of fitting, cutting, and stitching, as well as distribution – which would be hard to find outside of a fashion system. People outside a fashion system may wear clothing that looks relatively homogeneous, due to limited variety in materials and limited creativity in construction, but this is not the same as a uniform.104 sumptuary laws of the thirteenth century indicate that lords offered clothing to their companions, and one might imagine that this was often made from a large lot of fabric purchased from a single draper. Yet miniatures of the thirteenth and fourteenth century showing groups of people such as knights or students tend to paint them all in gowns of different colors, rather than in uniform hues. in Guillaume de Dole, the variety of costumes is what attracts the admiration of the poet in describing a grand procession.105 it might be argued that such depictions were merely decorative, but i think the images reflect a sense that two people rarely had identical robes. Jon coulson discusses how roman soldiers did not wear a uniform in the modern sense, but like the troops of other places and periods wore a variation of current styles, with armor adapted to climate, their adver-saries’ tactics, and supply.106 Byzantine military treatises suggest that there were colors for shields, pennons, and helmet crests associated with particular units, but few specific examples have been firmly identified.107 The idea of identifying units or even armies by color, symbol or style was probably several degrees removed from actual practice.

as martin ellehauge observes, “uniforms” as items of dress identifying a group evolved gradually and spontaneously among professions that required specific adaptations. armor is one of the best and earliest examples.108 Yet

103 effros, “appearance and ideology.”104 an exception which proves the rule may be found in branch iii of alexandre de Paris’

Roman d’Alexandre, where the queen candace gives alexander the extraordinary gift of “cent pailes de Biterne trestous d’une color,” a hundred lengths of Biterne silk all of the same color (line 4848). it can be inferred that one hundred lengths of identically colored cloth was the sort of luxury item only to be found at a distant and exotic eastern court, something intended for the highest royalty. alexandre de Paris, Le Roman d’Alexandre.

105 “.. . tant samit/ onques nuls emsamble ne vit,” alexandre de Paris, Le Roman d’Alexandre, lines 5365–6.

106 Jon coulson, “arms and armour of the late roman army.”107 John haldon, “some aspects of early Byzantine arms and armour,” p.79.108 martin ellehauge, “l’uniforme militaire et le costume civil.”




although fighting men across a particular culture would generally adopt a type of armor – chain mail, for example, or plate armor, or a helmet style – to an extent sufficient to make them recognizable as a group to outsiders, armor remained individualized up to the time of its obsolescence in the sixteenth century. as helmut nickel has discussed, there was a high degree of armorial exchange between cultures east and west, since armor was taken as booty by the victor on each battlefield. Knights from england to china readily adopted the effective styles and technologies of their adversaries, as well as designs that traveled peacefully along the caravan routes.109 armor, in short, being an object of display as well as utility, requiring significant capital expenditure but also offering a surface which could be personalized according to long held cultural traditions, should be expected to be at the forefront of fashionable development, rather than its antithesis, as uniforms have become in recent times.

The Bayeux Tapestry of the last quarter of the eleventh century shows knights in mail shirts without surcoats, generally without any kind of personalized distinction. Kelly de vries remarks that, “there seems to be no reason why someone fighting at hastings or elsewhere should desire to decorate their armor.” 110 as de vries’ comment shows, the surcoats that began to appear in the twelfth century were unnecessary and even inexplicable: such irrational decoration is typical of fashion’s logic. as nickel puts it, although crusaders perhaps used them initially as protection from the levantine sun, “surcoats soon became a fashion item.” 111 By the end of the thirteenth century, all noble families of notable rank had their own design. By michel Pastoureau’s definition, emblems became genuine armorial shields when the same individual employed them consistently and the composition obeyed fixed and recurrent conventions, which began to happen in the twelfth century.112 Fixed, inherited styles, for all that they are decorative, do not correspond to a fashion system’s criteria of constant novelty and rejection of the past, yet they can function as a detail of distinction within a context of conformity, a perfect example of the paradox of criterion 3. heraldry became a bastion of resistance to incursion upon the hierarchy, especially in england where only nobles were allowed crests. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries were a time when colors and emblems were still in play, offering possibilities as fashion statements for the knight hoping to look distinctive. The permanent, familial adoption of crests comes later. even when crests became fixed, where and how they were used as ornaments contains a distinctive element of personal choice, and could be trendsetting.

The romances of the mid-twelfth century feature many occasions when individual knights are admired for their unique emblems and colors, either alone or as whole armies of individuals. The term entreseignié appears in old

109 helmut nickel, “The mutual influence of europe and asia in the Field of arms and armour.”

110 Kelly de vries, Medieval Military Technology, p.74.111 nickel, “The mutual influence,” p.111.112 michel Pastoureau, Heraldry: An Introduction to a Noble Tradition, pp.14–19.


French, first attested in the Tristan of Béroul, to designate the practice of putting unique ornaments of distinction on chivalric gear. Tristan, dressed as a leper, meets King arthur and his men, each of them fully armed and each with a different emblem on their arms, wearing silks and bearing fresh new shields (lines 3680–3).113 he begs a different item of apparel from each knight, including arthur’s garters and mark’s hood. King arthur’s presence marks this kind of dressing as idealized rather than quotidian, but the scene marks a new form of knightly desire for distinction in all the elements of armor and chivalric apparel. in the Roman d’Eneas, the narrator surveying the Trojan and Greek armies admires the many beautiful arms with different motifs (“tante bele arme entreseigniee,” line 8320). camille’s three thousand knights each bear a different emblem: “n’i a celui n’ait a devise/ congnoissance de mainte guise” (not one of them did not have a personal emblem, distinct from the others, lines 6978–9). her personal guard of a hundred maidens are also each armed in individualized style: “bien armies de couvertures,/ tout de diverses armeüres” (they were well armed for protection, all with different arms, lines 7047–8). These exotic armies of long ago and far away reflect a twelfth-century taste for distinction, if not yet something fully realized in ordinary practice, whose logic is quite the opposite of that of the modern military uniform. Guilllaume Guiart’s Branche des royaux lignages (c.1306), which rhymes deeds of more recent and local kings from Philip augustus to Philip the Fair, associates multicolored armies with high style in a passage recounting events from 1241(“Tante cointise riche et bele / Que couleur diverse entreseigne”).114

although the chanson de geste model treats the armor of individual champions formulaically, even through clichéd formulas distinction was offered to individual warriors. For instance in the Song of Jerusalem, the great knights prepare for battle in typical fashion, each receiving a laisse of description including their armor.115 robert of Flanders wore chausses white as milk; Bohemond and Tancred of Puglia wore shining helmets and halberks; rotrou of Perche, steven of Blois and the count of vendôme had silver shields and shining golden armor; the Bishop of mautran wore his stole around his neck under his shield (laisses 219–23). or better, the former prisoners of the saracen corbaran, now freed, ride out in elegant gifts from their captor: harpin of Bourges with a shield emblazoned with a lion white as a dog rose and a red silk pennant; Baldwin of Beauvais in a helmet embellished with topaz from the river of Paradise; Jean d’alis in a gold romanian helmet, with a silk banner fringed in pure gold; the Bishop of Forois with lion-painted shield and almerian silk gonfalon (laisses 13–16).

113 a. J.Greimas, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française jusqu’au milieu du XIVe siècle, s.v. “entreseignier”. Béroul, “Tristan.”

114 Guillaume Guiart, Branche des royaux lignages, lines 4480–1.115 Thorp, La Chanson de Jérusalem. such scenes are missing in the more historically

accurate Chanson d’Antioche, which recounts how the crusaders were ragged, naked, sunburned and eating shoes and horses.




Poetic versions of war offered the image of chances for lesser men to attain such exotic trappings as well. in the Roman de Troie, the argonauts disembark on the beach at colchas, and change out of their sailing clothes:

vestirent lur cors gentement.riche furent li garnementde dras de seie a or brusdez,de gris e d’ermine forrez;li plus povres ot vesteüreriche, bien faite a sa mesure.116

They dress their bodies nobly.The garments were richof silk stuff embroidered in gold,lined with miniver and ermine.The poorest had an outfit that wasopulent and tailored to fit well.

in this description of rich, carefully tailored clothing made available even to the poorest adventurer, the narrator appeals to the fantasy of a broader twelfth-century French audience, desirous of that distant world where even minor knights without baronial fortunes might wear well-cut eastern silk, opening up possibilities of expression for a broader number of men (criterion 10).

Jason’s armor is described one piece at a time, from the toes on up, with a vocabulary extolling its incomparable distinction. This description serves as a condensed and amplified example of the lexicon frequently used in presenting knights before battle. First his “genoillieres” (knee plates): “ainc el siecle n’ot fait si chieres” (never had such precious been made in all the world, line 1816). his gold spurs were sculpted in the style of solomon (line 1818), whose name was regularly invoked to designate the finest gold work. his mail shirt or halberk was made to his measurements, never had a better one been forged (lines 1820–1). his shining, tight fitting helmet was so well forged it could not be pierced (lines 1824–6). The admiration for good fit has been discussed above. The nose-guard was of onyx, “it would be folly to search for a better or more beautiful one” (lines 1830–2). his sword was more valuable and powerful than any other (lines 1833–5). The exotic elephant skin used on his shield should speak for itself, not to mention the boss of spanish gold and the gold orphrey ornamenting the edges (lines 1837–40). everything the ideal warrior Jason puts on is unique, exquisitely made from the choicest materials, reflecting his status as hero, but also the sense that imitable greatness should be associated with inimitable taste. regardless of whether Jason’s armor was based on twelfth-century reality, its originality was held up as a model, and serves to illustrate the incursions of the mentalities described in criteria 3, 4 and 5.

116 de aainte-maure, Le Roman de Troie, lines 1141–6.


The rhetoric of “indescribable” distinction

does description of uniqueness arises out of a value placed on distinction, or simply out of clichéd conventions of rhetoric? michael roberts has shown that the latin literature of late antiquity featured a “jeweled style” which lavished description on exotic jewels and their settings in clothing, arms, and any other circumscribed surface. But this literature of late antiquity tends to emphasize geometric arrangements, glitter and colors, rather than novelty or uniqueness as seen in the example from Benoît.117 one might wonder, for example, about richece’s robe in the Roman de la Rose, shown as unmatched for its beauty, richness, and lively design:

richece ot d’une porpre robe,nu tenez ore pas a lobe,que je vos di bien et afichequ’il n’ot si bele ne si richeel monde, ne si envoisie.118

richece had a robe from a purple stuff,– don’t take this as mere flattery –i tell you truly and i affirm thatthere was no other so beautiful or so richin the world, nor one so stylish.

This passage, like many passages showing uniqueness, employs something related to what e.r.curtius called the “inexpressibility topos,” a descriptive flourish dating from ancient times, seen often in Greek and roman panegyrics, later used in saints’ lives and medieval latin poetry. These passages also have something of the “outdoing” topos, in that Jason and richece’s apparel implicitly outdoes that of anyone else.119 however, curtius observed “outdoing” in panegyrics where the object of flattery outdoes the gods, when a poet surpasses his predecessors, or in descriptions of heroes’ strength, courage, wisdom, or similar qualities. edmond Faral found that it is only in the twelfth century that description becomes the supreme object of poetry. it is a new fashion (“mode nouvelle”) in literature, first formulated in the rhetorical theory of matthew of vendôme.120 We return again to the point that fashion does not exist without words, criterion 7. They create, perpetuate and strike down new styles, even as they can be consumed as fashion items themselves.

read in the allegorical or narrative context, many instances where laudatory emphasis is placed on an object’s or a garment’s originality become part of a complex commentary on social mores. The twelfth-century French account of

117 michael roberts, The Jeweled Style, pp.111–18 and passim.118 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 1051–5.119 curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, pp.159–63.120 edmond Faral, Les arts poétiques du XIIe et du XIIIe siècles, p.76.




Jason’s adventure at the court of medea has resonances of the adventures of contemporary merchants and crusaders in the levant. Jason may be draped in clichés, but the author sensed that his audience would listen attentively to thirty verses amplifying the uniqueness of the hero’s attire. The robe of richece, who signifies wealth, power and splendor in a way that is difficult to fully translate, speaks to how fine dye, weave, and cut were desirable and could make those with money magnets for those seeking influence as well as luxury. The robe is bought with power, illustrates power, enhances power, and proximity to it confers power.

not all the courtly figures of the Rose’s carole were described as having “indescribably unique” apparel. When it is mentioned, it serves as a form of distinction between the figures in that micro-society’s hierarchy of courtly values. oiseuse (leisure or idleness) had unique hair accessories. deduit (Pleasure) was unrivaled among young men for his beauty and agility (lines 800–1, 813–14). leesce (Joy) had a chaplet finer than any other the narrator had seen worked in silk (lines 857–8). The gown, belt, and gold circlet of richece were all special. venus’ robe and accessories were also indescribable, due to space limitations, according to the narrator (lines 3414–18). in contrast, Biauté (Beauty), largece (Generosity), cortoisie (courtliness), and Jonece (Youth) had no items categorized as unique or indescribable. The robe of Franchise (Generosity of spirit or openness) was cut to fit her perfectly, but this did not make its appeal inexpressible. only the figures representing fashion-related values – such as wealth to consume, power gained through appearance, and pleasure and seductiveness – are described as being fashionably distinctive, using the so-called “inexpressibility topos.” richece and oiseuse (line 582) were both associated in the poem with wealth, power, and thereby attraction. Burns has emphasized how oiseuse “fashions herself” from the clothing and accessories which give her substance, sculpting an image both attractive to others and pleasing to herself.121 deduit was associated with wealth and power as well, being proprietor of the garden; leesce, his amie, would likewise be, by association. Fashion and consumption are associated in the poem with the leisure to indulge pleasures and to pay attention to seductive appearance (criterion 9), as is clear in both the narrator’s comments and oiseuse’s words about herself.

il paroit bien a son atorqu’ele estoit poi enbesoignie.Quant ele s’estoit bien pignieet bien paree et atornee,ele avoit feste sa jornee.

rice fame sui et poissanz,s’ai d’une chose mout bon tens

121 Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, pp.78–9.


que a nule rien je n’entensqu’a moi jouer et solacieret a moi pigner et trecier . . .122

it seemed clear from her appearancethat she was hardly needy.When she had arranged her hair well,dressed and adorned herself well,she was done with her day’s work.

i am a rich and powerful woman,and i especially enjoy one thing:there is nothing i like more thanplaying and indulging myselfby combing and braiding my hair.

leisure, social influence and wealth are shown as necessary elements in the enjoyment of fashions like personal grooming luxuries and inimitable appearance, as well as the positive sense of self they breed (criterion 4). elsewhere, leisure, social importance and wealth are demonstrated in the sponsorship of pleasurable entertainment such as those for which deduit (musicians, acrobats, dancers, lines 741–74) and leesce (singing, lines 727–40) were responsible. Beauty, generosity, courtesy, openness of spirit and youth are not necessary for being fashionable. such values have no need of improvement by fashionable consumption or display, being intrinsically attractive and rendering artifice superfluous.

in the allegorical context, description is not wasted on empty flourishes of merely rhetorical clichés. “indescribable” objects are part of a larger system expressing a notion of a hierarchy of virtues as well as an ideal social order. They provide insight into the conception of fashion Guillaume de lorris presents, which in turn provides insight into his idea of how society functions.

Establishment of permanent value for novelty

By the first half of the 1300s, that century when Western fashion was supposedly born, the dit called the “contenance des Fames” offers evidence that the desire for novelty was firmly in place. The poet, warning men not to waste their time and energy on women, complaining of how they all envy one another’s jewels and show off in horned headdresses and revealing clothing in the streets (lines 11–16, 66–8, 80–2), includes the complaint that “ce que fait l’une, ne fait l’autre;/ l’une veult d’un, l’autre veult d’autre” (What one does, another won’t do; if one wants something, the other wants something different, lines 85–6).

122 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 564–8, 582–6.




here, desire to differentiate oneself through consumption is portrayed as a norm, suggesting another example of criterion 3 at work.

Women were generally not in a position to write such poems about men, although the padding, corsetry and extravagant sleeves and hats worn by men in contemporary fourteenth-century miniatures suggest that there would have been fodder for it.123 Blanc suggests that while women retained their status as temptresses from the guilt of original sin and used dress as a powerful instrument of seduction in the masculine imagination of the time, men found in fashionable dress a means of affirming their authority. one short narrative reveals that masculine vanity may have matched or exceeded that attributed to women. The Lay del lecheor (lai of the libertine) recounts the custom of holding court at saint Pantelion in Bretagne, an annual occasion for dressing up (lines 10–12). one wise lady queried why knights like tournaments so much, and “Por qui s’atornent li danzel?/ Por qui se vestent de novel?” (For whom do the young men dress up? For whom do they get fashionable new clothes? lines 71–3). The wise women impute raw sexual motives to the fashionable young men, but their psychological analysis is not so much the point here as the evidence of men’s interest in fashion, and their use of it for seduction. novelty could seduce both genders, and both men and women attempted to use it in making themselves attractive.

The twelfth- and thirteenth-century examples studied in this chapter show both men and women getting new things and appreciating change. The anonymous Lai du Trot offers an example of the different treatment offered the genders. it tells of a strange vision encountered by a knight, lorois, of the round Table. after telling a little about his lands, the narrator lingers over how he was dressed that day: in a fine linen chemise “delie e sobtil” (delicate and finely crafted), with an admirable belt (“de pïors ai jo veü mainte./ il ne resam-bloit mie sot,” – i have seen many a worse one. he did not at all look a fool), a surcot of expensive sanguine scarlet wool lined in ermine, fretted laced shoes, and well-tailored chausses (lines 29–41). he encounters a group of ladies, each riding with a well-dressed knight (lines 113–26). although none of the ladies is singled out for individual description as lorois is, the narrator tells of how each looked distinctive through the choices in details: with belt or without, hair braided with ribbons or loose, chaplets of roses or eglantine (lines 84–5, 90–5). The male hero receives individual attention especially with regard to fabrics and tailoring, while the dream ladies are treated en masse, distinguishing themselves with slight variations in the details of their appearances. This type of gendering is by no means absolute or universal, but examples often follow this tendency.

Terms such as “new” and “fresh” signal certain elements of a lexicon of fashion, but was there a set of terms for expressing notions such as “stylish” or “fashionable” directly in the medieval vernacular? This is the focus of the next chapter.

123 Blanc, Parades et parures, pp.26, 79, 96, 191–214.


4

Words for Fashion

Ipsa res verba rapiunt.

Things seize words.

(cicero, De finibus 3.5; quoted in montaigne, Essais 1.26).

one important sign of a concept’s existence is the presence of words to describe it. This is particularly true of fashion, where real objects only gain their ephemeral “fashionable” value through a system of public appearance and evaluation, as described in criteria 3 and 7. This chapter takes a philological approach to the existence of a fledgling thirteenth-century fashion system. it looks at the evolution of a particular set of terms, specifically cointe and its derivatives, towards their close association with desirable appearance, studying examples of their usage in depth in a variety of old French and occitan texts. expressions of fashionability are not necessarily obvious in the medieval corpus. This fits Barthes’ observation that the designation à la mode is rarely expressed explicitly. rather, it remains implicit. an object is equated with “fashionable” merely by being the object of description.1 Cointe has often been translated with innocuous positive adjectives, which deserves reconsideration. it is precisely this sort of term that is most apt for the connoting the abstraction of fashionable value.

Cointerie in Old French and Old Occitan

The modern connotation of the english word “fashion” dates to the sixteenth century. The French word mode comes to indicate current dress style trends somewhat earlier, by 1482.2 does this mean that fashion only came to exist around the time of the renaissance? Words for fashion, according to fashion’s own ephemeral rules, should be expected to come in and out of fashion. Just as today new words are constantly invented to describe a person or object as stylish and desirable – witness “cuckoo,” “fetching,” “groovy,” “hip,” “awesome,”

1 Barthes, Système de la mode, pp.33–4.2 oed, s.v. “fashion.” rey, Dictionnaire historique, s.v. “mode,” p.1257.


“gnarly,” or “phat” in recent parlance, all borrowed from other registers, popular for a while, and then discarded as “dated” – so we should expect to see borrowing, ephemeral popularity and eventual disappearance in words describing fashion, wherever it exists.

The most salient old French word associated with concepts linked to fashion, stylishness, and elegance is coint or cointe in the adjectival form, cointerie or cointise as a substantive and se cointir, a verb. although they will not be addressed directly in this chapter, a number of other noteworthy terms are often seen in conjunction with cointe and notions of style, as the reader will notice in the passages for examination. Mignot, connoting graciousness and pleasing appearance, is often found associated with the concept of stylish appeal, as well as coquetterie.3 Envoisiez, derived from the latin for “vice” (vitium) but connoting joyfulness, brightness, and gay color,4 is also found in association with this lexical group.

little has been said about the ways these terms communicated fashionable values. Georges matoré does not mention cointerie or terms for appreciating trends in his work on medieval vocabulary, stating only that the idea of fashion is implicit before the sixteenth century when mode and distinguer appear, although the word elegant comes into more frequent use in the fifteenth century. he does, however, remark on the numerous terms designating different garments, styles, and textiles in use from the appearance of the vernacular.5 michael and ariane Batterberry observe that in the twelfth century the term “elegance .. . crept into French vocabulary to signify aristocratic appreciation of refinement and beauty,” suggested by the latin electio, referring to selec-tivity.6 elegance does not necessarily signify novel styles or an avant-garde appearance, however. douglas Kelly noted the importance of cointerie to Guillaume’s part of the Roman de la Rose, as well as the more derisive way that Jean de meun uses it in the second half, emphasizing that it was used to indicate stylized (as opposed to natural) beauty.7 While one can speak of “natural elegance,” any “naturalness” apparent in a modish style necessarily involves artifice.

3 Greimas, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, s.v. “mignon.”4 Greimas, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française., s.v. “envoisier.” it can mean

cheerful, joyous, gay; it can also refer to bright color, as in a garment or one’s complexion.

5 matoré, Le vocabulaire et la société médiévale, p.227.6 Batterberry and Batterberry, Fashion, p.86.7 With some of Jean’s misogynist characters it came to refer to the artifices employed

by “fallen” women to hide their defects in the ovidian manner. Kelly, Internal Difference and Meanings, p.118.



The cointerie of courtly grooming

in one of the most striking examples of the use of the word cointe, amors (the god of love) in Guillaume de lorris’ Roman de la Rose (c. 1225) employs the term numerous times in the context of emphasizing the importance of grooming and dressing for the lover, his new vassal:

mes qui d’amors se velt pener,il se doit cointement mener.hons qui porchace drueriene vaut neant sanz cointerie.cointerie n’est pas orguiauz.Qui est cointes, il en vaut miaus,por que il soit d’orgueil vuidiez,qu’il ne soit fox n’outrecuidez.moine toi bel, selonc ta rente,et de ta robe et de chaucemente:bele robe et bel garnementeamendent home durement .. .8

he who wishes to take up the concerns of lovemust conduct himself cointely.The man who seeks true loveis nothing without cointerie.Cointerie is not arrogance.Whoever is coint is worth moreprovided he is free of arrogance,insofar as he is neither crazy nor out of line.Keep yourself handsome, according to your income,and see to your clothing and shoes:handsome clothes and handsome accessoriesimprove a man a great deal . . .

This passage serves as a first example of how cointe and its derivatives were clearly linked both to appropriate social conduct, one of the general senses of fashion, and to dress and grooming on a level more specifically concerned with consumption. The god of love’s repeated emphasis on the word indicates the importance of cointerie for the success of the prospective courtly lover. The word represents a quality that was clearly perceptible, and which an observer could judge based on appearance. The lover must cultivate “it,” the mystique of what is often translated as “elegance.” elegance is a more neutral term than “fashion,” suggesting a classic timeless quality, something like savoir faire. But given its socially charged use in the context of such works as the Rose, i propose that cointe can often be translated more accurately with such terms as “fashionable” or “in style.” Barthes offers the distinction, derived from

8 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 2121–32.

Words For Fashion 97



hjelmslev, between “denotation,” where language represents a specific real-world object, and “connotation,” which functions as “metalanguage” to represent scientific and abstract concepts. metalanguages depend on whole systems of original signifiers as well as real objects.9 Cointe evolves from signifying the abstraction of a certain quality of knowledge to a more complex abstraction describing objects, and people possessing objects that demonstrate the superior knowledge that is fashion. in Barthes’ terminology it is a connotative term, then, rather than a denotative one, part of a metalanguage that links real objects in its valuation system.

Cointerie and orgueil

The god of love’s advice to the lover presents the kind of “do and don’t” discourse now commonly associated with fashion publishing. a careful distinction is made between true cointerie and behavior that exceeded the bounds of presumption, outrecuidance. Following the logic of theatricality, in a fashion system one may make a personal statement but should not violate the basic silhouette; one must not exaggerate excessively, as that would bring negative attention. These are precisely the rules of cointerie established by the god of love. Guillaume de lorris draws a fine line between the orguilleus, the man showing narcissistic, prideful, foolish, and sinful behavior, and the appropriate level of attention to one’s person. in so doing, he anticipates and attempts to thwart any criticism of his statement. such criticisms of attention to worldly appearance were abundant in this period, especially coming from the church.10 The poet’s careful definition of the quality of cointerie as antithetical to pride and exaggeration suggests that he expected the word to be charged with controversy and to face criticism, an important symptom of fashion’s presence in a culture.

When the god of love makes the lover his vassal with the ceremonial hand clasp and kiss, the lover begins to gain confidence because he feels cointe: “atant devins ses hom mains jointes,/ et sachiez que mout me fis cointes .. .” (Then i became his man with hands joined, and know that i felt very cointe . . ., lines 1953–5). here is testimony to fashion’s effect on the personal psyche, described in criterion 4. he is now a member of an elite social group, and will be able to act confidently because he has acquired the knowledge of the mandated conduct for gaining superior social approval (the codes for appropriate social imitation

9 Barthes, Mythologies, p.213; Barthes, Système de la mode, pp.38–40.10 For a summary of the range of contemporary views, Thomas aquinas, Summa

Theologica, ii.ii, question 169, articles 1–2, 2: 2253b–57a. maurice of sully’s commendation of John the Baptist constrasts the saint’s simple clothing with the “orgeilloses vesteures” of contemporary nobles, robson, Maurice of Sully, sermon 49, pp.172–3. see also Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, pp.37–41, 52–3, 201–2; Zink, La predication en langue romane, p.373.


discussed in criterion 3). Cointerie operates at the nexus of superior knowledge and style of display. Guillaume de lorris emphasizes that it should build self-esteem, but not inflated ego or anything similarly false.

Social intelligence

according to Godefroy, the term cointe appears in old French in the twelfth century.11 it initially meant “clever, wise, prudent,” connoting intelligent bearing. it seems have evolved from latin cognitum, originally signifying something along the lines of “knowing.” in the Roman de Troie (c. 1160–65), for instance, Paris is described as clever with a series of positive terms: “saives et artos, / veisiez, cointe, et scïentos” (wise and cunning, bright, cointe, and knowledgable, lines 4347–8).12 agamemnon is similarly presented, “saives iert, cointes et maqeinz (he was wise, cointe, and clever, line 5150),” in addition to being noble and glorious, but covetous. in both cases, their intelligence in matters of politics and tactics distinguishes them as heroic men, while their tendency towards ruse in the use of their intelligence is suggested as a negative shading of character. in Guillaume de Dole (c. 1209–28), in order to be allowed into the Parlement and palace, the heroine’s valet speaks cleverly and wisely, cointement, and succeeds in insinuating himself into the graces of those in power.13

in the Lai de Narcisse (c. 1155–70), the princess of Thebes, dané, apostrophizes love, complaining that it terrifies counts and kings, the most cointe members of society: “les plus cointes met en esfroi.” 14 in this context, the word seems to connote those in power with notable social training and experience. similarly, in Amadas et Ydoine (c. 1190–1220), when the eponymous heroine, daughter of the duke of Burgundy, faints, all ladies run to her aid, and even the most cointe among them lose their self-possession from fear for her.15 in Aliscans (c. 1187–89), the term seems to connote social prestige when aymeri swears that if any of his men touch his challenger rainouart, “n’i a si cointe,” (no matter how brave or worthy he might be), he will put his eyes out, (line 3188).

11 Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, s.v. “cointe,” “cointelet,” “cointement,” cointerel,” “cointir,” “cointise,” “cointisement,” “cointoiement,” “cointour.” although the word had passed from current French usage by the seventeenth century (coinci-dentally, the period when the Roman de la Rose fell into obscurity), it apparently lingered in the dialect of the vosges well into the nineteenth century.

12 The translators render these terms “sage et habile, avisé, aimable, plein de savoir.” although “amiable” is given by Godefroy as a possible translation for cointe, there is little in these contexts to suggest it as the best possible rendering.

13 renart, Le Roman de la rose ou de Guillaume de Dole.14 emmanuèle Baumgartner, Pyrame et Thisbé, Narcisse, Philomena, line 162.15 “cointise” is used a number of times in the work, seemingly connoting intelligence

of another person, lines 265, 1992.




in the late twelfth and early thirteenth century, cointe often had a more generic sense of goodness, attractiveness or amiability. it was often paired with another adjective connoting attractiveness and pleasing manner. For example, in Aucassin et Nicolette (c. 1175–1250), the heroine is “cointe et gaie.” 16 in La Châtelaine de Vergy (late thirteenth century), the knight who loved the châtelaine was “biaus et cointes.” 17

a similar lexeme occurs in old occitan texts, appearing at about the same time or somewhat earlier. initially, as in old French, it had an unspecific positive connotation. one of the songs attributed to the “earliest troubadour,” Guillem iX, speaks of a “dompna conja.”18 in conja it is not difficult to see the derivation of the word from latin cognita. The term would connote a lady desirable for her wisdom or knowledge. in his last known poem, the term is more closely linked to dress as the narrator looks back on his life and regrets the days when “mout ai estat cuendes e gais” (i was very cuende and gay), when he wore “vair e gris e sembeli” (vair, miniver, and sable furs).19 This usage with “gay,” as seen in aucassin et nicolette, is found many other poems and novas. For example, in a poem of the early thirteenth-century trobairitz the comtessa de dia, because the speaker’s beloved is “the most gay,” she is “coindet’e gaia.”20 in the mid- to later twelfth century, Bernart de ventadorn described his ideal lady as “Bell’e coind’ab cors covenen” (beauti-ful and coinda with a pleasing body).21 The last example approaches a closer association with appearance, although Bernart’s usage is still more vague in meaning than those of the god of love of Guillaume de lorris. it becomes apparent, in any case, that coinde, cuende, and coindeta in old occitan refer to charming, attractive qualities, often related to appearance and the body.

