Fashion in History: A Global Look

Tutor: Giorgio Riello

Week 3

Monday 15 October 2007

‘The Origins of Fashion: Status Hierarchy and Magnificence’

1. Clothing in Medieval Societies

1. Clothing in Medieval Societies

1. Clothing in Medieval Societies

In the middle ages clothing was not just a matter of personal choice.

What one wore depended on his/her position in society.

↓

Medieval society was a hierarchical society

1. Clothing in Medieval Societies

The ‘livery’ was a “social uniform” of a group.

People belonging to different social groups (artisans; doctors; priests; lawyers; traders; etc.) would dress differently

Guilds (associations of people doing the same job) would wear similar garments, or colours

Servants of powerful families would wear the colours and insignia of the family

↓Medieval society was a segmented society

2. The Great Divergence: The Shapes of Men and Women

Until the early part of the 14th century both men and women wore very large tunics or cloaks called ‘Houppelande’.

‘Spinning’, in Ovide, late 15th century. Paris, BNF, 874 fol. 132v

Dominico di Michelino, Dante and the Three Kingdoms, Museo d'Opera del Duomo, Florence. Oil

on canvas, 1465 (detail)

Rogier van der Weyden, first page of the Chroniques de Hainaut (1448). Opaque paint, gold, and pen and ink on parchment, Bibliothèque Royal de Belgique, Brussels.

Piero della Francesca, The Queen of Sheba in front of the True Cross, Arezzo, Church of S. Francis, 1453-58. Detail.

Rogier Van der Weyden, Portrait of a Lady, c. 1460

Fra Domenico, Poor woman, Florence c. 1440

Men and Women before c. 1300 Men after c. 1300

Men and Women before c. 1300 Women after c. 1300

Archduchess Isabella Clara Eugenia and her Dwarf, c.1599,

artist unknown

2. The Great Divergence: The Shapes of Men and Women

2. The Great Divergence: The Shapes of Men and Women

This change in the “shape” of men and women was caused by:

1. The development of sewing

2. The development of knitting (as in the case of hoses)

While a garment is normally woven on the loom, cut and sewn; a knitted garment is produced as a 3-D object from yarn.

3. The use of buttons and other fastenings such as pins

3. The “Birth of Fashion”: Where and When?

Hypothesis 1. Fashion, Courts and Armour

-What is central is the differentiation between men’s and women’s shapes and their clothing

- Men wear armour with a padded garment underneath

- By 1330 this garment is used as overgarment (without the armour) and is called doublet or ‘poupoint’.

Titian, Portrait of Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino. c.1536-38. Oil on canvas. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Italy.

Christoph Amberger (c.1500-61)Portrait of Christoph Fugger. Alte Pinakothek, Munich, Germany.

3. The “Birth of Fashion”: Where and When?

Hypothesis 1. Fashion, Courts and Armour

See Pipponier and Maine (reading list)

Central to this notion of fashion is the medieval court:-Elizabeth Wilson claims that this is a form of fashion heavily reliant on the court; - Fernand Braudel thinks this is not ‘fashion’ as such but a form of court culture

3. The “Birth of Fashion”: Where and When?

Hypothesis 2. Fashion from the East

- The emergence of fashion is linked to trade in the ‘East’ (Asia)

- Silks imported from the Near East spakled new forms, shapes, colours and textures

Asian Silks Figured in the Articulation of New Styles in Medieval Europe

The True Cross by Piero della Francesca. 1452-66. San Francesco, Arezzo.

Portrait of a Condottiere, by Jacopo Marcello (?). 1480-90. National Gallery of Art, Washington

3. The “Birth of Fashion”: Where and When?

Hypothesis 2. Fashion from the East

- The emergence of fashion is linked to trade in the ‘East’ (Asia)

- Silks imported from the Near East spakled new forms, shapes, colours and textures

- Europe at this point was well linked to the near east through:

- The trade of the maritime republics of Genoa, Venice and Amalfi;- The trade carried out by Jewish and Islamic traders in Europe;- by the crusaders who between 1100 and 1300

travelled to the holy land

3. The “Birth of Fashion”: Where and When?

Hypothesis 3. Fashion and the Medieval City

Fashion did not emerge in either the court and/or the contact with Asia

But

in the context of urban living, the medieval ‘comuni’ (Italian city states) and the ‘signorie’.

4. Fashion and Urban Living

Living in towns and cities was the exception rather than the rule. 80 to 90 percent of the population lived in the countryside and cultivated the land.

Percentage of the entire workforce employed in Agriculture

1600-1700 2000

Venice 80 % Italy 6 %

Spain 75 %

France 73 %

Great Britain 45 % Great Britain 2 %

Low Countries

40 %

United States 2 %

Third World 50 %

Billions of Hectars of Land Under Cultivation

1400-1500 2000

3.6 13.5

4. Fashion and Urban Living

From the middle ages fashion is centred in urban areas.

Towns and cities are seen as places where resources are wasted rather than generated.

Fashion (with all its attributes of wastefulness) is part of a more general vision of urban living as wasteful.

Thomas III de Saluces, Le Chevalier errant, Paris, c. 1400-1405, Paris, BnF, département des Manuscrits, Français 12559, fol. 167

4. Fashion and Urban Living: four consequences

1. The city is a place for social competition: where you see new things, meet people and buy stuff

Anonymous, Mese di Luglio. c. 1400-1407. Detail.

4. Fashion and Urban Living: four consequences

2. The majority of people lived in the countryside and did not engage in fashion

Anonymous, Mese di Luglio. c. 1400-1407.

3. the money needed to buy expensive and fashionable clothing, luxuries, silks etc. came from the land. Town and country worked together.

4. Fashion and Urban Living: four consequences

4. The number of artisans who could produce fashionable objects was small. Skilled workmen were a very small percentage of the total workforce. Few people could be fashionable.

4. Fashion and Urban Living: four consequences

Sixteenth-century East Indies Pearl Broach

Portrait of Catharina Cornaro, Queen of Cyprus, by Gentile Bellini. 1500. Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

5. Competition and the Segmentation of Society

Fashion in urban places is not produced by competition and imitation across classes (to imitate one’s social superior)

but

is created by imitation and social competition within specific classes (to outdo people belonging to your own social level)

5. Competition and the Segmentation of Society

Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) distinguishes between:

1. ‘Reverential Imitation’: when one imitates one’s social superior and by doing this accepts his/her inferior position; (across)

2. ‘emulative imitation’: when people pick and choose and reinterpret and often borrows from their social equals, rather than superiors. (within)

6. Women and Fashion

Women have been seen as central in the history of fashion. However there are different explanations on why this is the case:

A.Georg Simmel (1858-1918) talks about ‘Compensation’:

Fashion is a compensation for what women cannot achieve in the economic and cultural spheres of society

Christine de Pisan and Queen Isabeau of Bavaria, by the Master of Bedford, c. 1410

Four Days in LA: The Versace Pictures, 2001. © Steven Meisel

6. Women and Fashion

B. Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929) talks about ‘Conspicuous Consumption’:

women engage in fashion not because of themselves and their social position but because of their husbands’ position.

The display of clothing for women was used to visualise the social standing and wealth of the family, fathers and husbands

6. The “Birth of Fashion”: Why?

Werner Sombart (1863-1941) published Luxus und Capitalismus (1913) where he claimed: -that fashion is part of luxury consumption

and

-in ‘modern’ societies is used as a way to fight against the fear of death:

1. to deform, or re-arrange of time, in which people, human being, take charge of time and change its normal course.

2. this process provides social cohesion

6. The “Birth of Fashion”: Why?

Herbert