Appearance

The more specifically fashion-oriented sense shared with the French parure is clearer in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century texts. in the thirteenth-century occitan novas Lai on cobra, which imitates the allegorical encounter between the lover and the god of love of the Roman de la Rose, the god of love rides with a beautiful lady, miséricorde. sumptuous detail is lavished upon her

16 dufournet, Aucassin et Nicolette, chanté iii, line 8.17 rené stuip, La Châtelaine de Vergy, line 43.18 Guillem iX, “Farai chansoneta nueva,” line 19, P.c. 183.6, in Guiglielmo IX

d’Aquitania. The attribution of this song is disputed: some date it as roughly contemporary with Aucassin (last quarter of the twelfth or first half of the thirteenth century); if it is by Guillem iX, it would date to the latter part of his lifetime (1071–1126).

19 Guillem iX, “Farai un vers do sui dolenz,” lines 29 and 42, P.c. 183.10.20 comtessa de dia, “ab joi at ab joven m’apais,” line 4, P.c. 46.1, in de dia, “les

chansons de la comtesse Béatrice de dia.”21 Bernart de ventadour, “chantars no-m pot gaires valer,” line 41, P.c.70.15.


clothes, mount and appearance (lines 90–125), summed up in the phrase “car anc dios non formet sa par/ de gran beautat e de cunhtia” (For God never made her equal for great beauty and cunhtia, lines 112–13).22 “cunhtia” clearly refers to all her attractive outer trappings: fine jewels, shoes, palfrey, saddle, and layered robes of superior fabrics. Se coindejar in occitan signifies se parer, to adorn oneself, as it does in old French.23 in Flamenca, love approaches the hero and “si fes mout gaia et cointa” (makes herself look quite gay and cointe, line 1784), before proposing the adventure of finding Flamenca. The passage is striking as a possible allusion to the advice of the Rose’s god of love, recalling that figure’s strong association with care for appearance. in these usages the term connotes a quality that includes both attractive appearance and superior knowledge. success in love is promised in association with these qualities, which corresponds to fashion’s logic of seduction (criterion 9).

Savoir faire

a verb, acointier, was frequently used in texts treating courtly manners in this period. With the resonance of cointe but a sense more akin to the latin root cognitio, it indicated a particular kind of knowing. it was not just simple acquaintance or familiarity (expressed by old French cuenestre, connoistre) but a socially advantageous kind of acquaintance. it is used prominently in Jehan et Blonde to this effect, for instance. Jehan does extremely well as a serving squire for the count of oxford at the Parlement in london. it is his knowledge, his acointance, of how to behave and make a good impression that is the making of his fortune.

li quens menga avoec le roiet Jehans servi devant soi,Qui mout bel acointier se sot;ne se fist pas tenir pour sot.de servir devant grant segnourne trovast on servant millor,Plus courtois ne plus avenant.24

The count ate with the king,and Jehan served him,he knew how to make a good impression;he was not taken for an ignoramus.For service before a great lord

22 méjean-Thiolier andnotz-Grob, Nouvelles courtoises occitanes et françaises. méjean-Thiolier translates “cuhntia” as “charme.”

23 levy, Petit dictionnaire provençal-français, s.v. “coindejar,” “coindir.”24 Jehan et Blonde, lines 168–73.




you could not find a better servant,nor a more courteous or more pleasant one.

Acointier marks a sort of evolutionary middle ground between “knowing” and “fashion” by expressing a form of social distinction. associated with words connoting courtly success like avenant and courtois, referring generally to charm, wit, pleasant manners and appearance, acointier belongs to the courtly conditions breeding proto-fashion. in the sense of making social impressions, it is also used frequently in the contexts of intimate, rewarding friendships or advantageous acquaintances with influential persons.25

derivatives of cointe cover social territory that shifts freely between attractive comportment and attractive possessions, ultimately praising those who seemed to command both domains effortlessly. in Amadas, for example, a genteel bourgeois host distinguishes himself and honors the hero by serving wine in fine silver cups, “mult cointement/ et bel et envoisiement (lines 4043–4).” The adverbs seem to overlap, at once modifying the courteous service while focusing on the attractive tableware.

Unique personal expression

Cointe is often applied to express appreciation of unusual, distinctive objects chosen by an individual, showing that the describer prized originality. such usage suggests a need for a lexicon to convey appreciation of the social impor-tance of that originality. an example is the head ornament of oiseuse (leisure) in the Roman de la Rose. The circlet of gold orphrey is mignot, a term often seen in conjunction with cointe in contexts of stylish appearance; also deguisé,26 which suggests an appearance differentiated from the commonplace: “d’orfrois ot un chapel mignot,/ onque nul pucele n’ot/ plus cointe ne plus deguisé,/ ne l’avroie hui bien devisé” (lines 549–52). supported by the poet’s contention that he could not describe one more cointe or deguisé today, these adjectives together send the message that this lady’s crown was worth celebrating for its stylish inimitability. The girdle of richece (Wealth or splendor) is another example of the desirability of the unique qualities associated with cointe objects. “richece ot un mout cointe ceint,/ onc fame plus riche ne ceint” (richece had a very cointe belt, no woman was ever so richly belted) – which held a stone which protected the wearer from any kind of poison, and was worth “more than all the gold in rome” (lines 1065–73). in these cases, the

25 see, for example, Jehan et Blonde, line 4661; Roman de la Rose, line 1117, with richece, lines 2989–90, with oiseuse; lines 4653–4, 11211, 13075, 14783, 15022. see also Greimas, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, s.v. “acointe.”

26 Greimas notes that the word appears in the thirteenth century and gives two transla-tions: “1. chargé d’ornements, bigarré; 2. extraordinaire,” Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, s.v. “desguisier.”


word refers to an object that is admired for its rarity and unique craftsmanship. in L’Escoufle (c. 1200–02), fine rugs and needlepoint decorating a bed are described as cointes,27 as are elegant bedcovers in Guillaume de Dole (line 3278).

The exemplar of ideal masculinity, deduit, is given the sobriquet cointe on several occasions (“cointe fu e de bel ator,” he was cointe and had a handsome appearance, line 804, cf. 587–8). Part of his reputation as the very incarnation of amors’ description of cointerie is due to his clothing:

d’un samit portret a oisiaus,qui estoit toz a or batuz,fu ses cors richement vestuz.mout fu la robe deguisee,s’estoit en maint leu enciseeet decopee par cointise.28

in a samite silk patterned with birds,woven all over with gold threadhis body was richly dressed.The robe was truly extraordinary,it was cleverly cut in many placesand stylishly tailored.

The word deguisee appears again here, as in the description of oiseuse’s chaplet, to emphasize the unique appearance of the garment.29 Cointise, with its root in knowledge or knowing, suggests that the robe was cleverly cut, the work of someone with knowledge of how it was to be best done. Fashion requires knowledge and discernment, given that subtle details like cut are what separate the fashionable from the hapless imitators and the uninformed, vulgar crowd (criterion 5). deduit demonstrates a possession of such a kind of fashionable distinction, and this is a key to his role as the ideal of male courtly conduct presented for the lover to imitate.

it is the interaction of beautiful, well-made objects with worthy, discerning, attractive people that defines the magic of cointerie. in L’Escoufle, attributed to Jean renart, similarly, the crowns placed on the protagonists’ heads at their coronation make them look cointe, the gold setting off the flush on their faces, reflecting the suitability of the God-given honor offered them as rulers (lines 8951–65).

Cointe seems to refer specifically to a good cut when amors tells the lover to find a good tailor:

27 sweetser, L’Escoufle, roman d’aventure, lines 654–6.28 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 823–4.29 horgan renders “deguisé” and “deguisee” respectively as “unusual” and “ornately

styled.” de lorris and de meun, The Romance of the Rose, trans. Frances horgan, pp.10, 14. The term thus does not suggest a single obvious translation, but is related to the idea of extraordinary and unusual style and ornament.




et si doiz ta robe bailliera tel qui sache bien taillier,qui face bien seanz les pointeset les manches vestanz et cointes.30

and then you should entrust your clothingto one who knows how to cut well,who will make the seams lie perfectlyand the sleeves tightly-fitted and cointe.

This is one of several passages in the Rose that demonstrate the importance of skillful cutting and seaming. it is known that there was a thirteenth-century vogue for sewing sleeves down using decorative stitches each time a garment was put on.31 Tight sleeves stretch the bodice fabric neatly across the chest. There is no hiding a figure flaw with such a look. sewn sleeves represent a way to demonstrate an individual body’s uniqueness and merits. as such, they should be recognized as an object of thirteenth-century fashion.

The word cointe appears in the description of Franchise to describe the cut of her robe. This portrait is interesting because it stands out as didactic, promoting styles the poet likes, discouraging others. The poet says that she was not brunette or dark – “don’t” – but had a complexion whiter than snow – “do” (lines 1190–1). her nose was not orlenois, having the orleans shape, but instead was long and well-formed (lines 1192–3). more “do and don’t” advice on fabrics and styles are found in the discussion of her clothing:

el fu en une sorqueniequi ne fu mie de boraz:n’ot si riche jusqu’a arrazet si fu si cueillie et jointequ’il n’i ot une seule pointequi en son droit ne fu asise.mout fu bien vestue Franchise,car nule robe n’est plus belede sorquenie a damoiseile;fame est plus cointe et plus mignoteen sorquenie que en cote.32

she was in a sorqueniewhich was not of cheap stuff:

30 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 2133–6.31 Boucher, 20,000 Years of Fashion, p.182; Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France,

pp.183–4. The narrator of the Rose, upon waking, stitches his sleeves to obtain a tightly fitted, sleek look (line 98), as do the clouds in nature’s speech (lines 17968–70). Pygmalion sews his sculpture’s sleeves, as well (lines 20969–72). in the “essenhamen de la donzela” of amanieu des escas, ladies are advised: “cordatz estrechamen/ vostres bratz ben e gen” (lace up tightly your fine and noble arms), p.141, lines 43–4.



there was none so rich from here to arrasand it was so carefully made and seamedthat there was not a single stitchthat was not in the right place.Franchise was very well dressed,for no robe looks betteron a lady than a sorquenie;a woman is more cointe and mignotein a sorquenie than in a cote.

a sorquenie was obviously a closely fitting garment, shown in opposition to the cote, a long gown generally worn with a surcot, an over-tunic. This fashion for piling on voluminous garments, showing off layers of rich fabrics but obscuring the body, may have been the target of the poet’s objections. Sorquenie is apparently a hapax legomenon. a similar word (souquenie or souquenille) exists in later French to mean a loose smock, but that is obviously not the sense here.33 The rarity of this usage of sorquenie suggests the possibility that it represents a passing vogue, another sign of fashion’s presence.

By giving his opinion on the two different styles, the poet engages in the value-conferring process of a fashion system. The garments have no inherent value of their own, besides covering and warmth. it is the public promotion attaching value to a style that transforms the real garment into an object of fashion, as in the rhetorical process described by Barthes.34 While the poet gives value to the sorquenie ostensibly because it makes women more “mignote et cointe,” ultimately his preference is arbitrary. a loose draping garment may reveal the body as well as – if not better than – a tightly fitted one. The poet’s preference for well-seamed garments is symptomatic of fashion in that he advocates the more revealing and expressive garment, the one which allows him to read the “sweetness and openness” of the wearer (lines 1219–21).

Mignote appears again in this passage in conjunction with cointe. Frances horgan translates these words as “daintier and more elegant,” charles dahlberg as “quainter and more delightful”; andré mary as “plus jolie et plus mignonne.” 35 This book advocates a rendering that takes into account the presence of fashion in the passage. objects which are cointe, mignote and deguisée were stylish, charming, fashionable, distinctive, and imparted these same qualities to their owners and wearers. “Quaint” is derived from the old

33 Quicherat claimed that both the word and the style were imported into northern France from the south, based on the statutes passed by the 1298 consulat of narbonne (Histoire du costume en France, pp.186–7). These statutes post-date the Roman de la Rose, however, which is his sole source in claiming that it was a “cotte déceinte, mais taillée par le haut de manière à dessiner le buste, qui fut surtout au goût des galants.”

34 Barthes, Système de la mode, pp.46–9.35 de lorris and de meun, trans. horgan, Romance of the Rose, p.19; de lorris and de

meun, trans. charles dahlberg, The Romance of the Rose, p.47; de lorris and de meun, trans. andré mary, Le Roman de la Rose mis en français moderne, p.37.




French cointe. however, dahlberg’s frequent rendering of cointerie with “quaintness” does not adequately convey the sense of fashionable style and attractive flair that cointerie carried. although shakespeare used “quaint” to describe a highly fashionable and well-made gown in “The Taming of the shrew,” 36 for instance, that connotation is now obsolete. “Quaint” has evolved to connote something old-fashioned or peculiar, the opposite of fashionable.37

Gender

in the examples offered thus far, variations of the term cointe have been used to describe both masculine and feminine figures. in the first part of the Roman de Rose, where it is used to describe stylish appearance, it is applied to men’s comportment approximately eleven times, to feminine figures five times. These proportions are reversed in Jean de meun’s part of the poem, where the Unhappy husband frequently uses the term negatively. in the second half, it is used to describe women thirteen times, men four times, in lecoy’s edition. These proportions suggest that cointe was not reserved for one gender in the way that “handsome” is primarily masculine and “pretty” or “beautiful” feminine in modern english.

in the Roman de la Rose, the god of love’s frequent use of the term cointe was directed at the lover and more generally at young men seeking to please in courtly settings. it is repeatedly used in the first part of the poem in associ-ation with courtly young men. For example, the god of love’s minion, douz regart, held two Turkish bows: the one designed for sending out good arrows was smooth and painted with pleasant scenes of ladies on all sides, and “gay and cointe young men” (lines 919–20). deduit, the handsome young proprietor of the garden of love, was “biaus et lonc et droiz” (handsome, tall and straight, 799), as well as “cointe .. . et de bel ator” (804). The word in this context reinforces the general effect of deduit’s fine, well-formed, well-frocked appearance. Keeping oneself cointe is among the top three commandments of the god of love in his final brief summary of his “sermon”:

Qui d’amors veut fere son mestre,cortois et sanz orgueil doit estre,cointe se tiegne et envoisiezet de largesce soit presiez.38

Whoever would make love his mastermust be courteous and free of pride,keep himself cointe and bright,and be dedicated to generosity.

36 shakespeare, “The Taming of the shrew,” iv.iii.102.37 Oxford English Dictionary (1989), s.v. “quaint (adj.).”38 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 2217–20.


over five hundred lines of advice boil down to four virtues: courtesy, humility, generosity, and cointerie. clearly Guillaume de lorris saw it as one of the most significant keys to a young man’s success in finding a lady and acceptance by superiors at court.

other romances affirm this hypothesis. amadas, for instance, is “cointement cauciés” (line 1639), his chausses fit stylishly. Flamenca’s Guillem de nevers was similarly well dressed, as seen in the passage cited in the introduction. Further discussion of the translation of the cointerie commandment into actual garments will appear in the next chapter. The word is not generally used for old men. The association with ambitious youth could be seen as evidence for a fashion system’s polarization of the older and younger generations, as the young are those who favor novelty as a way of seeking out a social place for themselves.

Commanding female figures

in contrast to the use of cointe for the dress and deportment of young heroes, the word is applied in a positive manner to several powerful figures given feminine gender. notably, the Rose’s venus, the personification of feminine sexuality, is twice called cointe in the lover’s attempt to describe her.

si fu si cointe et si tifeequ’el resembla deesse ou fee.dou grant ator que ele avoitbien puet conoistre, qui la voit,qu’el n’iert pas de religion.ne ferai or pas mencionde sa robe et de son oréet de son treçoër doré,ne de fermail ne de corroie,por ce que trop i demoroie.mes bien sachiez seürementqu’ele fu cointe durement,et si n’ot point en li d’orguieil.39

she was so cointe and so adornedthat she looked like a goddess or a fairy.By her impressive appearanceanyone who saw her would be able to tellthat she was no member of a religious order.now i will not mentionher robe or her hemor her golden hair ornaments,nor her neck brooch nor her belt,





because i would linger on them too long.But know for certainthat she was extremely cointe,and there was not a bit of pride in her.

The word is unambiguously associated with appearance here. it is also associated with sexual attraction, both by venus’ identity, and by the comment that one could tell she was not a nun, conveying that her appearance represented the opposite of sexual renunciation (fulfilling criterion 9).

elsewhere in the rose, the earth, personified as feminine, is twice referred to in conjunction with the term: first, in the beginning of the poem when she makes a new cointe robe for herself out of spring flowers (line 61) and later as the narrator notices her flowers a second time (line 1405). in the “mariage des sept arts,” the liberal arts are personified as nubile women; clothing is described only for the highest among them. Theology, the queen of the Faculties, who wears a rich hood (“chape de camelin”). she is also the only one said to be cointe (line 217).40 in le Bel inconnu, the term is applied to the hero’s lover-patron, the marvelous queen of Wales, in her richly figured embroidered robes (lines 5143–70), and not to any other women.41 in these contexts, the word is used in the depiction of figures given feminine gender that represent the summit of a hierarchy. They represent things which men dream of possessing: power over women’s affections, mastery of the highest level of study, seasonal renewal, prestigious sponsorship. This pattern of usage links young men and the objects of their ambitions more than it links women and cointerie.

Bourgeois women

Women of lesser stations could be associated with cointe adornment and behavior, suggesting a broadening of accessibility to thirteenth-century fashion as described in criterion 10. however, when such women are linked to cointerie it is often less to demonstrate their personal qualities than to portray them as desirable objects. in the Roman de Troie, Jason and his companions admire the bourgeois women of the fortified city Jaconidès, who were cointes and beautiful (line 1158). These women represent the riches of the city coveted by the adven-turers, rather than individual characters to be developed.

in the second part of the Rose, bourgeois cointerie becomes the site of serious gender conflict through ami’s discussion of the manners of a jealous husband, the mal marié, which illustrates the term’s link to criterion 8 for a fashion system, the arousal of criticism. This character laments the day he

40 Jehan le teinturier d’arras, Le Mariage des Septs Arts.41 renaut de Beaujeu, Le bel inconnu, roman d’aventures.


married an elegant, well-dressed woman. in so doing, however, he admits that he was seduced by the attraction of her stylish appearance.

mieuz me venist ester alez pendrele jor que je dui fame prendre,quant si cointe fame acointai.morz sui quant fame si cointe ai.42

Would that i had been hangedon the day i had to go and take a wife,when i met such a cointe woman.This cointe woman is the death of me.

This passage shows that cointises are a double-edged sword for women. initially, they proved a successful method for finding a husband. once the husband is caught, however, it becomes an issue provoking his rage, frustration, avarice and jealousy.43

couched in a larger discussion condemning marriage and women’s lack of chastity by quoting authorities like Juvenal and abelard, the mal marié’s discourse reveals several insecurities with regard to women’s concern for their appearance. Cointerie is at the heart of his rage: he uses a form of the word five times in fifty lines. he sees women as employing the artifices of cointise in order to gain public attention and recognition, which is precisely how fashion functions. his suspicions, however, are that women cultivate their appearances only in order to attract sexual attention, making themselves cointe to pay homage to venus, wearing their finery to dances and churches (lines 8995–9004). This speech shows the presence of several important criteria for fashion, beyond the criticism already mentioned (criterion 8). First, there is the logic of theatricality, which requires public performance of appearance for the functioning of a fashion system (criterion 6). The husband’s enumeration of the places where women (and men) go to be seen satisfies this. second, the logic of seduction is functioning in the passage, that line of thinking that says that the love and affection of potential sexual partners may be gained through the consumption and display of fashionable objects and behaviors (criterion 9). The angry, misogynist tone of this discourse suggests that fashion was entirely the responsibility of women. a closer look, however, suggests that the husband is thoroughly implicated in the system. its performance and seduction were effective on him. his wife expressed aspects of herself through her finery that appealed to him enough that he wanted to marry her. once married, however, he wants that expression to cease and to gain control of her expressiveness.

42 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 8809–12.43 Burns has examined the curious double message of the unnamed wife’s finery, which

at once seems to make her sinfully whorish, the stereotype of vain women condemned by the preachers, and yet give her elite status, essentially leaving her husband behind on her social ascent. Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, pp.44–51.




his impotent rage suggests that some women were not willing to relinquish the expressive power of fashion once married, or at least that some men feared as much.

at one point, the husband admits that men indulge in cointises as well as women. after arguing that women insult God’s handiwork by altering it with artifice (lines 9009–32), he says,

sanz faille ausinc est il des homes.se nous, por plus biaus estre, fomesles chapelez et les cointisesseur les biautez que dex a misesen nous, vers lui mout mesprenonsquant a paiez ne nous tenonsdes biautez qu’il nous a doneesseur toutes creatures nees.44

The same is, without fail, true of men.if we, in order to be better looking,put floral wreaths and cointisesover the beauties which God placedin us, we do him a great wrongby not appreciatingthe beauties which he gave to usover all other creatures.

in the quantity of space and words devoted to women’s fashion in this part of the poem, it would be easy to lose sight of men’s equal devotion to fashion. The rage-obsessed mal marié’s pause in his ranting to admit that men’s cointerie was just as much a problem as women’s testifies that men’s interest in fashion was just as significant as women’s, if not implicitly greater. it does seems to have elicited less protest, but one could generalize that women had fewer places for publicly criticizing men than men had for women.45

The wife’s cointerie is blamed for the man’s sexual frustration, both because cointerie seems to him to make her less submissive, and because her complicated clothing blocks his access to her body (lines 8824–34).

44 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 9033–40.45 While “cointerie” involved both sexes, there is a difference in the level of tension

provoked by each gender’s fashion activity. Both sexes are blamed for not respecting God’s creation, both in these passages and also when ami speaks nostalgically of the Golden age (lines 8332–3, 8351–9). Women’s fashion, however, is blamed for several more problems. violation of chastity has already been mentioned. The jealous, often absent husband (he is a merchant who frequently travels to rome and Frisia, lines 8445–6) suspects that his wife dresses up to flirt publicly in his absence (lines 8447–54, 8572–8, 8983–9008, etc.). linked to this line of thinking is violation of modesty, which he associates with ideal wifely behavior, for example when he says that he wants her to wear cointises for his eyes alone (lines 8493–6).


Que me vaut ceste cointerie,ceste robe couteuse et chierequi si vos fet haucier la chiere,qui tant me grieve et atrahine,tant est longue et tant vos trahine,por quoi tant d’orgeuill demenezque j’en deviegn tout forsenez? 46

What use is this cointerie to me,this costly and expensive robewhich makes you hold your head up so high,which vexes and torments me so,which is so long and trails behind you,which makes you act so proudthat it drives me quite out of my mind?

one of things that he most resents is the pride and self-confidence which her fine apparel grants her, and which she maintains despite his ranting and abuse. This meets criterion 4, in which fashion links stylish display and personal confidence. The subtle distinction between cointerie and pride insisted upon earlier in the poem by the god of love breaks down here in the boorish husband’s unsubtle view. The husband’s excessive transports of rage, like the rabidly misogynist romances studied by roberta Krueger, convey the impression of his own inadequacy as much as if not more than they convince readers of the true baseness of women or cointerie or contribute to the denigration of either.47 his loathing of her care for her appearance harms himself, by his own account, as much as it does her. When ami finishes the story, he says that the jealous husband is a negative exemplum and that women should be allowed their freedom, not subjected to a man’s will (lines 9391–412). nonetheless, the story of the mal marié occupies many hundred lines of vivid vituperation. it may be, as Krueger suggests of other misogynist texts, that this section was developed at such length because it provoked a lively reaction among readers. The narrator’s plea not to defame his writing for what he repeats from other authors about feminine behavior (lines 15165–212) supports the interpretation that Jean de meun was being deliberately provocative with the aim of exciting interest. The degree to which he expounds on the gender relations surrounding cointerie suggests that it was in reality a matter fraught with tension as well as fascination.

46 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 8814–20.47 Krueger, Women Readers and the Ideology of Gender, pp.65–100.




The cost of cointerie

While fashion and consumption were on the rise in this period, income levels of various ranks were not always proportionate to the grades of social hierarchy. it is understandable that fashion became the focus of serious conflict, both economic and emotional. after being sexually thwarted by the volume and intricacy of his wife’s clothing, the mal marié is further made impotent by his frustration at his inability to seize control of the wealth tied up in his wife’s apparel (lines 8845–54). as Burns has observed, the wife’s finery leverages marital independence and social mobility for her.48 Women’s economic autonomy was limited to governing personal property like clothing, jewels, bedding and serving ware. such things composed many dowries as well as the contents of women’s testaments.49

The husband who would lord over his wife sought to control her sexual freedom, her public appearance, her personal confidence and her wealth, all of which related to her cointerie. nowhere in the Rose does a female figure attempt to control all of those powers in a male figure through discourse related to appearance. The meretricious old Woman attempts to wrest some economic control from her lovers by manipulating them into supporting her taste for gifts, but she clearly occupies an inferior position in the social hierarchy and seems only a minor exception proving the rule. Judging by law codes, the paucity of female authors, and other factors, it is generally agreed that women had few modes of self-expression in the middle ages. Fashion was one of the few, as Jane Burns demonstrates in Courtly Love Undressed. men struggling with their own sense of adequacy appear to have protested women’s right to participate in the fashion system. Fashion succeeded in remaining an outlet of self-expression open to women, despite misogynist protests and other less gender-based moralizing like the arguments against artifice and in favor of God’s natural simplicity.

The purchases of finery described by the mal marié certainly stimulated the economy. a sense of the need to maintain appearances in order to retain or increase status was probably another guarantee of fashion’s successful foothold, creating a self-sustaining system. medieval women may not have left the traces of their subjectivity that men did, but the signs of the growth of a fashion system indicate that, like men, they were able to express themselves through choices concerning appearance. Fashionable self-expression had considerable importance in determining suitable sexual and conjugal partners, the place of a couple in the social hierarchy, and personal self-esteem as well.

48 Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, pp.47–9.49 see the widows in litigation with heirs for possession of their own wardrobes from

earlier marriages in the period 1277–1320, michaud, Un signe des temps, pp.60, 112–18, 46. on movable property as a prominent feature in women’s wills, Godding, “la Pratique testimentaire en Flandre au 13e siècle,” p.293; howell, “Fixing movables: Gifts by Testament in late medieval douai.”


Status and wealth

does cointerie only refer to trappings of wealth and power? if so, it might support the argument that there was no real fashion system in the middle ages, only sumptuous display by the upper classes. But given the many criteria for fashion satisfied by the varied and complex uses of the term, cointerie does not merely evoke the sumptuous. The uses of the word in the Rose are intimately connected to contemporary ideas and worries concerning station and income. These concerns were shared by people of a variety of estates, so that (and this satisfies criterion 10) the presence of a fashion system indicates – indeed relies upon and furthers – a destabilization of the lines of social demarcation by socio-economic distinctions such as station. Cointerie can, therefore, be a sign of social mobility.

Cointerie and lack of income are several times represented as antithetical in the Roman de la Rose. in the opening of the poem, the personified earth so gloried in the departure of winter’s poverty that she made herself a cointe new gown, of flowers (lines 57–62). here, cointerie is presented in opposition to poverty. This suggests that it was associated with the elite, but also with changes in fortune, seen in spring’s sudden rise to conspicuous consumption.

however, the god of love emphasizes that it is possible to be cointe even without great wealth or expenditure. Throughout the Rose, and in the tradition of ovid’s Ars Amatoria, the figure of amors insists that he speaks to poor lovers because the wealthy don’t need his help, a theme which Jean de meun develops at further length in the discourses on Fortune (lines 4739–5316), Fole largece (Unwise Generosity, lines 7855–8196) and the encounter with richece (Wealth, lines 10021–237). The god of love instructs the lover to keep up his appearance, but only in accordance with his income (line 2129). he further recommends,

de ganz, d’aumoniere de soieet de ceinture te cointoie;et se tu n’es de la richeiceque fere puisses, si t’adreice;mes au plus bel te doiz deduireque tu poras, sanz toi destruire.50

With gloves, a silk purseand a belt, make yourself stylish;and if you do not have the wealthto do it, then do the best you can;you should dress as handsomelyas you can manage without ruining yourself.

even for lovers with limited means there are options for stylish personal adornment. amors recommends floral wreaths, “which anyone can afford” (lines





2149–52). he also emphasizes the importance of general hygiene and grooming (lines 2153–62), personal attentions that need not be costly to be effective.

Whereas Guillaume de lorris seems to have been attempting to define cointerie in the didactic passages addressed to the lover, Jean de meun treats the word’s association with fashionable appearance as already established. When the word emerges from the mouth of Faux semblant (False seeming), it is clearly associated with the rich dressing and fine tailoring expected of the noble and wealthy. Faux semblant asks whether it is greater deceit to be a religious hypocrite or to embrace cointerie. he compares the life of mendicants like himself, who pray in public and deceive people behind their backs, and the manners of well dressed courtly laymen (lines 11897–994). he associates cointerie with the noble stations, even as he undermines the ideological nobility that people intend to convey by their cointe appearances. When he says he prefers to confess rich women rather than the poor, he amplifies the point with all the different ranks he is willing to entertain: empresses, duchesses, queens, countesses, abbesses, beguines, wives of governors and knights, and cointe and proud bourgeois women (lines 11547–56). The distinct association of cointe with bourgeoises in this passage suggests strongly that cointerie was open to any laypersons, regardless of birth rank, as long as they had the necessary income and could find a forum for public appearance.

This illustrates the growing presence of another aspect of fashion, the democratization of appearances. Faux semblant, for all that he is self-professedly deceitful, reveals the reality that cointerie, along with wealth and/or beauty, diminishes the importance of rank in gaining attention and services. it has been claimed that medieval fashions (or luxury, if fashion did not exist) were only the preoccupation of a few select members of the elite.51 There are signs, this being one of several instances, that by the second half of the thirteenth century, fashion had penetrated beyond the upper noble echelons into the middle ranks of Parisian culture. The Parisian income tax records of 1292 list three men with the sobriquet cointe, all living in the commercial right Bank quarter.52 “Jehan le cointe” of the rue au lyon in the saint-sauveur parish, who pays the minimum amount, twelve deniers; “Guillaume le cointe” of the rue de la courroirerie, near saint-merri, who pays forty sous, an average sum; and “nicolas le cointe,” living outside the walls near the Temple, paying a modest four sous.53 The context does not furnish any further information about these men or their lifestyles. The document does testify that at the end of the thirteenth century, the adjective was in use to describe urban-dwelling men of modest to moderate means, not just romance heroes or queenly personifications.

51 For instance Boucher, 20,000 Years of Fashion, pp.179, 180.52 see The Roman de la Rose, where oiseuse gives deduit the sobriquet “cointe”:

“Privee sui mout et acointe/ de deduit le mignot, le cointe” (i know Pleasure the mignot, the cointe, and am an intimate friend of his, lines 587–8).

53 Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel. Géraud suggests a broad range of interpretations: “agréable, gentil, prévenant, affable, beau, propre, bien fait, du latin comptus.”


Fashion was beginning to be used to bridge chasms established by distinctions of rank, permitting a new kind of social mobility. like Faux semblant, la vieille boasts of exploiting cointerie to gain wealth and position. she laments the loss of her wealth and social importance, a loss corresponding to the loss of her youthful good looks.

se je fusse sage, par m’ame,trop eüsse esté riche dame,car de trop granz genz fui acointequant g’iere ja mignote et cointe,et bien an tenoie aucuns pris.54

if i had been wise, upon my soul,i would have been a very rich woman,for i knew many high-placed menwhen i was mignote and cointe,and i had a firm hold on some of them.

coming from la vieille’s mouth, this mobility sounds distinctly unsavory. new social mobility is bound to create social anxiety, however, and this passage testifies to that as well. Cointerie is portrayed in the Rose as an important social tool, a positive one for young male lovers under the pen of Guillaume de lorris, a potentially negative one at the hands of unscrupulous women and preachers in the writings of Jean de meun. The second author corrects the first’s optimism by revealing fashion’s harmful consequences. his attitudes towards cointerie contain a cynicism that perhaps was a result of a fashion system’s growth and expansion over the course of the thirteenth century. during the four-decade span of the Rose’s composition, it seems very likely that cointerie evolved from a more isolated, closed, elite system to a more open, urban one. By the 1270s, fashion seems to have been functioning as a system that both stimulated and destabilized, that inspired celebration and fantasy as well as violent criticism.

The opposite of fashion: antonyms

in evaluating the presence of a fashion system, there should not only be words expressing favorable opinions of fashionable people and objects. The requirement that the styles of the recent past be rejected calls for ways of expressing concepts such as “unfashionable,” “outdated” or “out-of-style.”

a set of negative images painted on a wall seen by the Rose’s narrator before entering the garden are said to lack cointerie. oiseuse (leisure) says that deduit (Pleasure) had commanded that the wall be built and painted. she evaluates them saying that “the images which are painted there are neither mignotes nor cointes, rather they are miserable and sad,” as the narrator can see (lines 597–600). as





an arbiter of style herself, said earlier to possess cointerie (in her chaplet, line 551), oiseuse is able to judge the feminine figures on the wall. They have wretched appearances all around: haine’s ugly look, avarice’s old clothes (discussed in chapter 3), Tristece’s torn garments and hair, vieillece’s lost charms, Papelardie’s bad color and austere dress, Povreté’s complete lack of clothes. This passage demonstrates a consciousness of “un-fashionability.” The figures on the wall are, by their context, excluded from the garden of delight, where the attractive and stylish figures are described. Their exclusion from fashionability is first expressed by a negative construction, “not cointe,” then explained: they are “dolereuses et tristes.” Terms such as “pained” and “sad” are not direct equivalents of “unfashionable,” yet by explaining a lack of attention to appearance, they do serve that function. The context of the wall offers several other alternatives to cointe, including poverty in the case of Povreté, self-imposed damage in the portrait of Tristece, and distress imposed by time in the cases of avarice and vieillece. reasons for neglecting fashion, from lacking resources to miserly ignorance of the importance of displaying new possessions, all express the idea of “unfashionable” in different ways.

a similar kind of implicit definition of unfashionability is found in the old French Lai du Trot, where a knight sees a vision of ladies who have done proper service to love, each one accompanied by her lover, each of them “cointe et mignot et bien seant (line 115),” all well-dressed in rich ermine-lined cloaks and gold spurs (lines 118–22). These couples are contrasted with those who had served love ill, who were condemned to ride rude mounts without proper stirrups, saddles or harness, dressed like wretches.55 While the term cointe is clearly linked to positively viewed appearance, the figures’ dress is allegorical, intended to represent wisdom in love with its shades of courtly savoir faire more than to serve as a fashion plate for the year’s styles. nonetheless, the author’s harnessing of dress images for his allegory testifies to the place they held in contemporary society.

The Rose’s mal marié provides an antithesis to cointerie when he threatens his wife concerning her wardrobe. after admitting that men wrong God as much as women do with their efforts to be cointe, he offers himself as an exception to the pursuit of fashion:

mes je n’ai de tex trufles cure;je veill soffisant vesteürequi de froit et de chaut me gart.ausinc bien, se dex me regart,me garantist et cors et teste,par vent, par pluie et par tampeste,forré d’agneaus cist miens bureauscomne pers forré d’escureaus.56

55 micha, Lais féeriques des XIIe et XIIIe siècles.56 de lorris and de meun, Le Roman de la Rose, lines 9041–8.


But i have not care for such nonsense;i want only sufficient clothingto protect myself from cold and heat.i do just as well, with God’s help,at protecting my body and headfrom wind, rain, and stormswith my cheap stuff lined in lambas with fine blue wool lined in squirrel.

he sets up his tastes in polar opposition to his wife’s. she is cointe, concerned with style and artifice. he wants clothing only for its utility. she wants squirrel fur, vair, and finely finished and dyed woolens (pers). he wants lamb fur (also preferred by avarice, who wears a mantel that was “vil et de povre afeire” lined with heavy, matted lamb, lines 215–17) and bureaus, bourre in modern French, woolen cloth made from recycled discarded fibers, a scratchy, rough, generally cheap kind of textile.57 The opposition to cointerie is framed as both ideological (utility vs. artifice) and economic (cheap vs. expensive). his logic corresponds to the impulse to simplify seen in the founding of monastic orders and utopian communities, as well as to a strain of anthropology and costume history that posits an original, natural human condition in which clothes served only as protection. This logic has been criticized as positivistic (desiring a degree zero from which to initiate progress) and also as a simplistic denial of how complex the impulse to clothe oneself really is.58 The mal marié’s position is in some ways an artificial polemic tactic taken in order to oppose his wife. his behavior implies that the opposite of a cointe person is a miser, and moreover that miserly rejection of fashion breeds misery. his threat of confis-cating her finery and forcing her to wear cheap homespun, unadorned belts and his old shoes affirms this (lines 9265–82).

several aspects antithetical to cointerie figure in the portrait of the boorish bourgeois husband. one is economic, as he proposes that she will only have inexpensive clothing. another related aspect is quality: she will not have things showing superior workmanship such as fine weaves and sculpted belt buckles. a third aspect is age: he dreams of imposing worn-out and used garments upon her, in opposition to her new ones. if one major aspect of fashion is constant desire for new things, this description of the opposite of cointerie fits, demon-strating that old clothing was considered odious. denial of expression is a

57 on thirteenth-century town statutes from Provence and catalonia forbidding the manufacture of borra, cardon, La Draperie au Moyen Age, pp.109–13.

58 When John carl Flugel in the Psychology of Clothes attempts to discuss the “funda-mental motive” of clothing oneself for “protection,” he ends up talking about protection as magical thinking and clothes as emotional protection from others, pp.71–84. as the Batterberrys have said, there is no evidence that clothes were ever worn just to fend off the cold, giving the example of the indigenous people who go nude in the intemperate Tierra del Fuego (Fashion: The Mirror of History, pp.8–9). cannon, “The cultural and historical contexts of Fashion,” pp.24–8; steele, Fashion and Eroticism, p.15.




further aspect of the opposition to cointerie seen in this passage (see criterion 4). By giving her his old overshoes which do not fit her and telling her just to lace them up tighter (lines 9275–7), the mal marié deprives his wife of an expressive surface: she will no longer be able to show the true size and form of her feet. By giving her a belt without a closure of leather, that is “tout blanc” – literally “blank” – he would deny her power to express personal taste through the choice of texture and decoration. For the unhappy husband, the opposites of fashion are a complex constellation of situations denying self-expression, including poverty, miserliness, poor materials, inferior workmanship, overuse, poor fit, and plainness.

The outrageous advice of la vieille, as well as her own portrayal of herself, expresses another potential way of conceiving of unfashionability. When artifice is applied to embellish something that was decidedly unattractive in the first place, cointerie destabilizes nature, which according to common medieval logic bestowed beauty on good things, ugliness on bad things.59 la vieille may boast that she was once cointe, but her garrulousness and her strategic exploitation of lovers for monetary gain makes it obvious that she is not a desirable model of courtly virtue and behavior. When she declares, “s’el n’est bele, si se cointait,/ la plus lede atour plus cointe ait” (if she is not beautiful, let her enhance her appearance: may the ugliest be the most cointe, lines 13251–2), artificially wrought beauty becomes the opposite of cointerie. although based on ovid’s Ars Amatoria book iii, la vieille’s discourse represents a reaction to contemporary practices. The old French translations of L’Art d’Amours, moreover, gloss these sections in ovid heavily, distinguishing ancient practices from contemporary ones.60 The discourse of la vieille reveals both fascination with and repulsed reaction to practices of cosmetic improvement. la vieille exceeds the bounds of moderation in the cointises she employs and advocates, and moreover in revealing that they are artifices. in some ways, the antonyms to fashion that she embodies are folly and outrecuidance, excess, condemned earlier by the god of love (line 2128).

Fashion and pride have an equivocal relationship in the poem, as discussed above. The god of love explained that the opposite of cointerie was orgeuil, pride or arrogance (lines 2125–8), a view reinforced in the portrait of venus where the narrator describes her as extremely cointe as well as free of orgueil (lines 3419–21). “Pride” does not seem to have a negative connotation at the poem’s opening, when “la terre meïsmes s’orgueille” (the earth herself becomes so proud, line 55) and “devient la terre si gobe/ qu’el velt avoir nouvele robe,/ si set si cointe robe feire” (the earth becomes so proud that she wants a new robe, and she knows how to make such a cointe one, lines 59–61). however,

59 This neo-Platonic theory can be found in the works of thinkers such as saint augustine and Pseudo-dionysius and others later. de Bruyne, Etudes d’Esthétique médiévale, vol.3: Le XIIIe siècle; eco, Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages.

60 see roy, L’Art d’Amours. Bertoni, “accenni alla storia del costume in una versione francese dell’’ars amatoria’.”


in that passage, cointerie is a result of orgueil. in Philippe de Beaumanoir’s Salu d’Amours, orguel and cointise are allied against the lover-narrator, representing the pride and social superiority that make the lady inaccessible (lines 231–40, 371–2).61 la vieille advises women to avoid loving excessively vain men who devote too much time to their own appearance, because it is a sign of self-absorption, in other words, too much pride (lines 13601–6). vain lovers who boast about their looks are not admired as trendsetters or models of fashion, because they over-dramatize themselves. Fashion’s logic forbids excessive exaggeration, which leads to ostracization. The old Woman’s statement ultimately serves to affirm amors’ message that cointerie should afford the lover confidence, but not arrogance or vanity. Fashionable pride should be moderate and subtle, and above all intelligent. Bad pride is the opposite of fashion: the self-delusive pride which dares to dress up unworthy bodies and souls in a vain show of consumption, where choices are not made with the requisite knowledge of cointerie.

The existence of means for expressing abstract notions is a signal that a societal need to express such concepts existed. The prominent repetition of cointe and its derivatives in thirteenth-century vernacular works clearly indicates that fashion consciousness and desire for visual attractiveness were at work in the literate cultures of France and occitania in that period. Cointerie is by no means the only term connoting the abstract values of fashion, it is simply an example, part of a developing lexicon that deserves more attention. Where there was cointerie, there were changes afoot in the economy, touching on the increasing rates of demand for trade and innovation in distinctive objects and apparel. Where there was cointerie, changes were occurring in the construction of the social hierarchy with regard to station, income and gender, as well, offering a new way to ascend the ladder of social success.

Cointerie, novelty, and distinction are fine ideals, but attaining them in practice requires something more than poetic expressions of fantasy. Who could afford new clothes? What did it take to wear distinctive and well-tailored chausses? These are the questions for chapter 5.

61 Philippe de rémi, Oeuvres poétiques de Philippe de Rémi, sire de Beaumanoir.



5

The desire for spending money

it is a truth universally acknowledged,that a single man in possession of a good fortune,

must be in want of a wife.

Jane austen, Pride and Prejudice.

in the opening scene of Pride and Prejudice, mrs Bennett speculates that mr Bingley’s “large fortune” must be “four or five thousand a year.” 1 in 1953, marilyn monroe, Betty Grable and lauren Bacall played women seeking to discern “how to marry a Millionaire.” standards and customs change greatly between periods, but an outstanding income generally must number among a leading man’s requisite outstanding traits. how much income was required to allow the medieval romance hero to cut a distinguished, fashionable figure? on another level, what does it mean when precise sums of money are used in fictional narratives? note that it was heroes, more often than heroines, who were the prominent fashion consumers in the early centuries of the western system’s existence. The majority of examples in this chapter will deal with representations of male characters’ wealth and ability to consume.

The prerequisite economy for a fashion system

engagement in a fashion system requires personal spending resources, because it is such personal control of finances that empowers individuals to make distinctive personal choices. This chapter will examine some representations of economic anxieties in French medieval vernacular literature, looking at changes in popular monetary awareness that accompany the development of the fashion system, comparing these with historians’ analyses of the many economic changes occurring in the high middle ages. changes may be observed over the “long thirteenth century” (c. 1160–1330) in the ways a hero’s fortunes are described, in the amounts used for evoking fantastically valuable objects, and in the frequency of discussing prices, bargains, and incomes. Key terms from

1 Jane austen, Pride and Prejudice (orig. london, 1813; ed. Tony Tanner, london: Penguin, 1972), p.51.


this period such as avarice, one of the most prominent sins, and aventure, associated with fortune-seeking knights, further demonstrate the complex set of desires related to personal disposable wealth and how contemporaries struggled to deal with them.

From hoards of treasure to price-consciousness

Through the early and central middle ages, the money supply gradually dimin-ished in the occident, presenting great obstacles to the development or continuance of a fashion system. although it has been debated how brusquely trade was reduced as the Germanic tribes invaded and the roman empire gave way to merovingian civilization, historians agree that coins became scarce.2 Trade declined, but did not cease entirely. The scarcity of documents makes it difficult to speculate on exactly how much commerce occurred.3 While archeo-logical evidence testifies that coins did continue to exist and even to travel long distances, Philip Grierson argues that this should not necessarily be construed as commerce.4 in viking society of the ninth and tenth centuries, responsible for a significant portion of the goods moved, coined money did not initially exist. Tens of thousands of eleventh-century pennies from other lands have been found in scandinavia, but the concept of mercantile profit was only in an embryonic stage. Grierson characterizes households across europe in these centuries as striving primarily to be self-sufficient, rather than engaging in what could be called “shopping.” Purchase was not the “natural” way to furnish the necessities of life, as he puts it. status objects were exchanged most often under the broad rubrics of what can be termed “theft,” through raids and pillage, and “gifts,” such as regularly occurred between the church and the lords and their benefactors and dependents. coins and precious metals were hoarded as treasure. When they were exchanged, it was in large quantities, for political tributes, ransoms, city levies, and dowries. although under charlemagne there was a renewal of state-controlled public minting and the creation of a new counting system using deniers and sous, which established a period of monetary uniformity around the ninth century, gold ceased to be struck for coins. it had become too rare, and its quality had been in decline since the fifth century in Gaul. in following centuries, the larger sou (or sol), worth twelve deniers, became virtually fictitious, as marc Bloch observed.5 over the course of the

2 henri Pirenne opened the debate inadvertently in 1922, arguing that after the barbarian invasions the occident remained under the economic dominance of the east, not gaining economic emancipation until the merovingian period, which brought economic collapse. see Bloch, Esquisse d’une histoire monétaire de l’Europe, pp.7–32; Grierson, “commerce in the dark ages: a critique of the evidence,” pp.123–4; spufford, Money and its Use, pp.55–73.

3 hunt and murray, A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200–1550, p.24.4 Grierson, “commerce in the dark ages: a critique of the evidence,” pp.123–40.5 Bloch, Esquisse d’une histoire monétaire de l’Europe, pp.18–26.

The desire For sPendinG moneY 121


tenth to the twelfth centuries, the currency norm was a range of silver penny coinages, whose weight and purity varied significantly from one locality to the next, as did the frequency with which they were employed relative to “in-kind” transactions.6

a fashion system requires not only trade in displayable goods and a population whose spending money enables them to make personal choices, but also community groupings such as cities or courts large enough to constitute a stage for fashion’s theatrical displays (criterion 6). From the rural, largely coinless society of the early middle ages, the creation of numerous cities in northern europe began in the tenth and eleventh centuries, as improvements in agriculture gradually led to increased prosperity. city founding was a legal process, involving negotiation between the local lord and merchants to establish limits on various types of taxation: lords could expect to profit from the protection they offered city dwellers, but not to the point that trade was impeded by the weight of these exactions.7 around 1060–1100, dominique Bartélemy observes that it became habitual in documents of exchange to indicate the local provenance of the deniers involved. a century later, these local coinages had largely given way to the major interregional deniers parisis and tournois.8 The twelfth century was an important period of transition. Baldwin observes that many of the archaic systems were still in place, but competition for flamboyance at the courts was on the increase, and the estates had ceased to be appropriate production sites to meet such needs.9 Towns, markets, and fairs became essential, as centers of specialized artisans and for the exchange of imported goods.

increased trade and crippling expenditures such as the crusades brought about a shortage of metal for coinage, felt particularly acutely in the twelfth century. By the 1160s, silver from mines in eastern europe began to satisfy the need, further aided by the return to the minting of gold in the 1250s.10 Peter spufford emphasizes how this renewal of the european metal supply around 1160–1330 produced greater economic transformations than did the saxon mining of the eleventh century, when some new silver came into circu-lation, or even the new World infusions of metals in the sixteenth century. While coin payments were made to landlords in some regions at some times throughout the early and central middle ages, there is a notable shift to from payments in goods or labor to cash payments and the notion of fief-rentes beginning in 1187 in Flanders, and in the early thirteenth century in the lands

6 spufford, Money and its Use, pp.74–105.7 dominique Barthélemy, L’ordre seigneurial. XIe-XIIe siècle, vol.3, Nouvelle Histoire

de la France, pp.99–103; hunt and murray, A History of Business in Medieval Europe, 1200–1550, p.28; musset, “Peuplement en bourgage et bourgs ruraux en normandie du Xe au Xiiie siècle.”

8 Barthélemy, L’ordre seigneurial: XIe-XIIe siècle, p.109.9 Baldwin, Aristocratic Life in Medieval France, pp.113–14.10 lopez, “Back to Gold, 1252.”



of Philip augustus and in Germany.11 as spufford says, when the demand for luxury goods rose in the thirteenth century, it was backed by newly liberated quantities of ready cash arising from this revolution in rents.12 The idea of rente, then, is crucial for understanding the fashion-related economic and social changes of this period.

Notions of great wealth

The experience of the evolving monetary situation of the central middle ages is illustrated by the imprecise lexicon used in discussing wealth and transactions in many twelfth- and early thirteenth-century French vernacular works, particu-larly those which hearken back to earlier times. While money amounts and the value of objects are mentioned in twelfth- and early thirteenth-century vernacular works with frequency, they are usually given in terms of metal, or very round sums. For example, in the Roman de Thèbes (c. 1155–70), based on the Theban legends of antiquity, heroic wealth is expressed in terms of gold and silver given as gifts (lines 87, 6448–55) or found in wondrous objects such as a chariot (lines 5042–175).13 at one point, Polynices proposes to ransom himself for “ten thousand marks” (line 6435).

a hundred (“.c.”) and a thousand (“.m.”) marks are typical figures found in narratives, of which there are repeated examples. The silk and gold hangings on a wonderful bed were worth “more than a hundred marks” in Le Bel Inconnu (c. 1185–95, line 2372). in L’Escoufle (1200–02), the author describes a ring of an empress given as a sign of affection “qui vaut .m. mars” (which was worth a thousand marks, line 8435).14 in the Roman de la Violette (c. 1227–31), the armor of the hero’s opponent, Gontar de covelanche, was similarly worth a thousand marks.15 in other examples, pounds are used instead of marks, but to similar hyperbolic effect. in the anonymous late twelfth-century Lai of Guigamor, a thousand pounds of gold is used to indicate an unimaginably large reward: there was no knight who would dare hunt the white boar, “qui li donroit mil livres d’or” (whoever might give him a thousand pounds of gold, line 160).16 in the Lai of Graelent, an otherworldly lady wears a mantel “worth a castle,” and rides a horse whose harness and saddle were worth “mil livres cartrains” (a thousand pounds in the money of chartres, lines 601–4).17

“marks,” in the twelfth century, represented weight measures worth half a pound, eight ounces to the livre’s sixteen. Their use continued into the fourteenth

11 spufford, “le rôle de la monnaie dans la révolution commerciale du Xiiie siècle.”12 spufford, Power and Profit, pp.19, 60–5.13 mora-lebrun, Le Roman de Thèbes.14 on date, sweetser, L’Escoufle, p.xii.15 Gerbert de montreuil, Le Roman de la violette, line 2696.16 micha, Lais féeriques des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, pp.64–103.17 micha, Lais féeriques des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, pp.20–61.




century, progressively used alongside and then superceded by the gold florins, ducats, and other new large gold coins. sums greater than fifty sous were expressed in marks, and would have been paid in silver (or occasionally gold) ingots rather than coin. The mark of the silver mining district of Freibourg set the standard, and was the major form of currency used at the champagne fairs, along with the smaller deniers of Provins.18 spufford recounts how in the spring of 1204 Bishop Wolfger of Passau set out for rome, taking a supply of silver bars to convert into local currency as he traveled. Usually, but not always, the exchanges were in round numbers, as in the narrative examples given above. however, in contrast with those fictional “huge” sums such as a hundred or a thousand marks, the needs of the Bishop and his party were met by exchanges of two to five marks in each town. The one exception was rome, where he exchanged a total of forty-four marks on five occasions, presumably staying longer and making more gifts or offerings.19 The mortgages taken by knights to finance their crusade pilgrimages also illustrate how sums of “hundreds” and “thousands” of marks should be understood as fantastic. When the future King of Jerusalem, Godfrey of Bouillon, left on the First crusade, he had to sell his allodial estate, managing to raise 1300 marks of silver and 3 of gold. The Bishop of liège agreed to buy it, but had to request aid from all the abbeys of his diocese in order to actually raise the amount, not having such wealth readily available to him. spufford lists several lesser nobles who mortgaged their estates to local clerics for much smaller amounts: Baldwin of Ghent for 42 marks in the 1090s; odo of hellain for 5.5 marks in 1162; Godfrey iii, duke of Brabant, for 300 marks in 1171.20

International exchange: in Saracen lands

The crusades mobilized huge sums of money only to drain them from the european economy. several levels of the economic experience of these excur-sions are represented in Graindor de douai’s narratives of the First crusade, The Song of Antioch, Les Chétifs and the Song of Jerusalem, composed roughly at the time of the Third and Fourth crusades (1190–1212).21 The Antioch is purported to be based in part on a First crusade eyewitness account by one richard the Pilgrim, and one of the ways the difference between the accounts of richard [and] Graindor can be discerned is shifting price particularities.22

18 spufford, “le rôle de la monnaie,” pp.360, 88–90; spufford, Money and its Use, pp.209–24.

19 spufford, Money and its Use, pp.209–10.20 spufford, Money and its Use, pp.98–9.21 duparc-Quioc, La Chanson d’Antioche, vol.1: Édition du texte; myers, Les Chétifs;

Thorp, La Chanson de Jérusalem.22 duparc-Quioc, Chanson d’Antioche, vol.1: Édition du texte, pp.188–9, note v. 3399,

and p.192, note v. 3478.


The major part of the attention given the work has been dedicated to its extensive use of realistic historical detail.23

crusading leaders concerned with large sums often speak in terms of “mars d’or pesés” (weighed marks of gold, Antioche, lines 4526, 4627, 8127) or “or torsés” (twisted gold, Jerusalem, line 3759), locutions that demonstrate how the currency value of precious metals was conceived in terms of weight more than coinage. in contrast, a particularly fine battle horse is valued at more than “mil livres de deniers monées” (a thousand pounds in minted coins, Antioche, line 7699), a sum that while exaggerated in its vagueness also expresses a sense of the possibility of purchasing something with minted deniers, rather than ingots or metal in other more raw forms. That reference appears in a section where Graindor was composing on his own rather than following richard or a latin chronicler, which suggests that it reveals more about the mentalities of the early thirteenth than the early twelfth century. marks and pounds represent units of exchange that Graindor’s readers in northern France would have experienced on a daily basis. The foreign unit of exchange most often used is the “bezant,” referring to the gold coins of Byzantium, but also used generically to connote saracen money, for example in one verse referring to the capture of “.m. bezans de l’or d’esclavonie” (a thousand bezants of slavic gold, [Antioche?] line 3315). marks could be similarly qualified to express distant exotic currency when the proper numismatic lexicon was lacking, for instance “.m. mars d’or fin arabïant” (a thousand marks of fine arab gold, [Antioche?] lines 3388, 3390). like marks, bezants are often measured in even units of hundreds or thousands in the contexts of saracen wealth or desperate offerings to mohammed (for example, Antioche lines 4194, 5335–46), or the amount of income the Turks offer Bohemond as a bribe (“mil bezans de rente,” [Antioche?] line 5802). They are also mentioned in terms of the number of beasts of burden required to transport the sum (“.Xv. muls .. . cargiés de bezans,” fifteen mules loaded with bezants, [Antioche?] lines 397–9; a ransom of “.iii. roncis de bezans,” three packhorses of bezants, line 5514), another relatively imprecise unit.

When the register of the Song of Antioch shifts from the political machina-tions of the great barons to a focus on the experience of the common crusaders, a very different level of precision emerges, as well as a complex mixture of currencies. When the pilgrims are starving, a petit pain (personal loaf of bread) was worth 9 bezants, while a raw donkey thigh cost 100 sous, and a single denier bought 2 beans (lines 3481–4).24 later, a donkey leg was worth 60 sous, and bread worth a bezant (lines 6984–7). When steven of Blois takes ill and

23 duparc-Quioc, Chanson d’Antioche, vol.2: Étude critique; duparc-Quioc, Le cycle de la croisade. see also Paulin Paris’ articles, both entitled “nouvelles études sur la chanson d’antioche.”

24 see note, duparc-Quioc, Chanson d’Antioche, vol.1: Édition du texte, p.192. see also robert de clari’s chronicle of the Fourth crusade: during the siege of constantinople a measure of wheat cost 100 bezants, whereas it would only cost “sestier et demi a amiens”




is carried in a litter, he offers the poor men who carry him “.Xii. deniers de luke a cascun” (12 deniers of lucca to each, line 5637), a moment demon-strating the use of one of the european penny coinages most often used on the crusade. While Frankish knights and saracen rulers were represented as negoti-ating interchanges involving gigantic, round sums, these passages suggest that on another level of society there was sensitivity to small, carefully calculated exchanges.

Floire et Blancheflor (c. 1147–60), a romance set in saracen realms, offers a different kind of narrative example illustrating the different operational conceptions of wealth held by different social groups, as well as the complex-ities of international exchange.25 The heroine is sold into slavery in the king’s attempt to separate her from his son. The narrator assures [the reader] that the king did not sell her because he coveted wealth: he would preferred to have her dead than gain 100 marks for her (lines 427–30). later, when he realized her departure has condemned his son to despair, he would have given 1000 marks to have her back (line 1125). Both a hundred marks and a thousand are vague indicators of large amounts of money, as seen above, intended to represent sums that would impress a king. The king thinks in rounded terms rather than in more precise figures. in contrast, the polyglot merchant trusted to sell Blanchefleur managed to trade her for thirty marks of gold, twenty marks of silver, twenty lengths of Beneventan silk, twenty purple mantels lined in vair, twenty bliauts dyed dark purple-blue (pers), and a marvelous cup made by vulcan depicting the Trojan war (lines 437–512). The narrator underscores the girl’s attractiveness by the complexity of these mercantile earnings. moreover, it is added that the merchant took her to the emir in “Babylon” (cairo) and made a huge profit, exchanging her for seven times her weight in gold, a bargain that pleased him greatly (lines 517–30, 2718). The exchange also illustrates Bloch’s point that before the monetary transformations of the thirteenth century, metal was only one among many types of currency, including fabric, livestock, and pepper.26 The metals in these passages are understood in terms of their weight, rather than a fluctuating value assigned to particular coins by the market.

The frequent use of vocabulary specifying wealth, currency types, and prices in vernacular description suggests that these were considered important narrative details, and also that they were significant preoccupations of the cultures producing and disseminating these stories. it can be argued that they express desire for wealth, a mentality ancillary to a fashion system. another of Graindor’s crusade poems, Les Chétifs, portrays an early group of pilgrims taken captive at civetot and their adventures among wealthy saracens who need their heroic aid. it is a fantasy depicting pagan wealth in very specific

(a setier and a half in amiens). robert de clari, La Conquête de Constantinople, 34.18–20, p.100.

25 leclanche, Le conte de Floire et Blancheflor.26 Bloch, Esquisse d’une histoire monétaire de l’Europe, p.28.


terms, and creating plot structures permitting Frankish knights access to it. The miserable, impoverished prisoner richard goes from rags to silks when he agrees to fight as the disgraced saracen cormaran’s champion, and receives clothing from cormaran and his mother worth “.m. livres de fin argent fondu” (a thousand pounds of fine melted silver, line 606). another captive, Baudouin, receives “.XX. mil” (twenty thousand) bezants and also two horses and two mules for killing a demonic beast ravaging the desert (line 3645). another, harpin de Bourges, receives a thousand lengths of silk, a horse, a rich tent, a packhorse to carry his equipment, and gold and white silver amounting to “.m. bezans, tels .iiii. vins, tels .c.” (a thousand bezants, then eighty, then a hundred, lines 3847–55). Through such gifts, the present author has argued, these knights were represented as gaining access to vestimentary splendor and improved social position, and thereby to a nascent dream of fashion.27

Gifts versus shopping

Before and during the development of the market economy in the high middle ages, a gift culture provided the primary means of receiving new clothes and other objects of distinction such as horses, arms, jewels, and serving ware. Worthy people received new – or often somewhat used – objects as signs of appreciation from superiors. in the Persian-arab tradition of conferring “robes of honor,” khil’at, items worn by the lord had greater value than anything new.28 in political sirventes poems, epics, and romance prologues of the high middle ages, poets propagandized generosity, “largesse,” as Baldwin and others have remarked.29 The present author has theorized that when a gift culture is the sole provider of new objects and ornaments one cannot really speak of a fashion system, because gifted objects of conspicuous consumption do not reflect the personal, self-expressive choices of the wearer, but rather the taste of the superior.30 Fashion systems do not eliminate gift systems. on the contrary, as Jacques Godbout, mary douglas, and others have argued in the wake of the anthropological essay on the gift by marcel mauss, a gift culture continues to flourish even today, in forms adapted to contemporary society.31 money does not replace gifts so much as carve out a place for personal consumption alongside hierarchically determined bestowal. in order for a fashion system to come into being, conditions had to be in place that would allow individuals to make their own consumer choices.

27 heller, “Fashion in French crusade literature: desiring infidel Textiles.”28 see the essays in Gordon, Robes and Honor.29 Baldwin, Aristocratic Life in Medieval France, pp.98–121.30 heller, “Fashion in French crusade literature: desiring infidel Textiles.”31 mauss, The Gift, Foreword by mary douglas, pp.vii–xviii. Godbout and caillé, The

World of the Gift.




literature played a role in how this shift took place. The text allows an individual or group to fantasize how, if reality were different, they might shop for themselves. desire for change must be present to cause the actual market-place to evolve. despite the modern notion that shopping is a biologically feminine activity, the first group positioned to become independent consumers was men. heroes were represented as needing funds to outfit themselves according to their tastes and their social ambitions. romances imagined fantasy strategies for realizing those monetary, and thereby fashionable, needs.

How much money makes the man? Heroic income

mentions of objects worth “a thousand marks” give an idea of great, vast wealth, but they are not indications of income, that is, how much an individual could afford to spend in a given year. how did the ambitious young hero finance his lifestyle? in the twelfth century, many are represented as dependent upon the generosity of a lord. For example, in Erec et Enide (c. 1165–70), chrétien de Troyes makes a point of saying that erec held his lands from King arthur.32 That the overlord is arthur and not some lesser lord enhances erec’s social status, serving in lieu of an estimation of his fortune in monetary terms. in that romance, the courtly generosity of superiors suffices to satisfy the hero’s needs for consumption. When erec needs a new robe for his bride, he simply goes to the Queen and demands that enide be outfitted by the Queen herself. Guenevere agrees that enide’s noble lineage requires that she be better dressed, and immediately offers one of her own new gowns, “fresche et novele” (lines 1550–86). incidentally, the servant declares it is worth a hundred silver marks (lines 1635–7), which translates to a maximal abstract value as seen above. later, the lord Guivret similarly has robes made for the couple when they stay at his tower (lines 5223–37). in short, to get new clothes, erec manipulates the gift system. This arthurian world is fantastic, but it is noteworthy that this is a gift fantasy rather than a shopping fantasy.

Failure of the gift system

in other texts, such as marie de France’s lai Lanval (c. 1160–70) and a number of the anonymous lais with similar plots, the gift system is shown not functioning satisfactorily. Lanval opens at King arthur’s Pentecostal court, where the king has been generous to all his men except the eponymous hero, whom he has curiously neglected. Furthermore, no one has stepped up to mention the slight, since all the other knights are jealous of lanval’s looks, generosity and prowess (lines 5–26). as a result, the hero develops financial problems:

32 chrétien de Troyes, Erec et Enide, line 6545.


Fiz a rei fu, de halt parage,mes luin ert de sun heritage.de la maisniee le rei fu.Tut sun aveir a despendu;kar li reis rien ne li dona,ne lanval ne li demanda.33

he was son of a king, high born,But he was far from his inherited lands.he was part of the king’s household.all his wealth had been spent;For the king gave him nothing,nor did lanval ask anything of him.

arthur’s neglect is inexcusable: lanval is worthy to receive an income from the king, both in terms of his bloodlines and in terms of his courtly performance. The author highlights the mental as well as social toll that the financial diffi-culties take on the hero: “ore est lanval mult entrepris,/ mult est dolenz, mult est pensis” (now lanval is in a great predicament, greatly pained and greatly worried, lines 33–4). it is understood that to seek their fortunes, knights had to go abroad to find courts like arthur’s where they might achieve glory and thereby grow rich, but marie indicates that the system has broken down. Far from any renewable resources he might have at home, lanval can no longer maintain his status at court. in the Lai de Graelent, the hero, caught in a Potiphar’s-wife style predicament, suffers a similar quandary.34 he is obliged to serve his king at war, but due to the queen’s slander, the king withholds his compensation, and Graelent spends so much that he becomes impoverished, to that point that he must pawn his horse, effectively lowering his status from that of chevalier (lines 143–58). The status of these knights is further reduced in that they can neither shop for themselves, nor offer gifts to their companions to bind them in loyalty.

These representations are a significant critique of the gift system on their own, but marie goes a step further, warning her listeners that they could easily find themselves in lanval’s place:

seignur, ne vus en merveilliez:huem estranges, desconseilliezmult est dolenz en altre terre,quant il ne set u sucurs querre 35

my lords, don’t be surprised:a stranger without resourceshas great trouble in a foreign land,where he does not know where to seek help.

33 marie de France, Lais de Marie de France, lines 27–32.34 micha, Lais féeriques des XIIe et XIIIe siècles, pp.19–61.35 marie de France, Lais de Marie de France, lines 35–8.




This late twelfth-century text shows author and audience trying to imagine a new socio-economic system. The solution proposed is not necessarily a practical one from the standpoint of economic theory, but it is an attractive fantasy: wealthy and generous supernatural women fall in love with the impoverished heroes, take them as lovers, and provide them with funds and thereby status. Georges duby has suggested that these fabulous creatures are probably best understood as substitutes for the knight’s lost mother.36 While such a psycho-analytic view is possible, it could be argued there is more mention of money in these tales than of mothers. The economic critique they present is not merely incidental, but a response to a significant social problem. marie heightens the immediacy of the problem with the adverb “ore” (now, line 33) and the present tense of her asides: chivalric economic woes are contemporary, not problems of a distant past. This supports laurence harf-lancner’s broad argument that the fées of this literature, while obviously part of a movement integrating folkloric tales and motifs into the more clerical literary culture, were creations of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.37 The otherworldly lady intervenes to solve a contemporary problem.

These tales are laden with expressions of desire for personal consumption, and also the need for a noble method of acquiring it. lanval’s lady stuns and se-duces him with her soft, alexandrian purple clothing lined with ermine, and her bed, the hangings of which are worth an entire castle (lines 97–106). Graelent seizes a lady’s clothing while she is bathing, appreciating her fine figure; she turns the tables on his seizure, telling him he can sell her valuable mantel for coins, if he just returns the chemise (lines 237–8). although he is offended that she ascribes him such mercantile motives, he hardly refuses her coins later when they are offered without association with the marketplace. Besides simply needing coins to finance their lifestyles, knights face the additional challenge of needing to obtain them without demeaning themselves by counting them.

The knights pledge to become amis to their ladies with the promise to keep the love secret. as if love were not enough, these ladies additionally provide lavishly for their lovers’ chivalric spending habits.38 lanval’s lady offers him all the money he requires, provided that he spend it all generously:

Un dun li a duné aprés:ja cele rien ne vuldra mesque il nen ait a sun talent;doinst e despendre largement,ele li trovera asez.39

Then she gave him another gift:from then on he would have as much

36 duby, The Knight, The Lady and The Priest, p.223.37 harf-lancner, Les fées au Moyen Age: Morgane et Mélusine.38 see also the Lai de Desiré, lines 161–4, 249–52, in micha, Lais féériques.39 marie de France, Lais de Marie de France, lines 135–9.


as he could desire;let him give and spend freely,she will procure all that he needs.

What more perfect solution for the impoverished man of style? love provides all he could need to express his own taste, as well as enough to allow him to further extend his taste to gifts for his companions, assuring his social standing on three levels.

once the vows are taken, the lady’s servants take lanval and outfit him with new clothes. The narrator remarks that these made him look much better, like the “handsomest man in the world” (lines 173–6). Besides giving him horses and settling all his debts (lines 347–94), Graelent’s lady similarly provides “deniers e dras, or e argent” (coins and fine woolens, gold and silver, line 306), in short, the essentials for participation in a nascent fashion system. This texts directly fantasizes fulfillment of fashion system criteria 1, 3, 4, and 9. The image-enhancement here associated with new clothing is central to fashion’s logic: the new seduces. new clothes make the man, pleasing the generous lover as well as guaranteeing status at court. however, at this point in the later twelfth century, the effective way to imagine a man shopping for himself was to provide him with a wealthy fairy lover. more practical solutions were still to be worked out on the real economic level.

From grand sums to urban accounts

as the high middle ages progress, a greater sense of specificity about prices and income emerges. The contrast may be observed in two versions of the tale of a noble twin girl left in an ash tree bough who falls in love with a prince. in marie de France’s version, Le Frêne (c. 1160–70), it is specified simply that the girl was left wrapped in a rich medallion-patterned Byzantine silk with a ring weighing an ounce and containing a “jagonce” stone to finance her care (lines 121–31). Fresne, the foundling heroine of Galeran de Bretagne (c. 1195–1225),40 written a generation later, is left with 500 bezants of gold in her cradle for her upkeep (lines 490, 988, 7194) and an embroidered cloth which, when she considers pawning it to finance her journey, she estimates to be worth from 60 to 100 marks (lines 3980–1, 6595). The abbess, her caretaker, has spent all the bezants by the time the girl is nubile. We are given to understand that this is a noble amount of money, but not enough for twenty years of expenses as well as a dowry. The considerable increase in amplification on the practical matter of finances coincides with economic changes occurring over this period, such as increased use and availability of coins, and the possibility of expressing annual income needs in concrete monetary terms.

40 renart, Galeran de Bretagne.




When Fresne and Galeran finally do marry, for her dowry her newly redis-covered father, a landholder in Bretagne, proposes a forest, a thousand marks, and three of his castles. Galeran, now count of Bretagne, graciously refuses the dowry and proposes a dower instead (lines 7660–76). The heroine’s income is subordinate to the hero’s, but when she was penniless, there was no hope of marriage. income is not as important or treated with great detail when the hero of the romance is from the highest echelon of society, for Galeran as for others such as the young emperors conrad in Guillaume de Dole (c. 1209–28) or alexandre in Cligès (c. 1176), or the King of scotland in Philippe de rémi’s La Manekine (1225–29).41 For the young noble hoping to inherit, however, exact income sums become frequently employed descriptive elements in character development.

one of the most remarkable aspects of Jehan et Blonde (c. 1230–43) is its very exact depiction of the importance of money. Philippe de rémi gives precise and unexaggerated figures, in contrast with the “thousand marks” typical of earlier romances. This realistic cost-consciousness distinguishes the final wedding portrait of Blonde from other standard portraits of the genre.

atant fu Blonde apparillie:cote de drap d’or bien taillieavoit, et a son col mantel.Bien en valoient li tassel,mien escïent, quatorze mars.42

Then Blonde was dressed:she had a well-cut cote of cloth of gold,and a mantel at her throat.The whole outfit was worth,in my estimation, fourteen marks.

Besides dwelling on her radiance, the narrator very pragmatically observes that her set of clothes was worth fourteen marks. costly, but not in a fantastic way. narratively, the portrait serves to advertise the improvement in Jehan’s status by his marriage.43 This is particularly evident both in the narrator’s comment on the improvement of Blonde’s beauty wrought by her hairdresser’s skill (“s’estoient ja tout entrataint,/ Plus biaus que je ne devisai/ au premier, quant de li parlai,” now that [her hair] was all dressed, it was more beautiful than when i first described it earlier, lines 4721–2) and in the portrait’s inventory of the wealth represented by her toilette. Whereas many romance writers ornament such descriptions with similes amplifying the lady’s beauty (for

41 Philippe de rémi, Le Roman de la Manekine: on date, pp.83–91.42 Philippe de rémi, Jehan et Blonde, lines 4711–15.43 on Jehan’s strategic use of marriage customs to improve his status, Gouttebroze, “de

la stratégie matrimoniale.”


example, a “throat as white as snow”),44 Philippe de rémi focuses on the quality of workmanship that has contributed to producing her appearance. her hair is not fabulously golden or like a gleaming light: it was styled by a very skillful servant, “mie plains de perece” (not lazy in the least, lines 4716–19), whose work and presence at court is a sign of the couple’s new assets.

Blonde’s jeweled belt and bag were worth a hundred marks, again a significant figure, yet neither an astronomically mythical nor a vague one.

ele eut ausmosniere et çainture.en tant comme li siecles durene fust sa pareille trouvee:d’or et de pieres ert ouvree,et de pelles gros comme pois;qui la fist plus i mist d’un mois;cent livres, mien essïent, vaut.45

she had an alms purse and belt.never in the history of the agecould anything like it be found:it was worked in gold and precious stones,with pearls as big as peas;whoever made it must have taken a month;it was worth a hundred pounds, i wager.

Beyond the boasted expense in this example, the aumônière as a style is a highly significant accessory for this discussion of spending money. appearing in texts in the mid-twelfth century and in the iconography at the end of the century,46 these bags foregrounded the possession of coins, carrying them in richly decorated pouches hanging from a belt at the front of the robe, making spending money (or alms money, as one chose to use it) a centerpiece of the toilette. note that her bag was worth far more at a hundred pounds than her gown at fourteen marks.

Spending on companions

There are many examples of cost-conscious generosity throughout Jehan et Blonde, demonstrating the care with which the virtuous lord had to balance his attempts to win loyalty and his budget, in contrast with the fantastic, boundless means facilitating the generosity of lanval and Graelent. The count of oxford gives each of the twenty-four newly dubbed knights two hanaps or ornamented drinking cups, exactly ten marks, and new fur-lined scarlet robes

44 alice m.colby, The Portrait in Twelfth-Century French Literature, pp.23–88.45 Philippe de rémi, Jehan et Blonde, lines 4731–7.46 Goddard, Women’s Costume in French Texts, pp.35–6.




(lines 5398–405; 5618–19). all this exchange is shown as socially advantageous: both the young knights and the boatman mention their gratitude several times in fairly lengthy speeches, which demonstrates the power of largesse to improve a reputation in very short order.

in a clever moment, Jehan’s companion robin is disguised as a feverish man. he begs from Jehan’s rival’s men and manages to get exactly forty sous: a tidy income for a false beggar seeking to trick his “benefactor” out of an heiress.47 Given this context, when Jehan says to one of Gloucester’s men who was trying to take Blonde’s bridle and take her away, “vous mentés, se vous m’espee ne sentés,/ Ja ne me pris un denier” (You are lying. if you do not feel my sword i am not worth a penny, lines 4047–9), it has a sting of double meaning.

The Roman de la Rose ou Guillaume de Dole devotes a significant portion of its narrative to the system of euphoric generosity at the court of the emperor conrad, as michel Zink has oberved.48 ostensibly to enable displays of liber-ality, the emperor gives the hero Guillaume de dole very specific sums when he comes to court – 500 livres couloignois (of cologne) all in coins, deniers (lines 1896–7). later, conrad offers Guillaume a thousand marks to spend and give however he likes for the tournament. in contrast with the unlimited budgets granted to lanval, Graelent, and desiré, in Guillaume de Dole it is the budgetary parameters that are designed to represent impressive wealth. note that cologne was gaining wealth in this period through the manufacture of cloth and metal goods and as intermediary between Flemish producers and the German markets, becoming a center for the distribution of fashionable goods.49 The romance constructs a fantasy of realistically hyperbolic wealth in a setting where it could be fashionably appreciated. Yet the fantasy still involves dependence on a lord, and the generosity-based gift system regulates the mechanism of consumption.

Heroic income

The passages in Guillaume de Dole suggest an idea of how much cash was needed to finance a courtly event: several hundred to a thousand marks or pounds per special occasion. Jehan et Blonde depicts the importance of money for a young knight with a remarkable sensitivity to realistic detail. The text begins as Jehan is resolved to leave home to seek a fortune abroad, a necessity given his father’s reduced income:

47 “li quens douze esterlins li livre,/ et chascuns de ses chevaliers/ li donna d’argent sis deniers. lueques ne fu pas robins fox,/ Bien gaaigna quarante sols” (The count gave him twelve sterling, and each of his knights gave him six deniers of silver. robin was not a fool, he earned 40 sous, lines 3664–8).

48 Zink, Roman rose et rose rouge, pp.19–44.49 Bumke, Courtly Culture, pp.41–2, 63–4. Postan, Medieval Trade and Finance,

pp.154–6.


Tere avoit bien cinc cens livrees,se toutes fuissent delivreesde detes et d’assenemens.en sa joneche a fait despensPour les tournois k’il maintenoit,dont or volentiers s’aquitoit.50

his land income was 500 pounds a yearif it were all freeof debts and mortgages.in his youth he had made great expenditureson the tournaments he frequented,from which he would now rather be free.

When Jehan leaves he takes only “Un cheval, sans plus, bien portant,/ et vint livres tant seulement,/ et un garçon qui le siura” (a sturdy horse, nothing more, and only twenty pounds, and a valet who would follow him, lines 91–4). This is certainly not enough money to even get him to his first tournament: he needs an heiress. happily, he finds one in Blonde of oxford, and successfully absconds with her. in this, he resembles the hero of Le vair palefroi (late thirteenth century), whose small landholding was worth only 200 livres a year; but fortu-nately, his beloved was a “tres haute damoisele,” daughter of a “prince vaillant,” who had lands worth more than a thousand pounds a year, ensuring their financial viability.51 While still a fantasy economic scheme, marrying an heiress is a much more practical strategy than attracting a wealthy fairy. duby suggests that the marriage-driven romances of this period reminded listeners of ancestors from a century and a half earlier, when marriage customs allowed marginalized sons the possibility of increasing their status by capturing an heiress, offering a distorted memory of an earlier reality.52 The contemporary impossibility of such marriages supports the view that such stories represent social and economic fantasies, an attempt to dream a way out of spending requirements exceeding the ready supplies of cash.

When, at the end of Jehan et Blonde, King louis makes Jehan a knight and elevates the dammartin lands to the level of a county, this generosity is not left to vague description. Philippe is very specific that the king gave Jehan an income worth exactly six thousand pounds and more. moreover, the king gives him letters in which that was clearly spelled out and certified with the king’s own seal (lines 4979–95, 5011–16), establishing a guarantee of Jehan’s status. This kind of realistic, bureaucratic guarantee of income was not necessary to the narration in earlier or more fantastic romances. it is interesting that this income (and this is only his French holdings) is more than twelve times that

50 Philippe de rémi, Jehan et Blonde, lines 59–64.51 méjean-Thiolier and notz-Grob, Nouvelles courtoises occitanes et françaises, pp.504–

77. lines 72–88.52 duby, The Knight, the lady and the Priest, p.94.




of Jehan’s indebted father, who would have had to divide his aforementioned 500 pounds between two daughters and four sons.

in contrast, men not expected to live as knights, with the heavy equipment and social expenses that entailed, could live comfortably on much less. in order to gain the loyalty of the boatman who helps the escaping couple cross the channel ahead of the rival fiancé, Jehan pays him well, and further, in thanks for helping his daughter the count of oxford gives him enough to retire: fifty marks was enough to give him a comfortable living (lines 5472–87; 5529–35; 5625–8).

Income and changing clothes

Jehan put his faith in the signs of the increasing royal bureaucracy: the king’s official sealed letters. a fair amount has been made in the scholarship on this poem of the fact that Philippe de remi was a royal bailli, an administrator of the crown.53 autobiographical details aside, the specific sum of six thousand pounds in annual rente is particularly of interest because it is the income threshold given in the royal sumptuary law of 1294 at which nobles were allowed to have the greatest number of sumptuous clothing changes (four fur-lined robes, sets of gowns and mantels) per year:

4. item. li duc, li comte, li baron de six mille livres de terre, ou de plus, pourront faire quatre robes par an, et non plus, et les femmes autant.

[item. dukes, counts, barons having six thousand pounds of land [rent] or more will be allowed to make four robes a year, and no more, and the same for the women].54

Before his marriage and impressing the king, Jehan would not even have qualified to have three changes of clothes per year:

8. item. chevaliers qui aura trois mille livres de terre, ou plus, ou li bannerets pourra avoir trois paires de robes par an, ou li bannerets pourra avoir trois paires de robes par an, et non plus, et sera l’une de ces trois robes pour esté.

[item. a knight who has three thousand pounds of land [rent] or more, or a baronet, may have three pairs of robes a year, or a banneret may have three pairs of robes a year, and no more, and one of these three robes will be for summer].

53 see the essays in dufournet, Un roman à découvrir. Bastide, “Fin’amor et arrivisme dans le roman de Jehan et Blonde.”

54 Jourdan, decrusy, and isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, vol.2, pp.697–700.


he would have been relegated to the category of squires and sons of knights, obliged to wear only moderately priced fabrics:

19. les escuiers, fils de barons, banerets, et chastelains ne pourront avoir robes de plus grand pris de quinze sols tournois de Paris.

[squires, (who are) sons of barons, bannerets or castellans will not be allowed to have robes having greater worth than fifteen sous tournois of Paris].

at that rate, with the forty sous he tricked out of his rival Gloucester while disguised as a beggar, he might have been able to afford almost three aunes of wool cloth, possibly enough for a pair of chausses or a surcoat, but not sufficient for a full new set of robes. in 1279, the threshold given in the law of Philippe iii was seven thousand pounds of annual income for four fur-lined robes a year, which Jehan might have still been able to afford with his english possessions. it is worth cautioning that currencies were fluctuating at this time, and moreover that Jehan et Blonde was composed about a generation before these laws appear. But the importance of establishing and being known to have an income of so many thousand pounds can be seen in both literary and documentary sources.

in Flamenca (c. 1260–80), liberality is depicted in realistic and specific terms similar to those found in Jehan et Blonde. as the heroine Flamenca’s marriage is being arranged, her brother discusses the state of the family finances with her father, and they agree that there is enough in the treasury to fund the wedding in style – there is more than would be depleted in five years (lines 106–18). The father instructs him to be generous to increase his reputation: whoever asks you for a hundred sous, give him ten marks; whoever asks for five, give him ten (lines 131–2).

The specific contours of the hero Guillem’s fortune are laid out in even more explicit terms.

Quant fon cavalliers, non aviamas .Xvii. ans et .i. dia;le duc sos oncles l’adobet;.m. e .dXX. liuras li det,et autras .m. det l’en le reis,et autras .m. le coms de Bleis;.m. e .ccc. l’en det sos fraires;.m. marcs li done[t] l’emperaires.le reis engles fo sos cosins,e det li .m. marcs d’esterlins.Tot aiso fon de rend’acisaque no.s poc perdre nulla guiza.55

When he was made a knight he was onlya day older than seventeen;





his uncle the duke dubbed him;he gave him 1,700 pounds,and the king gave him another 1000,and the count of Blois another 1000;his brother gave him 1,300;the emperor gave him 1000 marks.The english king was his cousin,and he gave him 1000 pounds sterling.all of it was in rentand could not be lost in any way.

seven thousand pounds in guaranteed rent per year would place him in the highest income category specified by the sumptuary laws, and indeed he dressed in such a manner. With the promise of guaranteed rents and the illustriousness of the contributors, this is a fantasy fortune, to be envied by readers. however, the specificity of the conditions of the fortune suggests a reluctance to accept vague descriptions of “untold” riches. Knights – and readers – were watching their incomes in order to be able to keep up appearances. Guillaume, with all his largesse, is shown in many episodes as reckoning very carefully the worth of all the gifts he gives to his hosts and companions (see, for example, lines 3594, 3613, 3641, 3731). his is not fole largesse, but rather an efficiently reckoned purchase of attention and devotion.

The first burst of fashionable spending, as markets, trade, and technology opened up in the twelfth century, had depleted traditional fortunes and forced into existence a new mode of manly thinking, one that carefully tallied prices and necessary expenditures. consumption and accounting become less venal at the hands of the heroic lover, Guillem. The nascent fashion system necessitated new, more favorable portrayals of consumption and its exigencies.

The case against avarice and covetousness: cautioning the spendthrifts

romances in the style of chrétien de Troyes, from the last third of the twelfth century and later, glorified tournaments and other public spectacles of liberal spending and competitive consumption. outside the scenes of thrilling deeds, many works also show signs that young nobles were feeling the consequences of the social pressure to consume. These critiques of ostentatious living offer further suggestion of fashion’s presence, following criterion 8. in Erec et Enide, the poorly clad state of enide is blamed directly on the expenses her father incurred in tournaments, forcing him to mortgage and sell his goods and land (lines 510–20). Jehan et Blonde opens with the picture of the dire straits in which Jehan’s father’s tournament spending has left his sons (lines 49–82), and the narrator’s command to poor young knights to go abroad to seek their fortunes (lines 1–48). The fabliau villain Trubert preys on a knight, his lord’s nephew,


who was left naked and squireless by tournaments. Trubert gives him fine clothes, which lead to his death (lines 1539–647). in Guillaume de lorris’ Roman de la Rose, one noble young spendthrift willingly becomes the kept man of the figure of richece in order to maintain his taste for fine clothes, shoes, and horses (lines 1107–24). The vernacular literature, with varying levels of humor and invective, portrays the high stakes involved in the desire for impressive social consumption, in different critiques of the nascent fashion system that equally reveal the appeal of the system. There is often a direct link drawn between vestimentary and other types of display expenditure, and the bankruptcy of those whose noble lineage is at odds with their financial possibilities.

Jean de meun’s representation of the “chemin de Trop donner” (Path of excessive Generosity, lines 7855–930) illustrates allegorically the difficult choices offered the socially conscious, between the necessity of display and gifts and the consequences of consumption. excessive Generosity offers the lover an easier but ultimately more costly manner of “taking the castle” of Jealousy guarding the rose than the traditional military tactics ami recom-mends. The critiques reveal that ostentatious expenditure was seen as effective for gaining social standing, and also that the economic system lagged behind the need for expenditure. The insistence on the need to consider the long-term consequences of consumption suggests that the caution needed constant repetition: for many, spending was an urgent investment in personal status, overriding the awareness that making one’s living at tournaments, whose contests eliminated all but the best contestants and left all others naked, could not be a viable economic pursuit for the majority.

covetousness, convoitise, is held up in many texts of this period as a desire that ought to be repressed. if let run rampant, it was a vice liable to cause social ruin, as was the case among the Franks on the First crusade who were tempted to rape, pillage, or become traitorous by the lure of muslim riches.56

covetousness and avarice are frequently invoked in nostalgic laments for a more golden age. in one early example, Le Couronnement de Louis (c. 1133–66) opens on a tone of regret for the better days of charlemagne’s reign at aix, blaming the loss of rule of law on coveting: “lors fist l’en dreit, mais or nel fait l’en mais;/ a conveitise l’ont torné li malvais; / Por fals loiers remainent li buen plait” (in those days the law was upheld, but now it never is; evil people have debased it with their covetousness; deceitful bribes have overcome true justice, lines 34–6). This is hardly a fashionable kind of covetousness, showing desire for wealth and the attendant power on the part of those involved in judicial activities rather than desire for new clothes or displayable trappings.

although writers such as Jehan huizinga have noted an intense awareness of greed and avarice in the context of the new money economy of the later middle ages, sins which would lose their primacy in later centuries as they became accepted realities of capitalist culture, the denunciation of avarice was

56 heller, “Fashion in French crusade literature: desiring infidel Textiles.”




hardly new.57 as richard newhauser shows in his Early History of Greed, it was considered one of the foremost sins and a significant threat to the social order among the thinkers of the early church, and monastic writers both east and West in the early middle ages. representations of avarice then evolved through the high and late medieval periods, reflecting the changing concerns of the times. newhauser argues that avarice was poised to take on its later importance in the centuries of nascent capitalism because of the ample, established homiletic tradition.58

in contrast with the portrait of avarice in the Roman de la Rose of Guillaume de lorris discussed in chapter four, in which the figure refused to wear her new clothes before the old ones wore out, waiting ten years or more in matted old sheepskin instead of the vair furs hanging on the pole, most of the ecclesiasti-cally-produced portraits of avarice from late antiquity and the early middle ages do not focus on the vestimentary effects of the vice, or similar fashionable repercussions. reflecting an age of cataclysmic social disruption, cyprian shows the avaricious miser fearing robbers, obsessed with buried piles of money. hilary of Poitiers portrays a miser who fears only the loss of money, oblivious to friendship, religion, and honesty. arnobius the elder castigates the miser for litigating against friends and practising usury. maximus of Turin castigates his avaricious citizens for buying booty from the invading Germanic tribes, encour-aging the pagan forces of destruction.59 only Gregory of nyssa (335–94), a writer of cappadocia in eastern christendom, presents a portrait comparable to that of the Roman de la Rose, in which the usurer is shown setting a table without enough provisions, not granting his children the bare minimum to make their way in life, and, notably, not changing his clothes when necessary.60

For the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, anxiety centers less on the hoarding miser (although the figure in the Rose does clearly hoard) than the regrets of the spendthrift. The author of Flamenca stages an allegorical conversation between avoleza (lowness or vulgarity) and cobezesa (covetousness) during the wedding festivities. cobezesa says,

domna, que fas? vezes los beballar e danzar antre se?oi! oi! tot caira lur burban!Ges quec jorn non er sanz Johans.sadol so e trepon aora:so qu’il despendon autre plora.mais tal n’i a que.ns amaranenan d’u mes e planeranso ques aun ara despendut.61

57 huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages, pp.25–6.58 newhauser, The Early History of Greed.59 newhauser, The Early History of Greed, pp.16–17, 75.60 newhauser, The Early History of Greed, p.32.61 huchet, Flamenca, lines 753–61.


lady, what are you doing? do you seethem dancing round all together?ah! all their show will soon vanish!not every day is the feast of saint John.Today they drink and are merry:what one spends another will weep for.But there are those who will love usin a month and regretwhat they have spent now.

The narrator cynically observes how extravagance debases even merry and noble folks, turning them from their noble ideals and carefree spending towards want, poverty, and diminished social status. This passage, like other examples in this chapter, shows the underbelly of the growing need for courtly ostentation: the darker consequences of fashionable spending.

Étienne de Fougères’ Livre des manières, the earliest extant example of the genre of estates literature (c. 1174–78), addresses six different social stations.62 Étienne particularly focuses on avarice and covetousness as key problem areas with all but the peasants and women, further support for the contention that noble and clerical men were the primary fashion consumers in this period, rather than women. Kings are cautioned against avarice and “envie” in relation to preventing judicial corruption (lines 57–60), and preventing wars due to coveting land (lines 93–6). Bishops should not value deniers and rents over good judgment (lines 293–6, 313–16); similar advice is given to cardinals (lines 517–24). Knights should not neglect churches and almsgiving out of desire to spend their rents on themselves (lines 545–52, 629–32). Bourgeois merchants and minstrels should avoid the temptations of usury and false dealings motivated by covetousness (lines 805–52). The archbishops seem to be particularly prone to covetous spending, in Étienne’s view, as he warns them not to borrow money to keep impressive horses (lines 413–14), when they should instead be educating clerics to the extent that their incomes allow (lines 421–28). From that emphasis on consumption among archbishops, Étienne moves to generalize more broadly about spending in a passage worth examining in closer detail:

Bobanz de secle est chose enposte,hom mesurez s’en geite et oste .. .chascuns deit esmer et entendrecombien se pout sa rente estendre;segunt ce deit metre et despendre,Qu’il n’enprunt qu’il ne peise rendre.63

Worldly ostentation is a deceitful thing,a moderate man rejects and resists it . . .

62 Étienne de Fougères, Le Livre des manières.63 Étienne de Fougères, Le Livre des manières, lines 433–4, 437–40.




everyone must estimate and reckonhow far he can stretch his income;thus he must portion and spend it,not borrowing more than he can repay

such advice will hardly seem revolutionary to the modern reader, who on the contrary might read it as the banal sort of lecture children get when asking for an increased allowance. however, these practical words mark a departure from the virtue of generosity necessary in a gift culture where personal spending is not possible. This treatise suggests a society where the key vices were not those associated with hoarding, but with the need to learn moderation in acquisition and spending. Étienne’s insistence on limiting the recourse to credit is an all-too-modern theme. The “new” vices of the high middle ages, such as avarice and coveting, are not really new at all, but they do reflect a different – and expanding – set of options for sin and social troubles. men’s fashionable spending was becoming an important temptation, as was the manipulation of rents and credit in order to facilitate it.

Aventure

another key term for the discussion of representations of spending money in the vernacular literature of the long thirteenth century is aventure, an important descriptor in general for this literature, one present in many works, yet one whose varied meanings have proven difficult to fully comprehend. many of the texts discussed in this chapter have been associated with aventure. Gaston Paris included works such as Jehan et Blonde, Floire et Blancheflor, l’Escoufle, the Roman de la Violette, and Galeran de Bretagne in his classification of the “roman d’aventure,” which he defined as a narration whose main subject was love, a fantastic fiction without historical pretensions. he contrasts it with the “national epic” genre by, among other things, its colorful description of manners and objects from daily life. he believed these details were designed to attract a growing feminine readership, a contention open to debate given that men were more engaged in spending than women. in keeping with the modern sense of the word “adventure,” Paris limited the genre to plots involving fortu-itous events.64 Georges matoré, in his study of medieval vocabulary, similarly limits the word to the deeds of errant knights “seeking adventure” in fantastic, magical quests in the style of chrétien de Troyes.65 however, both Paris and matoré struggle with the correspondence between actual word use and the genre they each delimit. matoré found it astonishing that the word was used so infre-quently, only a handful of times in chrétien’s romances. Paris passed over the contradiction that while his term “roman d’aventure” is never used to designate

64 Paris, “Études sur la litterature du moyen age: le roman d’aventure.”65 matoré, Le vocabulaire et la société médiévale, pp.185–7.


the kind of romance he describes, the term aventure appears in connection with genres he excludes from adventure, such as chansons de geste, lais, and fabliaux. erich Köhler studied aventure as a key element of the individual knight’s search for identity, following hegel’s interpretation of romantic art as representing a struggle between the individual and society, where aventure would signify the knight’s struggle against the magical forces that constantly trouble his world and his quest for happiness.66 Philippe ménard saw in the term a crucial and “immense” problematic for understanding arthurian literature, and interpreted it as associated with peril and chance.67

michael nerlich has critiqued the narrow field matoré, Köhler, and ménard assign to the word, returning to the dictionaries of Friedrich diez, emile littré, Wilhelm meyer-lübke, Frédéric Godefroy, Walther von Wartburg, and adolf Tobler and erhard lommatzsch to draw attention to the far wider scope aventure held before what he calls the “ideology of adventure” caused an irreparable shift in understanding.68 Those philological works show the most common uses of the word to have pertained to the realm of finance and mercantile speculation, rather than daring deeds or unexpected events. For instance, Godefroy’s primary definition for the word is “droit éventuel,” with seven examples employing the legal language of monetary land rights, taxes, and payments. a second definition is “produit éventuel,” connoting an expected yield of agricultural produce.69 The word was also associated with the risky, long-distance investment ventures of merchants, as Gilles le muisis explains in the mid-fourteenth century: “marchéans s’aventurent par pays, par contrées;/ Par mer sont et par tiere marchandises menées .. . Tous temps sont en peril, pau sont asseurées” (merchants adventure through lands and countries; they transport merchandise by sea and by land .. . they are in peril at all times, with little security).70 The present author would argue, after nerlich, that the word deserves reconsider-ation, especially with regard to its economic associations. ménard did recognize the existence of certain economical and commercial senses of the word, but does not reflect their connection to arthurian literature. Köhler recognized that economic tensions between different ranks of nobles and their incomes existed within the chivalric world, and that such tensions were probably due to the rapid monetary evolution of the late twelfth century, from which chivalric literature emerged.71 Aventure should be understood as part of the social and economic changes of the burgeoning fashion system, connoting the efforts and risks undertaken by a character in need of economic gain that would allow him to become a functioning consumer. Texts labeling themselves aventures

66 Köhler, L’aventure chevalresque, pp.77–102.67 ménard, “Problématique de l’aventure dans les romans de la table ronde.”68 nerlich, “Quand l’histoire des idées s’aventure.”69 Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, s.v. “aventure.”70 “c’est des marchéans,” Gilles li muisis, Poésies, vol.2, p.57. see also nerlich,

“Quand l’histoire des idées s’aventure,” p.350.71 Köhler, L’aventure chevalresque, pp.83–5.




feature fictional attempts to solve the social problem of the need for spending money and the displayable products it affords. as such, they become part of the creation and perpetuation of the fashion system.

Lanval is exceptional among marie’s Lais, from the central character’s oddly unidentifiable name, to the way that it is identified as “l’aventure d’un autre lai (the aventure of another lai, line 1)” rather than an ancient story the author knows, as generally occurs among the others. Graelent and Desiré are similarly termed aventures (line 1 and line 2, respectively). as Jeff rider has observed, Lanval is an excellent example of how some romances used otherworldly inter-ventions to bring to light faults in the society in need of correction, in this case arthur’s lapse of benevolence.72 i would go further to say that these are aventures partly because they represent impoverished knights in need of financial, social, and emotional support in order to function in fashionable court society. Paris and others have concentrated on how aventure involves love and marriage, in opposition to the adulterous situations of courtly love, and Jacques de caluwé has similarly concentrated on how stories such as these anonymous lais feature the realization of the eternal desire to find pleasure without sin in sexuality.73 This is not the only desire that “aventures” fulfill: marriage might provide love and a legitimate outlet for sexuality, but in the case of many of these stories, marriage to a lady of superior rank also provides wealth, increased status, and improved appearance.

not only does marie de France imagine lanval’s difficult financial situation and a solution for it, she figures her persona in it as another kind of courtly figure in need of recognition and ultimately, remuneration, both when she warns her audience that they could easily fall victim to lanval’s difficult financial situation in a foreign land (lines 35–8, examined earlier), and when she includes “dressing the jongleurs” among the manifestations of his generosity (line 211). as Glyn Burgess has noted, it seems she identifies with lanval.74 Beyond the topoi of courtly fiction, there are suggestions of a reality in which knights and poets alike held precarious financial positions in a system poised between a gift economy dependent on the largesse of lords, and a new economy requiring personal coin income. michel stanesco observes that aventure derives from the future participle of the latin verb advenire, but rather than being a prominent feature of classical latin, it was the creation of the youthful French language.75 a new substantive for new situations, in short. constructed on a verbal structure connoting futurity, it bespeaks hope for improved conditions.

The chivalric romance tradition has received the lion’s share of attention with regard to aventure, distorting the term’s use among a variety of contemporary genres, where the word is less associated with the marvelous and more with the means of gaining a fortune. Girart de Vienne (c.1180), a chanson de geste

72 rider, “The other worlds of romance,” pp.118–20.73 de caluwé, “l’autre monde celtique et l’élément chrétien dans les lais anonymes.”74 Burgess, The Lais of Marie de France, p.20.75 stanesco, D’armes et d’amours, p.55.


described as an aventure, (lines 107, 323), opens on the portrait of an impover-ished noble family. They have only a loaf of bread to share between them and no salted meat or wine, dwelling in a fortress reduced to a single mule, one charger, and three lances and shields (lines 118–27).76 in contrast with the conscientious narrator of Jehan et Blonde who cautions against impoverishment due to tournament spending, this family blames their poverty on the persecutions of the evil saracen king sinagon (lines 150–8). The boys go out exploring one day with the aforementioned spears and shields, and spying a merchant’s treasure-laden mules, they strike him dead and bring home the wealth. Their father embraces them for the good deed, which has made the family “menant et asazee/ de bons deniers et de meinte denree” (well off and wealthy in good coins and merchandise, lines 280–1). he gives thanks to God, never chiding them for the moral misdeeds of theft and murder, which are not mentioned. The new wealth allows the young men to leave to “seek honor” (and their fortunes) by conquering foreign countries (lines 299–303). The monetary gain of the first aventure, the seizure of the merchandise, leads on to further aventure as the hero conquers lands, takes a wife who is his social superior – the daughter of a duke – and brings forth a dynasty of heroes (lines 322–9).

an even more morally questionable but profitable form of aventure is found in Trubert, a fabliau from the second half of the thirteenth century, a point when it can be read in light of an established fashion system.77 The peasant Trubert represents an anti-hero, the antithesis of spendthrift knights as well as economically savvy bourgeois merchants. as such, the story critiques the fashion system that was in place. Trubert realizes that his badly dressed sister has no chance of marriage unless she has a pelisse (lines 22–5), so he goes to market to sell a heifer to furnish her wardrobe. a butcher, seeing the heifer is worth twenty sous, offers ten for it, which the naïve and inexperienced Trubert readily accepts (lines 34–43). Trubert then sees a goat he desires, for a price of five sous. The seller kindly helps him with his addition, explaining that five sous is not fifteen-twenty but three-twenty (five times twelve is sixty). The fabliau opens on this tone of ridiculously bad bargaining skills. From there, with his goat, Trubert makes his way into the city, “par aventure guile,” a curious adverbial locution that encapsulates the contradictions of this character: he appears to be accidentally guileful, but he is also a deceitful adventurer, in search of gain by all fraudulent means possible. admiring the work of a painter, he has his goat polychromed. The painter asks for three sous, but Trubert again proves his poor mathematical skills by paying him three-times-twenty deniers, which is to say five sous (lines 97–115). When the duchess of Burgundy admires the goat and wishes to buy it, he names a price of five sous – not calculating the goat’s embellishment in its value – but additionally asks for “un foutre,” sexual favors which the lady initially refuses, later to grant. When her

76 Bertrand de Bar-sur-aube, Girart de Vienne.77 douin de lavesne, Trubert.




husband returns, she quickly turns Trubert out with his goat and a chest containing at least ten pounds of Paris and chartres coins (lines 209–16), leaving him free to sell his goat a second time to the cuckolded duke, and initiating him into a perverse means of profit: defrauding his noble lord. numerous further schemes ensue, involving disguises, gratuitous violence, and greater and greater financial gain. Trubert is a sinisterly comic inversion of a chivalric “adventure,” and its humor plays on the coping skills required in both handling money and appreciating it. Trubert’s vendetta against the duke begins when, disguised as a carpenter, he is entertained by the duke at the castle, offering him new robes and a luxurious bedchamber (“bele et cointe”) whose comfortable bed gives the vilain insomnia (lines 568–93). The humor depends on an audience that can imagine a character rural and sheltered enough to be immune the urban world’s temptations to consume. Trubert is impervious to fashion, coveting comically obscure things that refute the logic of social imitation of criterion 3. he lacks the basic arithmetic to survive among crafty merchants, yet is able par aventure quickly to learn the guile to amass signif-icant wealth. Trubert is an anti-hero because he amasses wealth easily in a world where many of his more ostensibly deserving social superiors had diffi-culty doing that, and because in his guile he elects to subvert the fashion system, rendering meaningless the ostentatious trappings of status (polychrome, clothing, bed) by not following the social imperative to admire and covet them.

The chanson de geste known as Huon de Bordeaux (c. 1260–68) serves as an excellent example both of possible profit-related connotations of aventure, and of the economic tensions that have been the focus of this chapter.78 The orphaned huon, inheriting his father’s status as one the of the twelve “peers” of France, is promised rentes of three thousand pounds a year by charlemagne, in exchange for service at court on three holidays and military service when requested by sealed letters (“per saiaus et per brief,” lines 301–3), which charlemagne vows to increase by two thousand pounds (lines 486–8) if huon comes to the Paris court to bring tribute in recognition of the inherited fief. Through the machinations of the treacherous amaury, huon incurs charlemagne’s anger and is exiled, allowed to return only upon fulfilling an impossible mission to the emir Gaudisse, far across the red sea. along his way, relating how since he has lost his lands he must seek his fortune (“aventure quere,” line 2666) he meets a prince who tells him a belle aventure of how his duke banished him from his lands when he killed a noble, but when the duke died, his friends helped restore his lands and wealth to him (lines 2671–6). The aventure in this passage is not a magical quest, but a story of a lost fortune regained. it calls for audience sympathies similar to those evoked in Lanval, creating multiple worthy but dispossessed characters, victims of a precarious system of income distribution, who assist one another in regaining social and economic standing.

78 Kibler and suard, Huon de Bordeaux.


huon explains several times that the only reason he left France was to seek “aventure” (lines 4637, 4736). it would be easy to read such statements in terms of a modern understanding of the adventure genre, referring to incredible challenges and adrenaline-producing trials. huon, however, is no glutton for punishment. The challenges make him break down and weep. The only aventure he seeks is an income and a place in his culture of origin. auberon the fairy befriends him and gives him a number of magic objects that huon realizes will prove useful tools in achieving further good fortune. huon pronounces this meeting and these gifts a “belle aventure” (line 3817), a fortuitous gain. Aventure can connote a broad variety of tools, experiences, and events that promise future spending money, status, and standing.

scholars such as mario Bastide and Faith lyons saw price-consciousness and attention to details of consumption as part of the enbourgeoisement of romance.79 lionel Friedman criticized the commonplace treatment of the Roman de la Rose which classifies the misogynist discourses of ami and la vieille as “bourgeois realism,” but in suggesting that “the caroling women of the thirteenth century bear a strange resemblance to the corybants of the fourth,” 80 he passed over the amplifications and particularly the cost-consciousness that sets these scenes in the Rose apart from patristic antifeminist writings. moreover, the texts considered in this chapter should suggest that price-consciousness and consumption were not limited to romance, but rather as issues of emerging social tensions are the focus of narrative experiments across a variety of genres. The term “bourgeois realism” is inappropriate, especially inasmuch as these texts neither depict nor are explicitly directed towards one particular class. in place of the “enbourgeoisement” theory, the notion of a growing fashion system better accounts for what was going on in passages showing concern for spending and display. The desire to spend on up-to-the-moment display, and anxiety about the consequences of excessive spending and extravagant display, emerge from several status groups. They reflect fashion’s logic of competitive, conspicuous consumption and theatri-cality. economy plays an important role in the fantasies that these texts offer. speaking of money becomes banal, or worse, taboo for anyone aspiring to the higher classes, in later periods, once it has become common. here fantasies of spending money are far from banal: these texts represent an attempt to work out a new kind of life for a new kind of hero.

79 Bastide, “Fin’amor et arrivisme dans le roman de Jehan et Blonde,” p.8; lyons, Les éléments descriptifs dans le roman d’aventure, p.140.

80 lionel J.Friedman, “’Jean de meung,’ antifeminism and ‘Bourgeois realism’.”



6

The development of shopping

Lors l’enmainne en sa cambre droit.Ore a tou cou que desiroit:

La pora veïr ses juiausEt eslire tous les plus biaus.

Then she leads him straight into her chambers.now she has all she desired:

there she will be able to see his jewels,and select all the most handsome ones.

Le Roman du Castelain de Couci, lines 6648–51.

in a fashion system, economic and social structures must be in place to permit and promote the frequent acquisition of new things. But fashion systems function both at the macro-economic and personal levels. how does a system for acquiring new things come about in a nascent fashion system? French vernacular literature sets up many situations in which new clothes are admired or received. But crucial to a fashion system is an economy where it is possible for more than just a narrow elite to consume new things expressive of personal tastes on a regular basis. how and where did one get new clothes in the thirteenth century, when desire for them is in evidence? although characters rarely “go shopping” in medieval French romances, the acquisition of new garments by gift is a common element from the earliest vernacular works, as discussed in the previous chapter. When new things are required characters often “have them made” (fet faire), an activity expressed using a causative construction that suggests we should not imagine “window shopping” but rather a process of ordering garments through various artisans. The used clothing system (freperie) provided valuable services to patrons of all ranks, converting clothing into cash as well as supplying “ready-made” garments. This chapter will compare anecdotes of acquisition in vernacular literature with documents such as tax and métier (craft organization) records to show some of the facets of medieval “shopping.” The former provide representations of various types of consumers, while the latter can offer an impression of the other side of shopping, that of the purveyors.


The marketplace: who shops, and how

The accepted view of medieval and early modern fashion holds that trends were initiated by the highest aristocracy, and then adopted gradually through the social ranks in descending order. Burghers imitated the courtly nobility, and eventually urban trends penetrated the countryside. innovation belonged to the elite, and excesses were the “caprices of a minority.” 1 however, the actual process of selection and purchase was not frequently portrayed by contempo-raries as an occupation of medieval elites. on the contrary, selection and purchase seems to have been relegated to specific servants, or members of the bourgeoisie. The process of choice, distinction, and imitation is more complex than the top-down formula allows.

Beroul’s Tristan (c. 1155–87?) provides one of the earliest vernacular images of shopping, done not by the protagonists but through a surrogate, in this case the sympathetic hermit ogrin.2 Tristan and Yseut, after a period as fugitives, arrange a truce with King marc through ogrin, and resolve to part. The hermit, apparently seeing that it was the necessary thing to do, goes to mont st michel of cornwall “por les richeces qui la sont” (for the rich goods that are there, line 2706) to fashion an outfit for Yseut that will reassert her dignity at court. one might imagine that the lovers would have difficulty appearing in public since they are exiled, but there is no question of them shopping for themselves: it is all of ogrin’s devising. he buys a great deal, and bargains skillfully (“tant achate/ et tant acroit et tant barate,” lines 2713–14), managing to assemble a wardrobe comprising vair and miniver fur, scarlet woolens, cloth of silk and dark purple, white linen, and a palfrey harnessed in gleaming gold (lines 2707–12). When she is dressed, the narrator comments that the hermit did not regret what he paid for it all (lines 2852–9). his shopping for her is a satisfying political and pious act, delivering the lovers from the sin of adultery, reuniting the king with the queen and bringing peace to the court. The noble protagonists do not deal with money, merchants, or transactions in this passage, nor do they select their own clothes. They entrust selection to the hermit, who proves an effective stylist. although the criteria for a fashion system emphasize personal choice, it should be acknowledged that many of fashion’s highest elites even today have recourse to a professional stylist, dresser, costumer, or valet for staging a theatrical appearance.

alexander the Great, in the Roman d’Alexandre (after 1180), shows desire to shop, but rather than do so directly he disguises himself as a chambellan, a steward or treasurer. he accepts a truce with the oriental king Porus on the condition that Bactrian merchants bring in merchandise and sell it at a good price (branch iii, lines 1518–19). The use of disguises is a common trope of the alexander material, but the details offered in this particular case are

1 Boucher, 20,000 Years of Fashion, p.179.2 Payen, Tristan et Yseut.



instructive. To counterfeit a chambellan’s appearance, he sets aside his royal robes (line 1533), and looks “like a mendicant, in his worn clothing” (line 1609). he mounts a slow and reluctant mule instead of a noble charger, on a bad saddle with pieced-together, knotted stirrups (lines 1534–44, 1607–8). Porus offers him wax, cakes, and wine without charge (lines 1552–4) in exchange for carrying a letter to alexander for him. The narrative intent of the disguise is espionage, not a shopping fantasy. however, alexander does offer the audience the pleasure of a bargain. The scene illustrates one set of expecta-tions for a royal shopper in the later twelfth century: he will be a servant, wearing distressed clothing, on an inferior mount, but confident in his ability to provide fine things to suit his master’s tastes.

additions to the William of orange cycle feature several episodes where warrior heroes are transported into the merchant milieu to comic effect. in Les Enfances Vivien (c. 1200–25) 3 the noble christian boy vivien is kidnapped by pirates and sold to a saracen merchant couple. They dress him well in imported silks and stuffs that flatter his biologically noble figure (lines 871–3, 881–7), as discussed in chapter 4. The adoptive father gives him some money to go out and learn to bargain. vivien hints at the future battle of aliscans where he will kill saracens relentlessly despite fifteen wounds when, as a child, he dreams of nothing but the noble activities of hunting and combating the infidel. he sees a horse and, following his noble instincts, must have it. he asks the owner its price: 50 sous. vivien says he has 100 sous in his purse, and that the horse is worth all that and his brand new ermine-lined mantel besides. When he goes home to brag about his “bargain,” his adoptive father despairs of the boy’s merchant potential, declaring the lame horse worth only five sous (lines 935–96). The point is made that knights belong on horses, not among the market stalls.

similarly playing on the theme of a noble hero’s comically poor head for arithmetic, in Le Moniage Guillaume (late twelfth century), William of orange, turned monk, is sent to buy fish at market for the monastery. The abbot gives him ten pounds, more than enough for the errand. When Guillaume opens his chest to pay the fishmongers, he finds counting the coins too much trouble, so he throws them out generously by the handful. The merchants approve, blessing the cleric who has no interest in haggling. William refuses to bargain with them, having no desire to argue over money with peasants.4 This illustrates a perceived class divide with regard to commercial transactions.

The extremes of the social scale, both the highest barons and also the lowest vilains, were often expected to be incompetent in the marketplace. The fabliau of Trubert, discussed in the previous chapter, is one example where a rustic was portrayed as too dimwitted to make tasteful selections or bargain wisely.

3 magali rouquier, Les Enfances Vivien. This editor does not date the work more precisely than to the thirteenth century. Given the use throughout of the term bliaut, (see note 40, ch.3), i suggest dating it to the first quarter of the century.

4 andrieux-reix, Le Moniage Guillaume, lines 1027–37.



in “du vilain asnier,” a hopelessly rural manure merchant accustomed to the “country perfumes” of his merchandise faints when he is overcome upon exposure to the rich and costly scents of the montpellier spice market.5

narrative instances of noblemen entering the marketplace are rare, particu-larly in texts prior to the middle of the thirteenth century, and often exploit ironic juxtaposition for humorous purposes rather than presenting realistic scenarios. more often shopping is done through intermediaries, usually servants of rank, such as alexander’s chambellan. in the Roman du Comte d’Anjou (1316),6 the count of Bourges sends his seneschal to buy things for his marriage: brunette and scarlet woolens, cloth of gold, silk and brocade from Tartary, vair and ermine fur, a coach painted in arms of blue and gold with five strong horses, and also english, German and hungarian palfreys with fashionable (cointe) saddles and harnesses. he instructs the seneschal not to count the cost (lines 2729–48). The shopping list is composed by the count, employing general categories for textiles, colors, furs, and horses, but demanding no specific distinctive details. he sets high expectations for quality without specifying what he might reject as inferior, evidently trusting the servant to satisfy him. The work of discernment – such as which brunette or scarlet is the best among those available, knowing which draper deals in the best quality or most exotic stuffs, deciding what quantities to order, and determining what funds will be exchanged – is trusted to the seneschal, whose job description here has evolved from the oldest (latin senex) servant in the household to the lord’s surrogate for taste.

examples of noble women entering markets are more rare than those of men, suggesting the highly circumscribed place they held in the fashion system. in one case, the woman’s aristocratic identity is concealed in order that she may do so, although her beauty and demeanor betray it. The noble heroine of the Roman du Comte d’Anjou survives by her embroidery during a difficult interlude in orléans, sending the bourgeois widow with whom she and her companion are staying to the market when silk and provisions are needed (lines 1340–56). The heroine and her companion avoid appearing in public partly because they are fugitives from the incestuous desire of the girl’s father (lines 1074–6). They also stay out of the streets to protect their virtue, since even venturing out to attend mass they become targets for the attention of lascivious urban men, who imagine that a pretty embroideress would be willing to engage in casual prostitution if coerced, offered twenty pounds or lover’s gifts such as aumonières and robes (lines 1702–800). The didactic tone of the narration emphasizes how dangerous the streets could be for attractive and unprotected women. The narrative also shows that by the early fourteenth century, young tradesmen of a town such as orléans saw shopping for luxury items and gowns

5 ménard, Fabliaux français du Moyen Age, vol.1, pp.19–20.6 maillart, Le Roman du comte d’Anjou.

The develoPmenT oF shoPPinG 151



to share with women as a possibility open to them, and relatively easily managed.

romances occasionally portray a less threatening type of shopping experience. merchants of luxury goods would enter noble homes, allowing the ladies of the house or members of the court a more private encounter with a selection of items. exploiting this practice, several romances feature lovers who disguise themselves as mercers or other merchants in order to visit their ladies. There is obvious word play in this period between such merchants’ “jewels” (juiaus), meaning the accessories such as pins, belts, and bags exchanged by lovers and the pleasures (joies) lovers enjoy (jouir) together. The motif is probably derived from the tradition of Tristan’s beggar, leper, and merchant disguises. as danielle Buschinger observes, such descriptions are part of the rehabilitation of the merchant’s status, which before the later twelfth century had been reviled, scorned for not creating anything (as man was intended to do in God’s image) and associated with the taboo on money.7 in Jakemes’ Roman du Châtelain de Couci et de la Dame de Fayel (late thirteenth or early fourteenth century), the eponymous castellan takes up a mercer’s basket and staff to enter his lady’s company, following her instruction.8 The disguise is successful: when the cuckolded husband, the lord of Fayel, meets him on the road towards the manor, he instructs him to head directly to Fayel, and expresses hope that the mercer will have some pretty objects to suit the lady or their court (“espoir as tu aucun juiel/ Qui faura no dame ou no gent”, lines 6613–16).

The profession of mercery was ambiguous and varied, as anne sutton has shown, and in the broadest sense could comprise any kind of merchandise.9 in later thirteenth-century France, many mercers sold “pretty objects,” according to texts such as this and the craft statutes of Paris, which regulate the types of silk, gold, silver, and pearls to be used in a wide variety of accessories: bags, fine hats, hair ribbons (treçons, intertwined with the hair through braiding), pins to fasten necklines, trim for necklines and hemlines. as lespinasse and Bonnardot remarked, this type of commerce belonged essentially to the “domain of fashion.” 10 The selection of attractive, novel ornaments they offered and often advertised as potential love gifts corresponds to criteria 1–5 and 9. mercers offered affordable novelty, a means of achieving the satisfaction of consuming something new without the expenditure of ordering new garments. They offered direct access to consumption, something the more complicated and time-consuming garment ordering process did not.

in contrast with earlier epic warriors with no head for bargaining, the disguised castellan de couci bargains with the lady in the presence of her

7 Buschinger, “l’image du marchand dans les romans de Tristan en France et en allemagne.”

8 Jakemes, Le roman du castelain de Couci et de la dame de Fayel.9 sutton, “The silent Years of the london Guild history before 1300.”10 Étienne Boileau, Le livre des métiers, ed. lespinasse and Bonnardot, pp. lxxvii,

157–9.


household, and then with a number of individuals in turn. The narrator indicates he learned how to haggle in order to appear convincing in his disguise (lines 6695–705). mercantile bargaining is here again not construed as behavior familiar or instinctive to a knight, although it is noteworthy that the lady and her courtiers prove adept at it as consumers.

similarly, in Froissart’s Meliador (c. 1383–88) the hero disguises himself as a merchant. The plot is hatched upon the urging of the hero’s clever servant lansonnet, to allow an encounter with the heiress hermondine, for whom he was engaged in quests of bravery but had never met.11 lansonnet explains that this will be the perfect disguise because ladies and maidens are normally thrilled when jewelers come to their castles and manors with rings, brooches, and pins, and give them an eager welcome into their homes (lines 11944–55). When they visit the goldsmiths of aberdeen to buy their “merchandise,” it is lansonnet who does the shopping. meliador stays out of the marketplace, waiting for him (lines 11985–96). lansonnet also arranges the jewels in a display box of white wood, which makes them look even finer (lines 12002–12). in both of these cases, the nobleman depends on others to instruct and guide him in how to be a merchant, lacking experience or intuitive aptitude for the activity.

in Meliador, the hero must penetrate several levels of intermediaries in order to show his “jewels” to hermondine. he engages his hostess to give him an introduction and spread the word that a merchant is coming. she goes straight to the castle and speaks to a chambermaid, who upon hearing of the quality of his merchandise instructs him to come in the morning. meliador credits this hostess with gaining him entry, and rewards her generously (lines 12076–127, 12144–50). he also gives the porter a ring (line 12163). once inside, he must insist on seeing the lady of the house herself, as initially three young ladies of her court wish to see his wares (lines 12199–210). Finally the servant argentine escorts him into the heiress’s presence.

meliador tells her it is the jeweler’s custom to offer a gift to clients before they buy. This is a convenient way to give her a particular ring transmitted to her by her cousin in this particular narrative, but it may reflect a more common custom rooted in the gift culture; such “lagnappe” 12 still exists in some places today. similarly in L’Escoufle (c. 1200–02), after the displaced heroine has established her reputation for making embroidered belts and bags among the bourgeoisie of montpellier (she boasts one evening that there could hardly have been three women of any wealth in the town who had not bought her goods, lines 5538–42), she seeks to gain entry to the court by making a matching belt and bag set ornamented with the baron’s arms (lines 5546–699). This method is successful, and she is invited to stay at the court, paid in fine clothing and tableware, and receives further rich commissions. as in Meliador, she first must

11 longnon, Méliador, par Jean Froissart.12 something given as a bonus, for example a free gift from a tradesman.




penetrate the young ladies and men of the court, but in her case her astonishing beauty serves as the recommendation attracting their attention (lines 5592–612).

in contrast, since the lady of Fayel was manipulating the ruse, she was not interested in sending servants in her stead. she makes a show of telling her household that she wishes to be alone with the merchant to see his jewels, and to choose all the most handsome ones (“eslire tous les plus biaus,” line 6651), although she lets them bargain with him later after she has made her selections. in all three cases, the lady of the house wields the most significant monetary power and expects the privilege of first choice if she wants it, but a household of servants and courtiers is ready to buffer her from direct contact with the merchant, as well as enjoy the pleasures of perusing, selecting, and bargaining for themselves.

The representations of the disguises offer insight into elite stereotypes of the merchant class, although since disguise is the primary intent these should be taken as exaggerations of how merchants might have been expected to look. The castellan de couci puts on a cloak of rough grey cloth, a ragged old cap, laced-up shoes, and discolors his face (lines 6579–92). it can be inferred that the humble appearance of his disguise is designed to protect him from being recog-nized by her husband. The description does imply that a shabbily dressed mercer could expect to gain entrance into a noble household. in contrast with the castellan of couci’s threadbare attire, meliador and lansonnet put on black, “deeply-pleated” robes (“cotes a plois larges et grans,” lines 11937, 12024, in the fourteenth-century fashion) and laced-up shoes (line 12045). lansonnet tells meliador to arrange his clothing in such a way to adopt a stooped posture, and since his hands are too white to belong to a commoner, he procures dye to darken them (lines 12036–45, 12166). Froissart’s caricature of a merchant is less tattered than Jakemes’, perhaps suggesting some evolution in the popular notion of the prosperity of the commercially employed, but in both cases, the stress of mercantile work and status is expected to be clearly marked on the body.

The “dit du mercier,” a poem from the later thirteenth or early fourteenth century in a genre that imitated the “advertising” cries of merchants, offers an unusual glimpse of the ambulant mercer’s clientele, as well as his varied merchandise.13 in contrast with the romances discussed above, the mercer-narrator of the poem does not seem to be addressing intermediaries, for the most part. he spends most of the poem enumerating the contents of his basket, linking objects to the clients to whom he would normally sell them. his clientele crosses the social spectrum: handsome gloves for “little young noble ladies” (damoise-letes, line 10), veils for nuns (line 39), silver and brass pins for noble ladies (gentix femes, line 47), kerchiefs for ladies (dames, line 48), laced coiffes for maidens (puceles, line 50), hats with birds and flowers for young noble men (damoiseax, 53), hats of hemp for peasants (vilains, line 57), the knives young

13 ménard, “le ‘dit du mercier’.”


men (bacheliers) use to style themselves cointes (line 82), headdresses (toailles) for gentlewomen (gentix femes, line 98), saffron for young ladies’ veils (damoi-seles, line 113), paternosters for old women (viellotes, line 136), pestles for chambermaids (chamberieres, line 143). he also features tools used in profes-sions: hide scrapers for skinners (line 30), flour sieves for bakers (line 60), whips for shepherds (line 64), hooks for fishermen (line 69), sharp blades for stitchers (line 70), hatchets for blood-letters (seignier, line 71), wax tablets and styluses for scribes (clers, line 93–5), the galangal root “to make clerics sing high notes” (line 109), and the tools serving women (feme) use such as scissors and razors, as well as combs, mirrors, and cosmetic implements (lines 99–105). he lists many items destined for men, such as braies and the belts that attach them (line 31), chausses from Bruges (line 67), saddles and buckles for horses (lines 32, 86–7), arrowheads (line 40), and weighted dice (lines 125–8). however, when this mercer interpolates his customers, it is women he summons: “venez avant, dames, venez!” (step right up, ladies! line 151), and “et vos, petites meschi-netes,/ Poez revenir as piletes!” (and you, little servant girls, you can come back to your pestles, line 155–6). Philippe ménard observes that this peddler recruits his clients most prominently among the young (one of many indications that a fashion system is in play in this poem, following criterion 1), and among women. although he appreciates the clerical willingness to spend and offers numerous products for churches and monasteries (lines 39, 59, 89, 91–3), men of the church and also manual laborers are secondary clients for him. ménard remarks that while the peddler features many practical necessities, the evidence indicates that he makes his real living off his clientele’s desire for coquetterie, elegance, and luxury; in short, their fashionable whims.14

“shopping” might occur in a variety of sites in the French high middle ages, which offered varying degrees of access to members of different social groups. marketplaces included major seasonal fairs such as those of champagne, or later lendit, saint-ladre and saint-Germain around Paris, where large wholesale transactions took place. each fair lasted a few weeks, and took place once a year. There were also more accessible urban markets, for instance les halles and the Place de la Grève in Paris, which were open a few days each week. les halles had evolved from an open-air market known as champeaux in the twelfth century to a sort of early “shopping mall” featuring two protective covered stone structures erected by Philip ii in 1183, and six more built by louis iX, so that inclement weather would not affect the fortunes of commerce.15 it was open Wednesdays, Fridays and saturdays. The Place de la Grève had been an open piece of land along the seine, which louis vii sold in 1141 to the marchands de l’eau who dealt in the many types of products, particularly foodstuffs, that arrived by river.16 The construction dates for these spaces indicates some key stages in the development of Paris’ fashion system.

14 ménard, “le ‘dit du mercier’,” pp.809–10.15 lorcin, La France au XIIIe siècle, pp.148–9.16 hillairet, Connaissance du Vieux Paris, pp.99, 57.




other artisans established themselves in boutiques in residential areas, where they would primarily spend their time producing goods with a small team of assistants (vallets) and apprentices, occasionally selling items or taking orders as customers came by. These artisan boutiques were accessible to neighbors and servants executing commissions, as well as other professional merchants. such businesses would be more or less “open” during daylight hours on working days, closed for sundays and holidays.17 it is interesting that some métiers make an exception for a fixed number of boutiques which will be open on sundays: the chauciers, for instance, insist that three and only three shops will be open on sundays, each master must wait his turn.18 The language suggests that more chausse merchants wanted to be open for business than was seemly; it further suggests demand for chausses on sundays, implying an urgency among customers who did not want to wait an extra day for new clothes. John of Garland indicates that some artisan-merchants such as belt-makers put out tables in front of their shops on the streets (“habent ante se”).

There were also ambulant merchants, both those who entered private noble homes as seen above, and those who hawked their wares in the streets, such as shoemakers who carried shoes on racks for sale, as John expected his grammar students at the University of Paris to have encountered daily.19 The craft statutes reveal that such peddling was accepted among some professions, such as “those who cry ‘la cote et la chape’ through the city,” among the used-clothing dealers (frepiers), discussed below. other professions such as the crepiniers (makers of crespinetes, netted hair ornaments) prohibited peddling altogether as too great a fraud risk, and thereby a threat to the reputation of the craft. The chauciers specify that if customers buy from peddlers, they might discover later that the product had been constructed with inferior materials, and being unable to find the merchant again to get their money back they would be disappointed.20

Getting new clothes

in contrast with narratives of shopping executed by specific servants, in Jehan et Blonde by Philippe de remy (c. 1230–43) there are glimpses of the hero and his sisters interacting directly with clothing merchants. They have recourse to a mercer for materials. Buying new clothes is one of the ways in which Jehan represents an attempt to depict a new ideal of knightly behavior. The narrator emphasizes that he bought new clothes, rather than putting on old ones,

17 a number of métiers prohibited work by candlelight because it was inadequate for quality execution of the work, for example the laceurs (makers of ties, gauze, net): Étienne Boileau, Le livre des métiers, p.66. others mark the end of the day by the ringing of the “curfew” bell at saint merri, such as the crepiniers (makers of women’s hair nets), p.75.

18 Étienne Boileau, Le livre des métiers, p.114.19 Jean de Garlande, The Dictionarius of John de Garlande, pp.16–19.20 Étienne Boileau, Le livre des métiers, pp.163–4, 75, and 114, respectively.


or getting used ones. after the couple have crossed the channel, and Jehan’s rival for the possession of his beloved heiress Blonde has been vanquished, when they wake the next day, the narrator details, “se fu Jehans apparilliés./ n’ot mie vestu robe viés,/ car il l’avoit noeve achetee” (and Jehan got dressed. he did not put on old clothes, for he had bought them new, lines 4541–43). The triumphant purchase of new clothes contrasts with more traditional practices in which a celebratory garment might be a gift from an overlord or ancestor, or buying them used as he might have done in his more impoverished state.21 Just as Jehan gained his fortune by rejecting the old lifestyle of staying on the family land waiting for his father to die, he rejects his old clothes as soon as possible and favors new (embracing criteria 1 and 2).

Jehan is not the only one to go shopping in the romance. When the couple arrives at the paternal lands in dammartin, the entire family gets new things. his sisters are shown involved in the process of having new clothes made. When Blonde arrives, they order thirty lengths of cendal silk from a mercer, and then call for the tailor too: “robes font faire sans delai” (they have robes made without delay, lines 4622–9). The sisters order clothes for Blonde as well. The procedure detailed in the scene is to obtain the fabric from a mercer, who apparently would be able to marshal a team of stitchers to execute the order in short time. That side of the operation is invisible, however.

in a few romances, particularly earlier texts, there are indications of new clothing being produced by domestic industry. a servant girl (meschine) sews a bliaud for her lady in the Lai de Desiré (c. 1165–1225, lines 627–8), an unusual example of a servant entering visibly into the narrative landscape. There are a few examples of noble women making clothing, but they serve to highlight the heroine’s extraordinary nature. in Amadas et Ydoine (c. 1190–1220), the heroine makes a chemise and braies of fine white linen as a gift for her love. however, other items of his clothing are not qualified as her handiwork, such as his well-cut black chausses edged in red, or his ermine-lined scarlet hood edged in sable (lines 3753–79). The passive verb forms referring to the fabri-cation of these garments (“bien decaupees .. . si est fouree .. . s’est orlee”) suggest the work of anonymous professionals. in Galeran de Bretagne (c. 1195–1225), when Fresne cuts and sews a robe for herself out of the precious cloth that enveloped her when she was found as an infant, her companion rose thinks she has lost her mind (“en son cuer l’en tient rose a sote; s’a fait oultrage, ce ly semble,” lines 6752–3). as Burns and Baumgartner have remarked, it is rare

21 an anecdote from Joinville illustrates the transition between traditional practices and the new pressures of fashion, when robert de sorbon accuses Joinville of dressing better than the king. Joinville defends himself by saying that his robes were a gift from his parents, hence a noble family heirloom, in contrast to something bought new. “Je ne faiz mie à blasmer se je me vest de vert et de vair; car cest abit me lessa mes pères et ma mère. mais vous faites à blasmer; car vous estes fiz de vilain et de vilainne, et avez lessié l’abit vostre père et vostre mère, et estes vestus de plus riche camelin que li roys n’est.” Jean de Joinville, “vie de saint louis,” pp.207–8.




that noble women make clothing in high medieval French romances.22 There is a scene in Cligès (c. 1170–77) where soredamor, the mother of the eponymous hero, sews a tunic for his future father, the Greek knight alexandre, embellished with a gold thread interlaced with one of her own golden hairs, whence she derives her name (lines 1145–66), but like several of the above examples, this is an extraordinary gift garment, rather than the routine new clothing a fashion system would require on a regular basis.23

a didactic poem on the virtues of women, “le Bien des Fames” (c. 1275–1325) lauds women for spinning and “working” to produce clothing, saying that by their toil all are dressed (“par li est toute gent vestue,” lines 84–6).24 although in rural areas clothing production was often women’s work, as le roy ladurie found in montaillou,25 the suggestion that women were univer-sally responsible for all clothing production is misleading. it is important to underscore the dichotomy between the urban and rural experiences of consumption in this period, as well as socioeconomic differences: if the affluent of certain urban areas were experiencing an emerging fashion system, rural peasants class were not, in all likelihood. on a literary level, the statement in “Bien des Fames” would might better interpreted as a celebration of traditional, archetypal women’s work, more than a realistic pronouncement regarding the gender structure of urban French garment commerce. most medieval spinners were indeed women, in cities as in the countryside. however, in the urban world of clothing construction at the end of the thirteenth century, male stitchers (couturiers) slightly outnumber female couturieres, 57 to 46 in the 1292 Paris tax records, and almost all tailors and chaussiers were male, as will be discussed below.26

another section of the “Bien des Fames” makes women responsible for the bliauts which make men look attractive and fashionable (“Fame fet fere les blïaus,/ si fet fere les homes biaus/ et acesmés et gens et cointes,” lines 63–5). The verbal construction is noteworthy. rather than claiming that women themselves make bliauts for men, the verse states that they “have bliauts made” for them: they order them, describing how they should be made, as was the case with Jehan’s sisters. similarly, the poem says women have chaplets of flowers made, to share with their lovers. They likewise commission new songs (lines 71–4). The poem, particularly given this type of phrasing, positions women as a force in fashionable selection and consumption, more so than as direct producers of objects.

Women take charge of ordering new clothing in L’Escoufle (c. 1200–02). When aelis and Guillaume decide to leave the household of her father, the

22 Burns, Courtly Love Undressed, p.86; emmanuele Baumgartner, “les brodeuses et la ville,” p.89.

23 chrétien de Troyes, Cligès.24 Fiero, Pfeffer and allain, Three Medieval Views of Women.25 le roy ladurie, Montaillou, pp.28–9.26 Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, p.501.


Byzantine emperor, to claim Guillaume’s heritage in normandy, aelis instructs Guillaume to ask his mother to have traveling clothes made for them to measure, in haste. aelis’ instructions are quite particular: they should have water repellent hoods, outer layers of bure, a sturdy stuff; and coteriax (another sort of cote) of the dark cloth of Flanders (“drap de Flandres poleté,” lines 3582–5). This suggests that it was expected that women of an elite household would know how to order clothing, and what sort of fabrics to request.

most often, passive verb forms are used when clothing is described as made to order, suggesting anonymous teams of professionals, as noted above. For the hero’s knighting in Galeran de Bretagne, the young men knighted with him were brought robes, cut and fitted for them (“Qu’en leur a fait coudre et taillier”) of moorish silk glittering with gold (lines 4780–5). The two verbs suggest two sets of professionals who would have worked on the garments: the cutters or tailors (tailleeurs) who would cut the cloth to measure, and the stitchers (couturiers) who would have assembled and finished the garments. There would have been some overlap and competition for work among these professions, as the Parisian tailors’ statutes of 1268 indicate that the master tailors did the cutting, and their vallets did the stitching.27 Couturiers and also tailors both engaged in clothing repair, particularly among more indigent communities.

There was a broad, varied, and changing vocabulary connoting the specialists who engaged in new clothing production. it is often difficult to know what type of artisan would have been the point of contact when clothing was commis-sioned. it seems to have varied depending on the situation and the locality. Tailors and stitchers certainly existed, and accord with modern notions of garment construction. mercers and other merchants also seem to have accepted commissions. Faith lyons identifies the mention of mercers in Jehan et Blonde as a new kind of detail not present in the romances of the twelfth or earlier thirteenth century.28 The process of obtaining new clothing becomes more frequently detailed in later texts, and other terms emerge there. in the fourteenth-century Roman du Comte d’Anjou, when the heroine’s uncle, the Bishop of orleans, reveals her noble identity and bequeaths to her the heritage of anjou, he celebrates by generously sending for (“fet mander”) a large variety of rich fabrics and furs. To have new robes and mantels made, a parmentier tailors these materials (lines 6360–73). That profession is not found among the thirteenth-century trades of Paris, nor in the tax records of 1292–1313, but it does appear in documents from metz in 1241 and 1254.29 The term appears more frequently in middle French, for instance in the Cent nouvelles nouvelles (c. 1460) from the court of Burgundy: in the ninety-fourth tale, for example, a fashionable “gaillard” of a priest is obliged to summon the draper and the “parmentier” when he is fined by an ecclesiastical official for his short, tight, courtly doublet and hose, commissioning those professionals to make him long

27 Étienne Boileau, Le livre des métiers, p. lxxv.28 lyons, Les elements descriptifs dans le roman d’aventure, p.145.29 Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, s.v. “parementier.”




robes with an immense train instead, both obeying and flouting the official’s order (lines 29–31, 62).30 The extensive (and changing) lexicon of garment construction and sales may be best illuminated by other sources, such as tax and craft guild records.

Urban shopping: the case of Paris

The Parisian tax records (tailles) of the years 1292–1313 offer the possibility of constructing an impressionistic geography of shopping in Paris at the end of the thirteenth century.31 The observations in the following section are drawn primarily from the 1292 records, which feature the largest number of taxpayers, approximately 14,500. The tailles of 1292–1300 were annual installments paid voluntarily towards a sum of 100,000 pounds tournois for release from general taxation, elsewhere in the kingdom charged in the amount of a penny on the pound for every purchase and sale (so two deniers per livre tournois), or one fiftieth of a merchant or artisan’s income.32 in contrast, the taille of 1313 was a “feudal aid” to King Philip iv for his eldest son’s knighting. as Joseph strayer notes, there was no governmental mechanism in place at this time to keep records of individuals’ income, so these taxes represent an estimation of income offered by individuals themselves.33 Those who made a false declaration were threatened with confiscation of the property amounting to the undeclared worth.34 such voluntary contributions cannot reliably furnish certain evidence of an artisan’s exact income, nor even whether they actually practiced the trade linked to their name, and so must be taken with some caution. The records list inhabitants street by street, by name, and the amount each contributed. many names are followed by a sobriquet, often indicating a profession. This seems usually to indicate an actual occupation, although there are cases where a guild magistrate’s surname did not correspond to the given profession. surnames were still variable at this time, and most were not yet hereditary.

The taille was not yet a regular tax in 1292. capetian fiscal administration was still in a developmental stage. clerics, including the many students at the University of Paris, were exempt; it is estimated that they made up about a

30 sweetser, Les Cent nouvelles nouvelles, pp.530–3.31 i will confine this study to the published rolls, particularly that of 1292, in Géraud,

Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel. comparison is possible with later rolls, which in some cases show the same merchants and how their fortunes changed: michaëlsson, Le Livre de la taille de Paris l’an 1296; michaëlsson, Le Livre de la taille de Paris l’an 1297; Michaëlsson, Le Livre de la taille de Paris l’an de grâce 1313. in addition, the rolls of 1298, 1299, and 1300 are extant: see michaëlsson, Études sur les noms de personne français d’après les rôles de taille parisiens (rôles de 1292, 1296–1300, 1313).

32 raymond cazelles, Nouvelle histoire de Paris, pp.250–2. Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, p.556.

33 strayer, “consent to Taxation under Philip the Fair,” pp.12, 21.34 Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, p.556.


tenth of the city population, which at the end of the thirteenth century is estimated at 200,000.35 nobles were exempt if they did not indulge in commercial activity. The records show a number of them who did. There are many lacunae in these records. street names for much of the left Bank are missing in 1292, for instance, as are the menuz gens paying the lowest amounts in 1296. although the majority of taxpayers are listed by profession, many are not, and their trade cannot be identified. although valets or appren-tices and servants are often listed, many were probably subsumed under the head of household. in short, these records can offer us a snapshot: some blurry areas and certainly many omissions, but an image nonetheless.

it is clear from the work of John monro and others that the textile production end of shopping was a pyramidal operation: at the top, a draper, who coordi-nated to varying degree the work of those below: fullers, dyers, weavers, spinners, carders, raw fiber producers.36 This model seems to match the patterns of habitation and income of Paris’ artisans. There are only nineteen drapers listed in the 1292 rolls, and although maître Pathelin (c. 1465) figures as a great comic figure of the later farce tradition, drapers appear little in the liter-ature of the thirteenth century. Figuring more often in both narrative and tax records were other artisans, such as the some 70 mercers, 145 tailors, and 103 couturiers included in the 1292 taille. The profession of couturier (literally, “stitcher”), was held by both men and women, as seen above. They are spread throughout the city, almost one on every street, rarely more than two per street, never more than four (and those lived by the King of sicily’s house, on the east side of the right Bank, and were likely employed with large-scale noble commissions). The median tax they contribute is 2 sous; the minimum is 12 deniers, or 1 sou (the minimum for all contributors throughout the rolls). marguerite from near the Porte saint-honoré paid 14 sous, a relatively modest maximum. note that the average contribution by couturieres was slightly higher than for couturiers: 2.14 sous, as opposed to 2.07. it could be surmised that there was a kind of gender equality in poverty in the stitching profession.

Tailors, mercers, and also chauciers (makers of chausses, trousers or leggings of silk or stuff, as well as souzchaux, gaiters, and chauçons, hose) are more often found in clusters. such groupings suggest the possibility of collaborative work for big commissions, and also the possibility of comparative shopping. These three groups also show much more range in income than the stitchers, which suggests that some of them distinguished themselves in quality and desirable design, or in entrepreneurial activity. The median tax for mercers in 1292 was five sous, with an average of 32.5 sous; the largest sum was offered by michiel d’amiens, paying sixteen livres (320 sous) in the Ferronnerie, an area named for blacksmiths at the edge of les halles built by Philip augustus, more populated by prosperous used clothing dealers than iron dealers or

35 cazelles, Nouvelle histoire de Paris, pp.131–3; lorcin, La France au XIIIe siècle, p.144.

36 munro, “medieval Woolens: Textiles, Technology and organisation.”




blacksmiths by the end of the thirteenth century. Tailors fall between stitchers and mercers in this hierarchy: their median tax in 1292 is three sous, average 5.8 sous, maximum fifty-eight sous. The concierge of the countess of alençon, saint louis’ widow, paid forty-eight sous, for duties that presumably included wardrobe prominently among the household management tasks. mercers were about 87% male, whereas tailors are nearly all male; the two women listed in association with tailoring are widows (“ameline et son fuiz” and “la fame david”).37 cut is essential to fashion, and well-fitted garments are frequently admired in the narratives. The control and innovation of those designs, in the thirteenth century, would have been primarily in the hands of men.

The chauciers present an interesting case study in fashion. of some sixty chauciers listed in 1292, most but not all were male. This is somewhat under-standable, since their product was for the most part destined for men, whereas tailors worked for both sexes.38 Their median tax was six sous, average 17.6 sous, maximum 120 sous, situating them in between the mercers and the tailors. Chausses were an article of clothing whose fine cut was highly prized, as discussed in earlier chapters. Good-fitting chausses separated the noble man with savoir faire from the vilain, who failed to understand their tight cut entirely in one passage cited from Flamenca (lines 2198–203). Besides ordering fine sets of robes from a mercer, to be cut by a good tailor, someone like Guillem would certainly seek out the finest chaucier in town for his less visible but important leg garments. Chauciers were clustered in nobly-frequented areas: on the cité, across from the royal Palace, a densely populated area, also full of mercers and goldsmiths; around the areas where armor, spurs, lorrains, blazoned shields and armor were made and sold, just north of the cité on the right Bank, la Bufeterie, named for winesellers; also in the wealthier merchant quarters of the right Bank.

a number of other artisan clusters could be found in Paris in the late thirteenth century. Gloves were found near armor and good chausses. of the 22 glovers (gantiers) listed in Paris in 1292, many are found on the cité, around the street called la Ganterie, as well as in la calendre, near Place saint-michel within the royal Palace and l’orberie, on the left Bank side of the island. a few were scattered through the university quarter of the left Bank, the area where John of Garland had observed some generations earlier in his Dictionarius (c. 1200) that “Parisian glove makers beguile scholars by selling them unlined gloves and gloves lined with fur from the pelts of lambs, rabbits, foxes, and mittens made of leather,” 39 materials which promised less warmth to chilled students than the more highly-prized furs, such as the elite would presumably have ordered. Jewelry, precious stones, and pewter and copper work could be

37 Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, 30, p.116.38 Women are almost never described in narrative as wearing chausses, but the royal

accounts do list purchases of chausses for the queen and her daughters. Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des Métiers, p. lxxiv.

39 Jean de Garlande, The Dictionarius of John de Garlande, pp.22–3.


found on the curiously named rue de mau-conseil (“street of bad advice”). makers of belts and straps for both people and animals, courraiers, were intensely concentrated in the saint-merri parish, in the streets called Petit-chanz and Quiquempoist. in the latter street, they intermingled with a large number of mercers. interestingly, there are no courraiers listed on the street called the courroierie, but we can’t really assume that there were none. The professional sobriquet may have been omitted, being viewed as obvious. it cannot be said whether or how often that was done in the records. For gold work, one went to the Grant Pont over the seine (also a magnet for tailors), up near saint martin on the right Bank, or in the Barillerie on the cité. linen weavers and dealers were concentrated around saint merri on the right Bank. For bazanes, sheepskins, one headed almost exclusively for the old cemetery of saint Jehan, or the stores in front of saint opportune.

That leaves a number of essentials for the wardrobe that prove more difficult to map, such as shoes. Besides the occasional galoshes specialist,40 there were basically two types of shoemaker, who doubled as shoe repairers: savetiers, of which the city boasted 140 or so in 1292, and courdouanniers, who numbered 226. The savetiers were, like the stitchers, at the bottom of the vestimentary food chain, paying between one and three sous in tax, classed among menus genz. There were no wealthy savetiers. note that in the passage from Flamenca discussed in the introduction, Guillem distinguishes himself by not wearing sabbata, rough common shoes, perhaps something like sabots (wooden clogs in modern French). John of Garland characterizes savetiers as stitching up old shoes, while cordouanniers were “beneficial to the city of Paris” for the shoes they constructed.41 The cordouanniers worked with finer leathers such as those from cordoba, spain, as their name suggests. although they were also often in the lowest tax bracket, eight sous was not an uncommon contribution, and one finds sums between eighteen and twenty-four sous with some frequency. Wealthier clients such as Guillem would have ordered boots and slippers from a courdouannier. shoemakers of either type are rarely found in clusters. They are dispersed through the city, one on almost every street. The Parisian of 1292 never needed to travel far to get his shoes repaired, or to order a new pair, unless he sought uniquely fine manufacture.

Fur work is another ubiquitous but poorly remunerated trade, perhaps surpris-ingly, given the prestige of fur-lined mantels and garments, or John of Garland’s comment that their wares “made them rich.” There is a skinner or fur-dealer (peletier) on almost every street, and he rarely pays more than two sous in income tax. in all, 214 peletiers are listed, a high number relative to number of tailors or mercers – rather difficult to explain, except to note that without central heating, fur was a necessary layer for people of all walks of life. it is worth noting that it was a profession where little creativity was involved to

40 Galochiers, of which two are listed in 1292. Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, p.514.

41 Jean de Garlande, The Dictionarius of John de Garlande, pp.26–9.




distinguish one pelt dealer from another, placing these artisans at a low status in the fashion system’s hierarchy of producers. so it would seem that like raw textiles, furs had little remunerative value, except in bulk; they became fashionable only when transformed by the creative teams of cutters, mercers, and so on. John of Garland distinguishes three classes of fur: most prized were miniver, vair, and sable, familiar from romances; then common squirrel, rabbit, wildcat, lynx and marten; the most common were those of lamb, cat, fox, and hare.42 Perhaps the impoverished peletiers engaged in the work of skinning the local cat population, labor-intensive work, not for the squeamish, and without prestige.

Freperie: the second-hand system

one of the foremost requirements of a fashion system is the relative disquali-fication of the past (criterion 1): fashion demands the constant rejection of recent styles in favor of the new. modern associations relegate second-hand wardrobes to the indigent, with the assumption that used clothing is “cast off,” out of fashion by its nature. This presents the question of whether medieval used clothing, in contrast, could be considered “fashionable.”

lexicographers of old French make the distinction between frepe, alterna-tively feupe, ferpe, felpe, or farpe, connoting old worn-out clothing or rags, and fripe, closer in meaning to the english “frippery” indicating something flashy but of poor quality, tawdry. The former is used in a few texts for pilgrims’ humble gear, the latter for frivolous courtiers.43 The Parisian tax records of 1292–1313 employ the term ferpier to designate used clothing, wool, linen, and shoe dealers; etienne Boileau’s book of métiers of 1268 refers to them as “frepiers.” additionally, those statutes refer to another type of second-hand merchant, the haubaniers, who instead of serving an apprenticeship bought the right to sell old and new leather, linen, and wool by paying twenty-five deniers to the tax pool (“haubanerie”) of the king’s Grand-chamberlain, fourteen to the master of the ferpiers, twelve to his companions for drinks, and six sous eight deniers a year to the king. having made such payments, they would owe no further taxes or duties.44 The taille of 1292 additionally lists two women who are rag-pickers, loquetieres.45

Unlike merciers and tailleurs, words for second-hand merchants do not appear at all in works of vernacular narrative literature. Ferpiers and haubaniers do not appear to have been part of the noble or poetic vocabulary. courtly works do at times deal with the question of pawning, mettre en gage or engagier,

42 Jean de Garlande, The Dictionarius of John de Garlande, pp.28–31.43 Godefroy, Dictionnaire de l’ancienne langue française, s.v. “frepe,” “frepaille,”

“fripelippe,” “friponnier.”44 Étienne Boileau, Le livre des métiers, p.164, art. 26.45 Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, pp.54, 132, 521.


which would have involved such merchants at times. (in renaissance italy, according to evelyn Welch, almost any merchant or innkeeper accepted pledges of goods against future payments, and might essentially be considered an informal pawnbroker.46 That something similar was true in thirteenth-century Paris is evinced by the statutes of the ferpiers, which attempt to uphold the profession by limiting participants to preudhomes and by an extensive list of anti-fraud measures, discussed below).

narrative sources show that many characters were capable of estimating the worth of objects, were they to be pawned or sold. There is the example of Fresne in Galeran de Bretagne, discussed in chapter 5, who estimates her embroidered cloth to be worth sixty marks when she considers selling it to finance her flight (lines 6593–7). another illustration in keeping with the above conclusions on the noble use of surrogates for shopping is found in a fabliau known as “le chevalier qui faisait parler les cons.” The tale concerns a knight who depended on tournaments for his living, lacking lands or vineyards to provide him with rents. Unfortunately, tournament spending could be ruinous, even for the successful knight, as discussed in chapter 5. during a period of peace the knight had to pawn everything. The narrator criticizes him for it:

si ot tot le sien despenduli chevaliers en cel termine;ne li remest mantel hermine,ne surcot ne chape forree,ne d’autre avoir une denreeque trestot n’eüst mis en gaige.de ce nel tieg ge mie a saigeQue son hermois a engagié,si a tot beü et mangié.47

and so he had spent all his fortune,the knight, during this period;not an ermine cloak remained,nor a surcoat or a fur-lined cape,nor anything else worth a pennythat he had not sold or pawned.on this, i can’t consider him wise:he pawned his knightly equipment,he drank and ate it all.

note that the narrator places his rich clothing first in the list of things to pawn. This demonstrates the importance of clothing’s stored value in this period. hearing a tournament announced, the knight turns to his servant huet to figure out how to redeem his equipment. huet sells his palfrey to settle the debts

46 evelyn Welch, Shopping in the Renaissance, pp.196, 200.47 rossi and straub, Fabliaux érotiques, lines 38–46.




(lines 62–81), leaving them with only twelve deniers until the knight manages to win something. They set off. on the way, the knight lags pensively behind, while huet proceeds on expeditiously. The servant comes across a fountain where three beautiful naked ladies are bathing. What economy-minded huet notices are their dresses, made of beaten gold, hung in a tree. he takes them back to the knight, who finds the theft utterly un-chivalrous. huet retorts that he should not think like a drunk:

les robes valent bien cent livres,Quar onques plus riches ne vi;devant quatorze anz et demine gaaigneroiz vos autant,Tant sachoiz aler tornoiant! 48

The robes are worth a good hundred pounds,for i have never seen any so rich;in fourteen and a half yearsyou could not win as much,no matter how well you know how to joust!

The knight, in noble fashion, responds that he does not care about money, something painfully obvious to huet, the narrator, and the audience. The knight returns the outfits, and realizing that the servant would surely have sold them and made a good profit, the ladies (who do indeed have magical powers) decide to reward him (lines 182–5). They grant him three unusual gifts: a joyful welcome wherever he goes, and the ability to make vaginal and rectal orifices speak. The knight thinks they are joking until he meets a miserly priest who offers him a generous welcome and puts all his wealth at his disposal. huet realizes the fairies were serious, and urges his employer to address the priest’s mare. “Where is your master going?” he asks. The mare’s orifice replies,

– Par foi, il vait veoir s’amie,fait li cons, sire chevaliers!si li porte de bons deniers:dis livres de bone monoie,Qu’il a ceinz en une corroiePor achater robe mardi.49

“my soul, he is going to see his mistress,”said the cunt, “lord knight!and he is taking her good money:Ten pounds in good coinage,which he has secured in his beltTo buy an outfit on Tuesday.”

48 rossi and straub, Fabliaux érotiques, lines 158–62.49 rossi and straub, Fabliaux érotiques, lines 284–9.


The shamed priest runs away, leaving the knight and huet with coins, rich clothing, and mare, all of which they clearly value as negotiable currency (lines 294–308). From this illustration it may be observed that clothing had an obvious cash equivalent value to contemporaries. The clothing of three noble ladies is valued at 100 pounds; a “robe” or gown, surcoat, and mantle ensemble for a priest’s concubine could be purchased for ten pounds. it was expected that one could sell or pawn clothing easily. no one ever laments, “Where can i find a second-hand clothing dealer?” neither the knight nor his servant value the priest’s or even the ladies’ clothing as “fashionable,” which might be expressed by a word such as cointe or admiration for its cut or appearance. This is under-standable to some degree, given that the items would not fit them. They both see the garments primarily in terms of their exchange value.

in that, they resemble the old Woman in the Romance of the Rose, who advises young women on how to wring as many gifts as possible out of as many lovers as possible, never giving away their hearts. a young woman should play one lover against another:

si se complaigne conme sageQue sa meilleur robe et si gageQueurent chascun jour a usure,don ele est en si grant ardureet tant est ses queurs a meseseQu’el ne fera riens qui li plese,se cil ne li reant ses gages;et li vallez, se mout n’est sages,Por quoi pecune li sait sourse,metra tantost main a la bourseou fera quelque chevissancedon li gage aient delivrance .. .50

she should complain, like a wise person,that they claim her best outfit and pledgesback from the usurers every day,for she so ardently longs to have themand her heart is so ill at easethat she will do nothing at all to please him,if he does not redeem her debts;and the young man, if he is not very wise,with whatever money she him blessed,will immediately put his hand to his purseor will find some meansby which to deliver her pledges .. .

meanwhile, her clothes should actually be locked up and hidden: the wise young woman would not actually pawn or sell them. she should reserve a





similar trick for a third sweetheart, asking him for a silver belt, a dress, a wimple, and money to spend. The old Woman is concerned elsewhere that a woman look her best, since a fashionable and seductive appearance will guarantee her the requisite lovers (for example, lines 13283–304, 13487–544). in this case, however, she advises readers on how to manipulate the pawn and second-hand clothing system without becoming its victim. This suggests the ubiquity of the system, on one hand, as well as its dangers on another, particularly with the use of the alarming and polemical word “usury.”

another character in Jean de meun’s continuation of the Rose, the Unhappily married husband in Friend’s discourse, sheds different light on the fashiona-bility of potential fripe. as discussed in chapter 3, he rages against the conjugal funds tied up in his wife’s expensive dresses, trains, hair accessories, and furs (lines 8809–42). at night he dreams of selling or pawning it all:

les robes et les pennes grisessunt lores a la perche mises,Toute la nuit pendanz a l’air.Que me puet lors tou ce valair,Fors a vendre ou a engagier?vif me vaez vos enragieret morir de la male rage,se je ne vent tout et engage!car puis que par jor si me nuisentet par nuit point ne me deduisent,Quel profit i puis autre atendreFors que d’engagier ou de vendre? 51

The outfits and the grey fursare then hung on the clothes pole,hanging in the air all night long.What then can all that be worth to me,except to sell or pawn?You will see me burn aliveand die of evil rage,if i don’t sell and pawn it all!since they only vex me by dayand by night give me no pleasure,what profit can i expect form themexcept by pawning or selling them?

he is a comical character in his denial of her clothing’s fashionable value, obstinately refusing to perceive anything but its monetary value. This passage, like the others, suggests the profound degree to which the second-hand trade penetrated later thirteenth-century French bourgeois society. it also suggests that its coexistence with the more fashionably satisfying methods of obtaining



new things was not always peaceable. if the wife’s clothing was expensive because it was fashionable, as the passage implies, and therefore had tempting resale value, it could be argued that clothing did not necessarily lose its value in passing through the freperie system. Used clothing, then, might constitute fashionable novelty for some, such as those of middle incomes. it was not, however, associated with the highest level of display. The royal sumptuary laws of 1279 and 1294 regulate yardage costs according to income categories, targeting new clothing rather than used for nobles and prelates with significant rents. romances make a point of celebrating “new” clothing for great occasions or when a character makes his fortune, for instance in the passage from Jehan et Blonde quoted above, in which Jehan “did not put on old clothes, for he had bought them new” (lines 4541–3).

The Paris taille records of 1292 show 121 ferpiers. Their demographics resemble those of the tailors, suggesting some variation according to skill and entrepreneurship, contrasting for example with the universally poor peletiers. The ferpiers’ median tax was three sous, average 6.2 sous, maximum fifty sous (paid by one William the crusader, Guillaume croisié).

a dozen modest ferpiers were located in the student streets of the left Bank. The métiers statutes of louis iX’s time denounced a group of peddlers who created a new market in the very small area around saint severin, buying and selling by candlelight, which of course made close examination of the merchandise problematic.52 They were apparently still there three decades later.

The successful ferpiers were clustered on the south end of les halles. la Ferronerie housed twenty-two, of which sixteen paid 5–36 sous, sums which stand out in the records as belonging to a class above the menuz genz, the working poor. Four more were in the Place aus Pourciaus (literally the “Pork Plaza”). There were sixteen down the street from the Feronnerie in the charronerie, on the south side of the commercial hub of the cemetary of the innocents, a less successful group. The savvy entrepreneur could clearly make a decent living dealing in used clothing. There were very few of them in the densely populated zones of the cité, dominated by nobles around the royal Palace and clerics by the notre dame complex. They were primarily to be found at commercial crossroads, rather than in the neighborhoods with one shoemaker, one stitcher, one tavern-keeper and so on dispersed on each street. These demographics suggest that consumers favored shop groupings, which allowed for comparison shopping, and that some ferpiers stood out from others as purveyors of distinction. some used items obviously had more value than others. in order to be fashionable objects, items must contrast with objects that are somehow unfashionable, whether because they are outmoded or simply worn out. Getting at whether “out of date” used clothing was seen to exist is

52 Géraud, Paris sous Philippe-le-Bel, pp.150–5; Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des métiers, p.165, art. 31.




challenging, given the limits of the extant evidence. The tax records suggest that some fripe had noteworthy desirability for consumers, and that some did not.

The 1268 craft statutes of the Parisian frepiers show great efforts to maintain the integrity of the profession. The statutes perform what was probably an uneasy marriage between three types of dealers: the frepiers who followed the usual progression from apprentice to vallet to master; the haubaniers, who took the shorter route of paying for the right to sell; and the street peddlers, referred to as “ceus qui crient ‘la cote et la chape!’” (those who cry ‘robes and cloaks!’). all three were required to purchase the right to be dealers from the Grand chamberlain, in saint louis’ time the comte d’eu, who relegated the duties of justice and regulation to his deputy, the master of the frepiers. The same was required of the chamberlain’s other métiers, the glovers, shoemakers, and pelt-dealers.53 For the frepiers, it was specified “whether rich or poor,” an added insistence which underscores the wide range of affluence in the profession, broader than for many. it also suggests the vastly different types of used products they might sell. The slightly tarnished novelty of high-quality fashionable garments would be a far cry from the rags in which some traded, or the used cloth that some artisans fraudulently used in lining or padding their products to save money.54

all frepiers were to swear an oath that they would not deal in suspicious merchandise. a list of types of forbidden transactions is given: they are not to fence stolen merchandise, buy used garments in taverns or brothels or from lepers, accept bloody or wet garments unless they could prove whose blood it was or why the items were soaked, or church vestments unless they had been properly withdrawn from church use. They were also to refuse items that had been fraudulently re-conditioned: woolens that had been fulled a second time, perhaps to wash them or improve the pile but which would be weakened by the process; or fabrics that had been subjected to forbidden caustic dyes such as caldron black.55

The frepiers’ statutes are lengthy: thirty-four, considerably more than the ten to fifteen typical of many professions. They were obviously a diverse group requiring significant supervision. members seem to have lodged many complaints amongst themselves, with fines for quarrels set at four deniers. They would also be fined for denegation of the master’s judgment in a trial or complaint, which suggests that some frequently did. The control of fraud and

53 Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des métiers, p.159, n.1; p.162. n.1.54 The merciers prohibited the covering of used materials (cloth, hoops, hats) with new

silk, pelts or silver. The chauciers “may line and pad their chauces with two silks, provided that they be new and satisfactory,” effectively prohibiting the use of recycled fabric; if such were used, the product would be burnt. The métier prohibited peddling, stating that customers expected new chauces and were disappointed when they found they bought chauces made from poor materials and cannot find the seller, “losing their money,” Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des métiers, pp.159 and 114.

55 Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des métiers, pp.159–61.


“dishonest” materials are a prominent feature in much of the contemporary craft regulation, reflecting anxiety on the part of consumers. however, the use of recycled materials obtained through the freperie system by various profes-sions suggests a key role to the fashion system: by limiting production costs in this way, merchants would be able to sell to a broader variety of customers of differing income levels, not just to the elite who expected the finest quality. cheapening the product, while lamentable from an artistic standpoint, signals that a process of democratization of fashion was under way.

To conclude, medieval French fripe ran the gamut: it could be highly desirable, therefore fashionable; or it could be useless for anything but padding. it seems to have involved all ranks of society, for better or worse; even the king and his closest counselors profited from it. although it does not seem to have furnished the finest or most admired objects of consumption and display, it played a major role in alimenting the vestimentary needs of this culture, whether by offering ready-to-wear options, or by providing materials to lower costs and increase availability of products.

There was no one-stop shopping in high medieval Paris, unless one was content to place oneself in the hands of the ferpiers. mercers, chauciers, tailors and others could be poor or wealthy, depending on whether they offered an innovative, attractive product or one destined for ordinary folk, as well as capital and entrepreneurship. The “dit du Pauvre mercier” tells of a mercer who can barely afford to keep his horse in oats. he leaves it in a pasture outside a rural fair, where a wolf devours it.56 This means sudden death for the mercer too, now lacking transportation from market to market. he says his horse is worth 60 sous. if the 1292 taille of Paris represented approximately one-fiftieth of each taxpayer’s income, there were indeed mercers and other merchants in Paris who had annual incomes of only 50 sous, and would have been hard pressed to buy a new horse. of course, residing in a major city such as Paris one might not need a horse to travel between fairs, and so could subsist on less. in any case, the divergence in incomes points to divergence in quality and product prestige, sources of distinction and novelty, fulfilling criteria 1 to 5, and illustrating the developing fashion system of thirteenth-century France.

56 ménard, “le ‘dit du mercier’,” pp.797–810.



7

The seduction of the Well-draped Form

This book has argued that a fashion system was nascent in the growing urban areas of France from the later twelfth century and had become a dominant, systematic, societal force in urban areas by the later thirteenth century. it has done this by looking at expressions of desire related to elements of a fashion system. it has not, up to this point, examined closely any particular styles. This final chapter proposes a revised look at the styles of the thirteenth century, in particular the reactions to increased supply and greater variety in fabrics, the initial result in part of the desires for increasing fashionable activity.

Views of thirteenth-century appearance

some have described the thirteenth century as a time of stasis in dress and adornment, characterized long, shapeless, unisex clothing. christopher Breward described the styles predating the fourteenth century as “simple and functional.” 1 François Boucher asserted that costume remained more or less constant from antiquity to the fourteenth century. his wife madame François Boucher concluded that “the thirteenth century brought but few new elements and notable changes” in the area of dress. ary renan similarly states that there were no essential changes in costume from the twelfth to the thirteenth century.2 such views arise partly from the relative scarcity of extant visual evidence from the thirteenth century compared with subsequent periods, as well as, at times, superficial understanding. Bumke has taken issue with the characterization of this period’s style as unisex, saying that such views are based on misunderstood evidence.3

others have seen elegance, rather than a lack of style or fashion, in the long, voluminous lines of thirteenth century styles. camille enlart praised the dress of this period, contrasting it with the twelfth century’s intricacies of pleated bliauds and embroidered and enameled accessories: “in the thirteenth century, the art of clothing like the other arts finds its beauty in simplicity. By its

1 Breward, The Culture of Fashion, p.8.2 Boucher, 20,000 Years of Fashion, p.13. madame François Boucher, “le costume au

temps de saint louis,” p.197. renan, Le costume en France, p.93.3 Bumke, Courtly Culture, p.139.


supreme elegance this period rivals Greek antiquity.” 4 Jacques ruppert offered a similar view, saying that in the thirteenth century costume was characterized by a general yearning for elegance.5 Joan evans has attributed the “sculptural” simplicity of the “Gothic Period (1179–1328)” to the heavy draperies in woolen cloth, contrasting with the fluttering silks of the romanesque period, a view critiqued by Bumke for concentrating on religious sculptural evidence to the detriment of literary records.6

e.r.Goddard noted a “much greater simplicity of style” in contrast with earlier times, while likewise noting many changes and diversifications particu-larly in men’s and women’s head-dressing styles in the thirteenth century.7 she referred to a “tendency towards severity of dress corresponding to the general austerity of the reign of saint louis,” citing viollet-le-duc, but he only speaks of a “simplesse” characteristic of the early thirteenth century.8 Joinville’s account of the reign of saint louis only features the king’s austerity, however, which is moreover offered as a virtuous contrast to the extravagant dress of his men.9 The popularity of ostensibly austere orders prominent in this period, such as the Franciscans, the dominicans, the Beguins and others, also reveals the exception more than the rule. austerity represents a reaction to the norm rather than the norm itself.

other authors have simply avoided the thirteenth century, or neglected it. James laver discussed the twelfth and fourteenth centuries in some detail but never even mentioned the thirteenth. others have followed suit.10 The middle ages are often treated as monolithic, for example in max von Boehn’s monumental four-volume work Modes and Manners, where he speaks only briefly of the “courtly period,” book-ended by the “turn of the millennium” and the fourteenth century.11

The archivist Jules Quicherat, in calling the period from 1190 to 1340 the “Période brillante du moyen age,” represents a different view. Whereas he devoted one chapter to the twelfth century, three were dedicated to this era. This demonstrates the larger number of changes in fashion and details of the silhouette that he considered worth documenting. From Quicherat’s perspective, the thirteenth century was the time of fashion’s flowering, a time of unprece-dented wellbeing and prosperity, a time of capable kings, commerce and industry, and when the growth of the money economy outstripped that of the land economy. The first thing he emphasized about thirteenth-century dress is

4 enlart, Manuel d’archéologie française, vol.3, p.38.5 ruppert et al., Le Costume français, p.40.6 evans, Dress in Medieval France, p.10. Bumke, Courtly Culture, p.150.7 Goddard, Women’s Costume in French Texts, p.10.8 Ibid., p.14. viollet-le-duc, Dictionnaire raisonné du mobilier français de l’époque

carlovingienne à la renaissance, vol, 4, p.214.9 Jean de Joinville, “la vie de saint louis,” pp.205–8.10 James laver, Costume and Fashion, pp.58–62; elizabeth Wilson, Adorned in Dreams,

pp.16–20.11 Boehn, Modes and Manners, vol.1, pp.166–257.



that luxury and the taste for finery invaded all classes, and this is a point he repeatedly stressed, evoking criterion 10. he remarked at one point, after quoting Guillaume le Breton and nicholas de Bray’s accounts of seeing silks and bright fabrics on nobles, bourgeois, and peasants alike on the occasions of festivities, that class conflict was not unique to recent times.12

if fashion is primarily a conceptual system, it is not surprising that there are inadequacies in efforts to describe the dress styles of the long thirteenth century based on small and cartoon-like miniature paintings, and sculptures that have lost much of their polychrome and detail, and which were not necessarily intended as representations of contemporary secular fashion in the first place. if fashionable novelty and change is best and most commonly experienced in the details, forms of evidence that neglect or have lost their details do not provide a thorough impression. as this study has argued, much of the pleasure of fashion lies in the realm of expression, and thereby the imagination. To attain a proper conception of thirteenth-century style, one must look beyond the silhouette to how it might be subtly manipulated, and beyond the dominant materials to how their purchase and utilization fed contemporary imaginations.

The well-covered form

The long thirteenth century was a great period for fabric. as Bumke remarks, precious fabrics cut in voluminous styles were of as much interest to poets and their audiences as actual garments.13 Trade was flourishing, markets expanding, and quality was high, possibly unsurpassed before or after. To illustrate, it is worth examining what contemporaries viewed as problems in the relations between producers and purveyors, and consumers. such conflicts offer a window on to what was valued, as well as its opposite, what disappointed and angered.

The craft statutes which began appearing in Paris under the prévôté of etienne Boileau in 1268 and were regularly renewed or augmented in subse-quent years feature great anxiety about “false” cloth, a problem noted in chapter 6. high quality and artisanal integrity were great priorities. This is illustrated by two statutes from a different source, the customary law book known as the Etablissements de Saint Louis, in the section imparting the Customs of Touraine and Anjou. statute 151 concerns false methods of measuring cloth, imposing a fine of sixty sous on merchants who carry a false yardstick. The following statute, “152. on a judgment for false dealing in cloth,” adds complication to the notion of “false,” however:

12 Quicherat, Histoire du costume en France, pp.177–8.13 Bumke, Courtly Culture, pp.132–4, 150–2.



marcheanz qui porte faus dras à vendre, et il en provez par les marcheanz drapiers qui bien avront queneü que li drap sunt faus par lor sairemanz, la joutise si doit faire les dras ardoir, à veüe et à saüe de marcheanz et d’autres genz; et si en paiera cil qui les avra aportez lX s. d’amende à la joutise. et s’il estoit provez que cil meïsmes les aüst faiz qui les avroit aportez, il em perdroit le poing par droit, por ce qu’il avroit ouvré come faus et come lerres.

[a merchant who takes false cloth to sell, and it is proved against him by merchant drapers who have affirmed that the cloth is false by their oath, the judge should have the cloth burned, in the sight and to the knowledge of the merchants and other people; and the person taking it [to sell] must pay the judge a fine of sixty sous. and if it were proved that the same person who was taking it to sell had manufactured it, he would by law lose his hand, because he had acted as a falsifier and a thief].14

mutilation as punishment for fraudulent cloth dealing is exceptionally draconian in this case. more common punishments for trade crimes in high medieval France would have been destruction of the offending article (burning, as here), imprisonment, and monetary fines.15 The harshness of the threat, even if it were not carried out, suggests the level of outrage that unacceptable cloth could arouse from those in power, and indeed the expectation that consuming cloth should be such a pleasurable or satisfying experience that disappointment would demand proportionate revenge.

Beyond use of improper measuring methods, which are a concern in legal texts as old as deuteronomy (25.13–16), there were many ways in which cloth could be false in thirteenth-century France. although the word “drap” specified in the statute refers to wool cloth, compare this regulation for the silk weavers: “iv. no mistress of the craft shall mix common thread (fil) with silk, nor inferior silk (flourin) with silk, because such work is false and bad, and should be burned if it is discovered.” 16 in this context the term “false” is used with regard to mixing fibers, or making cheap synthetics. other trades were concerned with the quality of invisible aspects of their products. as mentioned in chapter 6, artisans such as armorers prohibited the use of recycled linings or paddings in quilting (for example in the gambaisons worn under armor) as false.17 The merciers considered false any work that used cheap inner supports, or like the silk weavers, mixed inappropriate materials:

vi. nus ne nulle dudit mestier ne puet faire chapiaus ne ataches ne treçons sus parchemin ne sus toile; ne ne puet metre aveqes fines pelles fausses pelles

14 akehurst, The Etablissements de Saint Louis, p.97.15 see also related statutes from normandy, another key cloth producing region: de

Gruchy, L’ancienne coutume de Normandie, pp.46–7.16 Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des métiers, p.74.17 lespinasse and Bonnardot, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris, XIV–XVe

siècle, vol.2, p.319.

The sedUcTion oF The Well-draPed Form 175



blanches ne dorées, s’elles ne sont d’argent: car telles euvres sont fausses, et doivent estre copés et depeciées.

[6. no man or woman of said craft may make hats (chapiaus) or laces (ataches) or hair ribbons (treçons) on parchment or on cloth (toile); nor shall he or she put fine pelts (pelles) with false white or gilt pelts, unless they are of silver: for that is false work, and must be cut up and disassembled].18

here again, this evinces anxiety over mixing of higher and lower quality materials to pollute the work. Yet another type of “false work” can be found in the thirteenth-century regulations of the Paris dyers, a group responsible for an essential element of cloth value (as discussed in chapter 4), which specify that certain dye ingredients should not be used, including a type of alum (bouqam), and a particular vegetable dye (fuel de fuelle).19 in contrast, the linen dealers had a protectionist policy, as did many groups, prohibiting fibers from certain regions: “no one may or should bring linen to Paris from spain or noyon for sale, because those types of linen are false and bad, and were tested long ago.” 20 This suggests some of the distance that raw materials were traveling to manufacturing centers engaging in quality finishing work.

The embroiderers in 1316 set very strict quality standards for their luxury products, specifying that the work must be done in small stitches, and with the highest quality thread of “heart of silk” or gold, costing no less than ten sous per spool, because otherwise “such work is false, and it disappoints gentlemen.” 21 here, it becomes clear that customer satisfaction motivates the regulation. “False” can connote “disappointing” as well as deliberately deceitful. The mestiers documents show great concern for maintaining Parisian craft reputations as renowned producers of luxury goods. The anjou-Touraine region was not as vigorous a manufacturing area as Paris or the low countries, but as the custom implies that the merchants involved might not just be dealers, but might have manufactured the cloth themselves, the term “false,” in établissement 152, may very well refer to this broad variety of ways in which cloth might be deceitful.

This commercial climate, reacting to consumer demands for authentic colors and textile quality, was one where fabric itself was a primary focus of fashionable experimentation and consumption. in the thirteenth century, the fashionable line was directed by the quantity of quality fabric an individual could manage to drape upon his or her body and its general proximity, including home, town, and companions. mireille madou argues that the transition between the twelfth century and the period 1200–1340 was a time when extravagant forms were abandoned for a while, as silk’s popularity gave way to that of wool, which

18 Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des métiers, p.158.19 Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des métiers, p.112.20 Étienne Boileau, Le Livre des métiers, p.118.21 lespinasse and Bonnardot, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris, XIIV-XVe

siècle, vol.2, p.319.


simplified design lines due to wool’s greater weight and consequent tendency to drape. she signals the “foolish virgins” on the portals on strasbourg cathedral as the best representation of thirteenth-century style.22 anne hollander similarly characterized the thirteenth century as a period that favored rich, heavy, voluminous fabric over bodily flesh in its aesthetics, spurning nudity.23 The simplicity and lack of silhouette variation that some have perceived for the period is better viewed as an impulse on the part of the fashionable to array the body (and its surrounding area, from head to horse) in as much fine fabric as possible. This is further supported by thirteenth-century sumptuary laws of France and of the cities of occitania and italy. as this book has argued, these laws focused the major part of their energies on limiting yardages which could be consumed in an outfit, and the cost of fabric per yard each person of a given status and income category could spend. This approach contrasts with later laws across europe, which tended to restrict particular styles and materials.24

one example of the trend towards maximizing the fabric quantity on the body is the fascination with garment linings. detachable sleeves and cotes were lined in cendal, a lightweight silk, in contrasting colors that would peek out when the wearer moved. Prestigious fur linings have already been discussed at some length. The changing, two-toned grey squirrel fur known as vair (from latin varium, referring to its variegated color effect) was particularly prized, teasing the eye rather like contrasting silk linings. Fur linings would certainly have augmented the already heavy drape of fulled woolens, adding to the desirable impression of volume.

stylish women’s trains dragged on the ground in this period (as could men’s, for instance in the tale from the Cent nouvelles nouvelles cited in chapter 6). Trains are portrayed as the height of elegance in Jean renart’s Lai de l’ombre (1221–22): “The noble (preus) and courtly lady had put on a white and pleated shift (chainsse) whose train draped behind her almost six feet” (“pres d’une toise,” lines 314–16).25 casting aspersions on the look, the thirteenth-century dominican preacher Étienne de Bourbon compares women in trains unfavo-rably to beasts with tails: when women extend their “tails” like peacocks, what they really display is their dishonor (turpitudinem).26 in a sermon praising John the Baptist, maurice de sully, bishop of Paris during the reigns of louis vii and Philip augustus, similarly condemned trains as “prideful clothing.” Miparties27 and dagged and slashed garments also received scorn as wasteful, with the logic that excess fabric could clothe the poor.28 if the preachers had

22 madou, Le costume civil, pp.24–5.23 hollander, Seeing Through Clothes, pp.15–17.24 heller, “sumptuary legislation in France, languedoc and italy.”25 Jean renart, Le Lai de l’ombre.26 etienne de Bourbon, Anecdotes historiques, p.234.27 Garments featuring blocks of color seamed along (centre) axes, creating a half-and-

half effect.28 robson, Maurice of Sully, p.173.




had the terminology at hand they might have used veblen’s formula and called such ostentatious deployment (criterion 6) of richly woven and dyed cloth “conspicuous waste,” as their outcries imply that it was waste, in part, that made these garments sinful. it was also the pride they inspired, of course (criterion 4). a fashion system thrives on controversy (criterion 8). There is certainly evidence that the trend for draping the body in more fabric than it could physically accommodate, as with trains, engaged this principle.

Conclusion

The criteria for a fashion system are in evidence in various types of French texts from the thirteenth century. rejection of the recent past, criterion 1, is present on many levels, from Jehan’s delight in getting new, “not used” clothes, to the embrace of novelty evident in the lexicon of “new” and “fresh” which is prominent in the poetic tradition. That lexicon equally testifies to the presence of criterion 2, the constant desire for change. The scorn heaped on characters who avariciously or neglectfully persist in wearing old garments, and the dismay of moralists at new styles of “prideful” clothing, suggest both criterion 1 and criterion 8, which identifies constant criticism of fashionable behavior as one of the forces that perpetuates the system. Both the excitement at new clothes and the dismay over them suggest criterion 4, that consumption in a fashion system becomes tied to emotional well-being. The way that vesti-mentary portraits confer status on characters also works according to this principle. criterion 3, that consumption becomes an opportunity for individual expression within a context of social imitation, can also observed in the rhetoric of amplified portraiture, in which each hero or heroine is developed following a formulaic pattern, yet each given certain unique details or accessories of unusual fabrication. didactic and moralizing texts that complain that “everyone” is showing outrageous behavior with regard to consumption and display strike at the paradox of attempting individual expression within a climate of conformity. The unique details manipulated by individuals within military and other “uniform” codes of dress are similarly best understood through the logic of criterion 3.

The market for love gifts and small but eye-catching personal trinkets such as the wares of the mercer also testify to the relevance of criterion 5, that changes occur in the details rather than the larger silhouette. such affordable baubles present a means of individual expression differentiating the surface of a more rarely changed outfit (criterion 3), and allow a broader and broader portion of the populace (criterion 10) access to the emotional satifaction of minor but regular novelty (criterion 4). There was both a real market for small, relatively affordable luxury items, and a vernacular narrative tradition that celebrated, fantasized, and moreover gave fashionable value to those items, which in turn fulfills criterion 7, that words constitute the economy of the


system. The strong association of such accessories with lovers, a cultural notion so strong that the mal marié could hardly help but be jealous when his wife receives gifts, speaks to the presence of criterion 9, that consumption is associated with seduction. The importance of dress and grooming in the God of love’s instructions to the lover, “keep yourself cointe according to your income,” is perhaps the finest expression of that principle.

it can hardly be denied that many further developments in fashion were yet to come. moreover, the fashion system was far from universal in France at this time, being confined to certain urban centers, and to the theatrical stages (criterion 8) of the urban and courtly milieux. The label “nascent fashion” is certainly appropriate for the centuries prior to 1350. But the Western fashion system was already functioning on numerous levels well prior to the vesti-mentary revolutions associated with the advent of more exaggerated tailoring in the mid-fourteenth century. The desire for novelty and distinction had already put many of mechanisms of production and consumption into place that would allow later revolutions in style to occur, and recur.




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index

abelard, Peter, 109aberdeen, 153abulafia, david, 57airas, 72Aliscans, 99, 150alum, 57alms purses (aumônières), 65, 75, 113,

133, 151, 152alum, 176Amadas et Ydoine, 62–3, 71, 74, 99, 102,

106, 157amazons, 89ami (Friend), allegorical figure, 77, 108–9,

111, 147, 168 see also Mal Mariéamor (god of love), allegorical figure, in

Roman de la Rose, 71, 76, 79, 97–100, 103, 106–7, 113, 116, 119, 179 see also Love

animals, 125 see also horses, livestockanjou-Touraine, 174–6Antioche, Song of, 124–6appadurai, arjun, 34aquitaine, 56arab gold, 125arras, 104–5armor, 61, 87–90, 175; and change in male

dress, 48–9armorers, 175arms, 127, 145; see also Armorarnobius the elder, 140art history, 50; see also visual evidence,

miniaturesarthurian themes, 85, 89, 94, 128, 129,

143–4artifice, 96, 110, 112, 117Aucassin et Nicolette, 100Aumônières, see alms pursesaune, cloth measure, 137avarice, allegorical figure, 66–7, 116–17,

140; sin, 109, 138–40, 178Aventure, 142–7

avignon, 52avoleza (lowness or vulgarity), allegorical

figure, 140

Babylon (cairo), 126Bags see alms purses, pursesBailli, 136Baldwin, John W., 62, 127Balzac, honoré de, 11–12, 59Banking, 58Bargaining, 145–6, 149–53Barnard, malcolm, 20–1Barons, 65, 136–7Bartélemy, dominique, 122Barthes, roland, 15, 35–7, 95, 105Bastide, mario, 147Bathing, 130, 166Batterberry, michael and ariane, 49, 96Baubles, 73–7, 155, 178Baudelaire, charles, 12, 17, 30, 37, 40,

43–4Baudrillard, Jean, 16, 23–4, 29, 31, 38, 40–

1, 43Baumgartner, emmanuèle, 157–8Bayeux Tapestry, 88Beds, 103, 123, 130, 146; women’s

moveable wealth, 112Bel accueil (Fair Welcoming), allegorical

figure, 78–9Le Bel Inconnu, 108, 123Belts, 49, 75, 80–1, 94, 117, 118, 133, 153,

155, 166; as gifts, 63, 71, 73; sold in Paris, 163

Béroul, 89, 149Bezant, 125, 131Biauté (Beauty), allegorical figure, 92Bien des Fames, 77, 158Birds, 78, 103, 154Blacksmiths, 161Blanc, odile, 53–4, 94Blasme des Fames, 74


Bliaut, outer tunic, 72, 80–1, 83, 126, 172; made by women, 157, 158

Bloch, marc, 121, 126Blumer, herbert, 22, 31, 35, 45Boileau, etienne, Livre des Métiers, 77Book production, 10, 50, 54Boots, 4Boucher, François, 19, 49, 172Bourbon, 82Bourdieu, Pierre, 33Bourgeoisie, as consumers, 5, 6, 55, 108–

10, 114, 141, 149, 151, 168, 174; in sumptuary laws, 65; as economically savvy, 145; embourgeoisement, 147

Boutiques, 156Braies, undergarment covering legs, defined

2 n. 4; mentioned, 4, 80–1, 85, 155, 157Branches des royaux lignages, 89Braudel, Fernand, 18, 48Breward, christopher, 51, 172Brooches (fermails, fermals), 73, 75, 152,

153, 154Brothels, 170Bruges, 155Brummel, Beau, 44Brunete, type of wool, 66–7, 70, 151Bumke, Joachim, 12, 63, 172, 173, 174Burgess, Glyn, 144Burgundy, fashion in, 12; courts of, as

birthplace of fashion, 46, 48–9, 60Burns, e. Jane, 69, 74, 112, 157–8Buschinger, danielle, 152Buttons, 53Byzantium, 87, 125

calico, 47de caluwé, Jacques, 144camille, michael, 50, 74, 78canada, fashion and fur traders in, 23candles, 80–1; candlelight, selling by, 169cannon, aubrey, 19, 22, 23capitalism, 23, 52, 139cats, 164cemetary of the innocents, 169cendal, type of silk, 86, 157, 177Cent nouvelles nouvelles, 159, 177Chainse, 57, 177chambellan (chamberlain), 150–1; Grand,

and taxes paid to king, 164, 169champagne, 124, 155chanel, coco, 44change, concept of (criterion 2), 8, 19–21,

39; see also silhouette

changing of clothes, frequency of, 66–8Chansons de geste, 139, 142–3, 144–5,

146–7, 152 see also Aliscans, Couronnement de Louis, Enfances Vivien, Girart de Vienne, Huon de Bordeaux, Moniage Guillaume

Chapel, chaplet, head ornament, 69–70, 71, 74, 94, 116, 158; cap, 80–1; chapiaus, 176

Chappes, 65charlemagne, court of, 56–7; reign of, 139;

and minting, 121; as character, 146chartres, money of, 123, 146Châtelaine de Vergy, 100chauciers, métier, 83, 156, 158, 161–2, 171Chausses, garment covering legs, defined, 2

n. 4; mentioned, 4, 64, 68, 80–2, 85, 89, 94, 107, 137, 155, 156, 157 see also chauciers

Chemise, undergarment, defined, 3 n. 4; equated with nudity, 83–4; mentioned, 4, 80, 94, 130; as gift, 157

Les Chétifs, 124“le chevalier qui faisait parler les cons,”

165children, 26china, fashion in, 48chivalric culture, 40, 128–31, 143–6choice, vs. imitation (criterion 3), 21; and

emotions (criterion 4), 25–9chrétien de Troyes, 128, 138, 142; see also

Cligès, Erec et Enidechurch, 23, 27, 38, 87, 98, 121, 140;

vestments, 170circlets, 75–6, 102 see also chapels,

flowerscities, development of, 122civetot, 126class consciousness, 33, 42–5, 150 see also

statusclerics, as consumers, 6, 141, 155, 159–60,

166; chroniclers, 38; tax exempt, 160Cligès, 132, 161clock, invention of, 19cloth trade, 57, coaches, 151cobezesa (covetousness), allegorical figure,

140codpiece, 39coiffes, 154coinage, 121–2, 131, 166 see also marks,

livres, moneyCointerie, 78, 80, 84, 95–119



cologne, coins of, 134color, 69–70, 85, 96 see also dyecollars, 74 see also necklacescompanions, gifts to, 5, 6, 63, 65, 73–4,

129complaints, commercial, 170–1conformity, 20 see also imitationconspicuous consumption, 9, 19, 33, 82,

127, 178; see also VeblenContenance des Fames, 75–6, 93–4Cordouanniers, métier, see shoemakers corseting, 52–3; of men, 49, 94cosmetics, 155; roman use, 20Cote, defined, 6, 105; mentioned in texts,

66–7; thirteenth-century style, 177; coteles, 79; coteriaux, 159

coulson, Jon, 87Le Couronnement de Louis, 139Courraiers, belt makers, 163courtesans, 52courtoisie (courtesy), allegorical figure, 78,

92courtly culture, and dating of fashion, 26,

52; and pleasure, 40–1; proper conduct, 97, 102

courtly love, 41Couturiers see stitchers, designerscovetousness, 138–42craft statutes, see métierscraik, Jennifer, 16crane, susan, 53–4credit, 142Crepiniers, makers of crespinetes (netted

hair ornaments), 156criteria for Fashion system, list of, 8–10 criticism of fashion (criterion 8), 9, 37–8,

41, 178; reaction to change, 30 see also moralists

crowns, 103 see also chapels, circletscrusades, First, 89, 124, 139; Third, 55;

dating birth of fashion to, 58; financing, 124

crusade cycle, old French, 89, 124–7cups, 102 see hanaps, tablewarecurtius, e. r., 91customaries, law books, 174–5cyprian, of carthage, saint, 140

dahlberg, charles, 105–6dancing, 41, 140–1dandy, 44dante alleghieri, 12debts, 131, 135, 138, 165, 167

décolletage, 39, 53decorative art, fashion as, 15deduit, allegorical figure, 66, 78, 80, 92,

103, 106, 115demi-monde, 44democratizing force, fashion as (criterion

10), 9, 43–5, 75, 114–15, 171department stores, 46designers, 25Desiré, lai de, 144, 157devleeshouwer, robert, 31de dia, comtessa (Béatrice), 100dice, 155dictionaries, 143Dictionnaire sententieux, 11disguise, 134, 137, 149–50, 152distinction, 4, 171 see also Bourdieu,

Individual expression“dit du mercier,” 154–5“dit du Pauvre mercier,” 171douai, 4douglas, mary, 127dowries, 112, 131–2dragonetti, roger, 46 n. 1drapers, 83, 151, 159, 161, 175duby, Goerges, 130, 135dye, importance of 3, 54, 57, 177–8;

technology, 58, 86; mentioned in texts, 63, 70, 117, 126; undyed wool, 87; prohibited, 170 see also pers, inde, color

dyers, 161

earth, allegorical figure, 1–2, 113, 118economy, free market, 23; cyclical, 57–8;

growth of, 173–4effros, Bonnie, 87eleanore of aquitaine, 49ellehauge, martin, 87elegant, term, 96; thirteenth-century styles,

172–3embroidery, 75, 151; embroidered objects,

86, 153, 172embroiderers, métier, 83, 176emotions, role in fashion (criterion 4), 9,

25–9, 111–12, 178enamel, 172Enfances Vivien, 85, 150england, fashion in, 12; self and

renaissance, 27; heraldry in, 88enlart, camille, 172entertainment, courtly, 93envy, 76

indeX 199



epic see chansons de gesteErec et Enide, 128, 138ermine, fur, 5; lining mentioned in texts,

62, 94, 116, 130, 150, 157L’Escoufle, 103, 123, 142, 153, 158–9Etablissements de Saint Louis, 174etienne de Bourbon, 177etienne de Fougères, 141etienne Boileau, 164, 174eu, count of, Grand chamberlain, 170evans, Joan, 173exaggeration (criterion 6), 9, 21, 32–3,

176, 179exotic, desire for, 11eyewitness account, of First crusade, 124

Fabliaux see Dit du Pauvre Mercier, Du Vilain Asnier, Le Chevalier qui faisait parler les cons, Trubert

Fads, 15Fairies, 130, 135, 144, 146–7, 166–7Fairs, 155, 171“false” work, see fraudFaral, edmond, 91Fashion, definitions of, 17–18Faux semblant (False seeming), allegorical

figure, 78, 114–15Fermails, neckline pins, see broochesFeudal ceremony, 98Fief, 146 see also renteFines, 174–5Flamenca, 3–4, 63, 71–3, 80–5, 107, 137–

8, 140, 162Flanders, 122, 134, 159, 176; fashion in, 12Floire et Blanchefleur, 126, 142Flowers, hats or wreaths of, 77–9, 94, 110,

113, 154; gown of, 113; see also chapels

Flugel, J. c., 25–6, 39, 49Fole largece, see GenerosityFood, 125, 150Fortune, allegorical figure, 69, 113Franchise (openness), allegorical figure, 80,

92, 104–5Fraud, 170–1, 174–6French cultural identity, 11–13; vs. english,

51Le Fresne, 131Friedman, lionel, 147Fripe see used clothingFroissart, Jean, see MéliadorFuretière, antoine, 12Furs, 5, 54, 133, 136, 137, 149, 162, 177;

most and least prized, 164 see also ermine, gris, lamb, sable, sheepskin, vair

Galeran de Bretagne, 131, 142, 157, 159, 165

Galoshes, 163Gambaisons, 175Garden, topos of “locus amoenus,” 2Gaul, 121Gender, fashion and, 27–9, 39, 120, 172;

ambiguity, 78–9; and cointerie, 106–11; see also men, women

Generosity, 70, 73, 106–7, 127, 128, 133, 137–9, 142; Unwise Generosity (Fole largece), allegorical figure, 113, 138; see also Largece

Genoa, sumptuary legislation, 12; merchants of, 57

Germanic tribes, 121, 140Germany, 123, 134; fashion in, 12, 28, 63Gift culture, 34, 121, 123, 127–31, 133–4,

139, 142, 153; and seduction, 39; lovers’ gifts, 63, 74, 151, 158, 167–8, 178; to host, 71–2, 138; see also companions

Gilles le muisis, 143Girart de Vienne, 144–5Girdles, 57, 74, 102Glaber, raoul, 56Gloves, 73, 113, 154, 162, 170Godbout, Jacques, 127Godefroy, Frédéric, 99, 143Godfrey of Bouillon, king of Jerusalem,

124Gold, cloth of, 5, 132, 151, 159; thread,

103, 158; gilt, 176; use in exchange, 121–2, 124, 126, 127, 131; in mercery, 152 see also spurs

Goldsmiths, 153Gonfalon, 89Gothic style, 50, 173Graelent, lai de, 123, 129, 133–4, 144Graindor de douai, 124–6Greed, 140 see also avarice, covetousnessGreenblatt, stephen Jay, 27Gregory of nyssa, 140Grierson, Philip, 121Gris, miniver fur, 5, 164, 168Grooming, 68, 93, 113, 179 see also

hairdressingGuigamor, lai de, 123Guilds, see métiersGuillaume de Dole, see Roman de la Rose


ou de Guillaume de DoleGuillaume de lorris, 70, 78, 96, 97, 100,

113, 115, 140Guillaume le Breton, 174Guillaume Guiart, 89Guillem iX, 100

haine (hate), allegorical figure, 116hairdressing, 53, 76, 92, 94, 132; acces-

sories for, 152, 154–5, 168, 173, 176; roman, 20; fashions in men’s, 56 see also grooming

hats, see chapels, coiffes, hairdressingles halles, 155, 161, 169hanaps, 133happiness, 40; see also Leesceharf-lancner, laurence, 130harnesses, 116, 151harris, Jennifer, 53, 55hats, 154 see also chapels, coiffesheers, Jacques, 57hegel, 143helmets, 90hemp, 154heraldic emblems, 88–9; mentioned in

texts, 64, 151, 153hilary of Poitiers, 140hitchcock, alfred, 32hjelmslev, louis, 98hollander, anne, 52, 58, 177horgan, Frances, 105horses, accessories 101, 155 see also

harnesses, saddles, stirrups; mounts corresponding to character, 116; destriers (chargers or battle horses) 125, 127, 145, 150; pack animals, 125, 127, 145, 150; cheval, 135; palfrey (riding horses), 149, 151; as gifts, 139; archbishops keeping expensive horses, 141; pawned, 129, 165; talking, 166; loss of, 171

hose, mentioned in texts, 64 see also chausses

huizinga, Jehan, 139hunt, alan, 23Huon de Bordeaux, 146–7hygiene, 113 see also grooming

idleness, see Oiseuseimitation, social (criterion 3), 8, 21–4, 98income, 113, 128–31, 134–8, 157; of small

merchants, 171; see also rentesInde, dark blue tint, 3

india, 47, 48individual, expression (criterion 3), 8, 178;

notion of, 7industrial revolution, 46international trade, 11, 47islamic world, fashion in, 48 italy, fashion in, 12, 28; and birth of

fashion, 46; pawning, 165; sumptuary laws, 177

Jacques de vitry, 67Japan, fashion in, 48Jason, 90–2, 108Javeau, claude, 12–13Jealousy, emotion, 68, 109, 178; allegorical

figure, 139Jean ii, king of France, 86Jean de meun, 77, 79, 96, 106, 110,

113–15Jean renart, 177Jehan et Blonde, 5–6, 64, 101–2, 132–6,

142, 156–7, 178Jerkin, 48Jérusalem, Song of (Chanson de), 89,

124–5Jewelry, as gifts (joias,jouyaux, juyaus),

73–4, 152–4; as accessories, 79, 101, 133; roman, 20; sold in Paris, 162–3

Jewers, caroline, 68John of Garland, 156, 162, 163, 164John of reading, 51Joinville, Jean de, 31, 173Jones, Jennifer m., 42–3Jonece (Youth), allegorical figure, 92Journalism, of fashion, 8Joy, 96 see Leesce, jewelryJuvenal, 74, 109

Kelly, douglas, 96Kerchiefs, 154Knighting, as occasion for new things, 61–

2, 86, 133–4, 159; and income, 135–8Knights, 88, 94, 128–31, 133–9, 141, 143;

in sumptuary laws, 65Knives, 154–5Köhler, erich, 143Krueger, roberta, 111

laces (ataches), 176lacing, to achieve fit, 53, 64Lai de l’Ombre, 177Lai du Trot, 94, 116Lai on cobra, 100

indeX 201



lamb, inferior type of fur, 66–7, 117, 162, 164

Lancelot in prose, 74land rights, 143; see also rentelanguage and fashion, see wordsLanval, 128–31, 133–4, 144lapidus, Ted, 25largece, allegorical figure, 70, 78, 92 see

also generositylaver, James, 49, 173le roy ladurie, 158leather, 164Lecheor, Lay del, 94leesce (Joy), allegorical figure, 69–70, 78,

92lendit, fair of, 155levant, 92 see also Outremer, crusadeslexicographers, 143liberal arts, 108linen, mentioned in texts, 5, 63, 80–1, 94,

149, 157; dealers in Paris, 163, 164, 176lining, 175, 177 see also cendal, ermine,

fursliterature, relation to fashion, 30, 36, 41,

128lipovetsky, Gilles, theories of fashion 16,

18, 20, 24, 26, 29, 33, 34, 35, 37, 40, 42; dating of fashion, 49, 58

livestock, 126, 145Livre (pound), defined, 123–4; mentioned,

127, 133, 134, 135, 136, 151; see also sumptuary laws, coinage

livre des manières, 141–2louis vii, king of France, 155, 177louis iX, king of France, 31, 86, 155, 170;

period of, 77; and austerity, 173; widow of, 162

love, allegorical figure, 99; see also Amorlucca, money of, 126lyons, Faith, 147, 159

madou, mireille, 176mail, armor, 48, 90Maître Pathelin, 161mal marié, Unhappily married husband,

figure, 75, 79, 106, 108–12, 116, 168–9, 178

mane, Perrine, 56Mantel, protective outer garment or cloak,

defined, 6; in texts, 3–4, 116, 123, 126, 130, 132, 150

mallarmé, stéphane, 25La Manekine, 132

marketing, 29marks, defined, 123–4; mentioned in texts,

128, 131, 132, 133“mariage des sept arts,” 108marriage, 144; as factor in sumptuary laws,

65; and control of finances, 75, 109–12, 168–9; arranged, 137; prerequisite clothing for, 145

marie de France, 128, 131, 144; see also Fresne, Lanval

mary, andré, 105mass production, 29, 31matoré, Georges, 96, 142matthew of vendôme, 91maurice de sully, 177mauss, marcel, 127maximus of Turin, 140measuring, 137, 174–5 see also yardageMéliador, 153–4men, as fashionable consumers, 4, 6–7,

110, 151, 177; having financial control, 4; historic change in dress, 48–9, 60; facial hair, 54; as clothing producers, 158 see also hairdressing

ménard, Philippe, 143, 155mendicants, 114, 173mercers, 83, 152–5, 159, 162, 178merchants, 126, 141, 143, 145, 149–57,

174–6; see also bourgeoisie, métiersmerovingian civilization, 121metalanguage, 98Métiers, 77–8, 86, 149, 155, 161–5, 170–1,

174–6; magistrate, 160milan, 12military dress, 85–90miniature painting, 10, 50, 54mining, 122, 124miniver see grisminor art, fashion as, 15minstrels, 62, 141minting, 121, 125miparties, 177mirrors, 39, 155misers, 67, 140, 166miséricorde, allegorical figure, 100misogynist discourses, 74–7, 109–12, 147mobility, social (criterion 10), 9, 107; see

also democratizing force, statusmoderation, 142mohammed, 125monastic life, 87, 114, 117, 140, 154–5,

173money, 120–47, 171; taboo, 147, 152


Moniage Guillaume, 150montaigne, michel de, 11, 17, 19montaillou, 158montpellier, 151, 153moralists, 4, 12, 27, 38, 48, 51, 140, 177–8mortgage, 135, 138munro, John, 161music, 77muslim culture, demand for european

products in, 57; see also Saracens, robes of honor

Narcisse, Lai de, 99narcissism, 29, 39, 98, 119native americans, 23necklaces, 73needle, 3nerlich, michael, 143newhauser, richard, 140newton, stella mary, 52nicholas de Bray, 174nickel, helmut, 88norman england, 55, 56normandy, 55nouveau riche, 33novelty, 69–94, 131, 171, 178; see also

changenudes, 52nudity, 83–4, 139, 177nuns, 87, 108, 154–5

occitan, language, 71–2, 100–1; sumptuary laws, 177 see also Flamenca, troubadours

oiseuse (idleness), allegorical figure, 71, 77, 92–3, 115

old Woman see La Vieilleorderic vitalis, 48, 55–6Orgueil see prideorléans, 151orphrey, 69–70, 75, 102“out-of-date,” notion of, 35, 115, 169–70outremer, silk from, 85ovid, 46, 74, 76–7, 79, 113, 118

Padding, 53, 94, 170–1, 175Palace, royal, in Paris, 162, 169Pallor, 80–1Panegyric, 91Papelardie (hypocrisy), allegorical figure,

116Paris, 86, 114; as fashion center, 12, 79;

money of, 137, 146; shopping in, 155–6,

160–4, 169, 174–6 see also tailleParis, Gaston, 142, 144Parlement, 99Parody, 68, 85Pastoureau, michel, 88Paternosters, 155Pavillions, see tentsPawning, 129, 131, 164–9Pearls, 133, 152Peasants, 55, 154, 174Peletiers, métier, skinners, 163–4, 169, 170Pelisse, 145Pelts, 176 see also peletiersPepper, 126Performace, fashion as, see Theatrical

logicPerrot, Philippe, 47Pers, dark blue tint, 3, 117, 126Petrarch, 52Philip ii (augustus), king of France, 122–3,

155, 161, 177Philip iii (le hardi, the Bold), king of

France, 65, 137Philip iv (le Bel, the Fair), king of France,

61, 65, 160Philippe de Beaumanoir, 119 see also Salu

d’AmoursPhilippe de rémi, 5–6, 64, 132, 136; see

also Jehan et Blonde, La ManekinePillage, 121, 139, 140Pins see broochesPiponnier, Françoise, 56Place de la Grève, 155Planche, alice, 78Platelle, henri, 56Pleasure, value placed on (criterion 9), 9,

38–42, 70; mentioned in texts, 84; see also Deduit

Pleats, 154, 172, 177Post, Paul, 48–9, 58Post-modernists, 16Pounds see livresPovreté (Poverty), allegorical figure, 116Prelates, 65, 141 see also clerics, ChurchPride, 27, 98–9, 111, 118–19, 178Priests see clerics Production, commercial, 18Prostitution, 151Professions, see métiersPsychology, 25–6, 39, 130Puritanical thinking, 40Purple, 68, 70, 72, 130, 149Purses, 74, 113 see also alms purses

indeX 203



Pygmalion, 70–1, 74, 77, 79

Quicherat, Jules, 54, 57, 173–4

rags, 164, 170Rear Window, 32reason, allegorical figure, 69rebellion, against parents, 26recycling, of gifts, 72; of materials, 170,

175régnier-Bohler, danielle, 84reims, 80–1, 83renaissance, 7, 26–7, 47–8, 52, 95renan, ary, 172renart, Jean, 103Rente, land income, 65, 122, 136, 141, 146,

165repair, of clothing, 159; of shoes, 163reputation, 30rhetoric, 77, 91–3, 132–3ribbons, 57, 73, 75, 76, 94, 152, 176richece (Wealth or Power), allegorical

figure, 91–2, 102, 113, 139richard the Pilgrim, 124rider, Jeff, 144rings, 75, 131, 153; as gifts, 63, 73, 74roberts, michael, 91robes, set of garments, defined, 6, 65, 136;

in sumptuary laws, 6, 65, 136–7; of honor (khil’at), 127; mentioned, 79, 128, 133, 151, 166

Roman d’Alexandre, 149–50, 151Roman d’Eneas, 89Roman de la Rose, 1–3, 66–7, 69–71, 74–5,

78–80, 91–3, 96–9, 102–3, 107–19, 139–40, 167–9; see individual figures, Guillaume de Lorris, Jean de Meun

Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole, 62–4, 69, 73–4, 77, 87, 99, 132, 134

Roman de la Violette, 77, 123, 142Roman de Thèbes, 123Roman de Troie, 90, 99, 108Roman du Châtelain de Couci et de la

Dame de Fayel, 149, 152–4Roman du Comte d’Anjou, 151, 159Romans d’aventure, 142rome, ancient, fashion in, 20–1; armor, 87;

coinage of empire, 121; medieval, 124romances, dating of, 1, n. 1; see literaturerugs, 103 ruppert, Jacques, 173

sable, 157, 164saddles, 101, 116, 150, 151saffron, 155saint-denis, abbey of, 50saint-Germain, 155saint-ladres, 155Salu d’Amours, 119samite, 64, 68, 103saracens, 126–7, 145; styles of, 39, 70satire, of vanity and fashionable

consumption, 4Savetiers, métier, see shoemakerssavoir faire, 81, 97, 101–2, 116scandinavia, coin hoards in, 121scarlet, type of woolen, mentioned in texts,

5, 63, 70, 94, 133, 149, 151, 157seals, on letters conferring income, 135–6,

146seams, 80–3 see also stiches, tailoringseduction, principle of fashion (criterion 9),

9, 38–42, 94, 101, 109self, sense of, 25–9 see also individualsemiology, 35seneschal, 151servants, 153; skilled at hairdressing, 133;

charged with marketplace tasks, 149–51, 154, 165–7; sewing, 157 see also chambellan, seneschal

sexuality, 39, 110, 112, 144shakespeare, William, 106sheepskin, 140, 163shoes, 4; pointed, 54, 55, 57, 117;

mentioned, 94, 101, 139, 154shoemakers, 156, 163, 170sicily, king of, house in Paris, 161siglaton, 80–1, 83silk, 80–1, 85, 86, 89, 131, 149, 151, 152,

174; moorish, 159; purse, 113; and twelfth-century style, 173, 176; weavers, 175; quality, 176 see also samite, siglaton, cendal, cloth trade

silhouette, evolution of (criterion 5), 9, 30–2, 174, 178

silver, demand for, 57; coinages, 121–2, 124, 126; mentioned, 102, 127, 131, 152; genuine, 176

simmel, Georg, 22, 28, 43, 47sin, 27, 94, 98, 144, 178; see also avarice,

covetousness, envy, pride, vainglorysirventes, 127sivéry, Gérard, 57skin color, 154 see also pallorslashing, 177


slavery, 126slavic gold, 125sleeves, sewn, 2, 65, 80, 104; as gifts, 63sombart, Werner, 52songs, object of consumption, 158Sorquenie, 104spain, fashion in, 12spencer, herbert, 16, 22spending, as ruinous, 41, 140, 145spending money, 130–1spices, 126, 151, 155spindler, amy, 32spinning, 158springtime, topos of “reverdie,” 1–3, 113spufford, Peter, 57, 124spurs, 90, 116squires, 137stanesco, michel, 144status, social, 5–7, 42–5, 108–15, 136–8,

141, 154–5, 174; expressed through appearance, 30–1, 32–3; and marriage, 75; see also bourgeoisie, knights, merchants, peasants, squires, vilains, social mobility

steele, valerie, 28stephen of Blois, 125–6stirrups, 150stitches, sewing techniques, 2–3, 82–3, 176stitchers (couturiers), métier, 83, 157, 158,

159, 161; tools for, 155stone, Gregory, 25–6strasbourg cathedral, 177strayer, Joseph, 160summer, robes for, 136sumner, William Graham, 15sumptuary laws, French royal, 6–7, 41, 61,

65–6, 75, 87, 136–8, 169, 177surcoat, defined, 6, 105; changes in style,

48, 88; mentioned, 63, 79, 94sutton, anne, 152

Tableware, 102, 133, 153Taille (tax records) of Paris, 114, 149, 158,

160–5, 169–70Tailoring, importance of, 53–4, 58, 80–4,

86, 92, 103–4, 114, 162, 179; mentioned, 132

Tailors, 83, 86, 157, 158, 159, 161–2, 171Tartary, brocade from, 151Taverns, 170Taxes, 143, 160; see also tailleTents, 64, 127Testaments, 112

Theatrical logic of fashion (criterion 6), 9, 32–4, 54, 109, 122

Thread, 65, 83; quality of, 175–6Timber, 57Time, concept of (criterion 1), 8, 17–19Tiretaine, 70Toile, 80–1, 83Tonsure, 80–1Touailles, headdress, 155Tournaments, 61–2, 94, 135, 138–9, 165Townsmen see bourgeoisTradition, as contrary to fashion, 18, 30“Traditional societies,” fashion in, 18–19Trains, 168, 177Trendsetters, 9, 31, 33, 43–5, 73, 119 see

also DandyTrinkets see baublesTristan, 89, 149, 152Tristece (sadness), allegorical figure, 116Triumphal entry, 5–6, 86Troubadours, 41, 100Trubert, 138–9, 145, 150Turks, 125Tyranny of fashion, 23–4

Unfashionable, 115–19Uniforms, 85–8Unisex clothing, 172University of Paris, 156, 160“Up-to-date,” notion of, 19Used clothing, 149, 156, 161, 164–71Usury, 140–1, 167Utility, 117

vainglory, sin of, 27Vair, two-toned squirrel fur, 5, 164, 177;

imitated by sumptuary laws, 6; mentioned, 63, 67, 72, 117, 126, 149, 151

valets (noble young men), 61veblen, Thorstein, 19, 33–4, 178veils, 39, 79, 154, 155de ventadorn, Bernart, 100venus, 92, 107–9, 118la vieille (old Woman), figure, 78–9, 115,

118–19, 147, 167vieillece (old age), allegorical figure, 116vikings, 121Vilain, 145–6, 150 see also peasants“du vilain asnier,” 150vinken, Barbara, 47, 56viollet-le-duc, e. e., 173vischer, Friedrich T., 39

indeX 205



visual evidence of fashion, 10, 48–53, 174von Boehn, max, 52, 173de vries, Kelly, 88

Waistline, male, 49Waste, conspicuous, 19, 34, 178Wax, 150; tablets, 155Weavers, 161, 163Weaving, 58, 175Wedding, 137Wedgewood pottery, 47Welch, evelyn, 165William ii, king of england, 48, 55William (Guillaume) of orange cycle, 150

see also Aliscans, Enfances Vivien, Moniage Guillaume

Williams, rosalind h., 47Wills see testamentsWilson, elizabeth, 16, 21, 39Wimples, 79Wine, 102, 150Wolfger of Passau, Bishop, 124

Women, as consumers, 5, 52, 151–5; object of criticism, 4, 74–6, 94, 108–12; clothing regulated by sumptuary laws, 6, 65, 136; and fashion as self-expression, 27–9, 112; more narcissistic than men, 39; as readers, 142; making or ordering clothing, 157–9

Wool, mentioned in texts, 70, 72, 117, 131, 151; cheap, 159; used, 164, 170; and thirteenth-century style, 173, 176 see also cloth trade, scarlet, brunete

Words, give value in fashion system (criterion 7), 9, 34–7, 50, 105, 178 see also Barthes, criticism

Yardage, 169Youth, 92, 107, 155

Zig-zag stitch, 2–3Zink, michel, 134Zumthor, Paul, 46 n. 1




spine 21.5 A06/04/07

HOW can a distinction be made between a culture organized around fashion, and one where the desire for novel adornment is latent, intermittent, or prohibited? This book is the first to offer a comprehensive working theory of how fashion systems organize social hierarchies, individual psychology, creativity, and production.

Medieval French culture supplies the context for this case study of ‘systematic fashion’, demonstrating desire for novelty, rejection of the old in favor of the new, and criticism of outrageous display. Texts from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries describe how cleverly-cut garments or unique possessions make a character distinctive; they even offer advice on how to look attractive on a budget, and spin fantasies of gaining enough spending money to shop for oneself.

Such descriptions suggest fashion’s presence, yet accepted notions date the birth of Western fashion to the mid-fourteenth century revolution in men’s clothing styles. A fashion system was surely present prior to this ‘revolution’ in styles, to facilitate such changes: abundant evidence for the existence of such a system is cogently set out in this study.

SARAH-GRACE HELLER is an associate professor SARAH-GRACE HELLER is an associate professor SARAH-GRACE HELLERof Medieval French at Ohio State University.

Jacket: Guillaume de Lorris, ‘Roman de la Rose’, c. 1350 (Pierpont Morgan Library, MS M. 324,f. 2v).

Medieval Clothing and TextilesEdited by ROBIN NETHERTON and GALE OWEN-CROCKER

Historical dress and textiles, always a topic of popular interest, is now established as an academic subject in its own right. Medieval Clothing and Textiles, a new series devoted to the subject (vol. 3 at this time the most recent), includes in-depth studies from a variety of disciplines as well as cross-genre scholarship, representing such fi elds as social history, economics, history of techniques and technology, art history, archaeology, literature, and language.

Vol. II Clothing descriptions in an early Irish poem in relation to archaeological fi nds; the Latin inscription embroidered on the Bayeux Tapestry; cloth-making in 12th-century French romances; medieval Paris as an international textile market; the cost of sartorial excess in England; textile cleaning techniques at a German convent in the 15th century; jewelled animal pelts as fashion accessories in the Renaissance; the social signifi cance of the embroidered jacket in early modern England.

Vol. III Domestic textiles in Anglo-Saxon England; clerical vestments in the Anglo-Saxon church; representations of saints in Opus Anglicanumvestments; colour changes in Flemish luxury woollens, 1300–1550; the fi nishing of English woollens, 1300–1550; the signifi cance of poverty and richly decorated garments in the Vita Christi of Isabel de Villena; 15th-century instructions for fi ngerloop braiding; categorization of multiple-strand bookmarkers; children’s clothing in the Lisle Letters, 1533–40.

www.boydell.co.ukwww.boydellandbrewer.com

BOYDELL & BREWER LtdPO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620-2731 (US)US)US

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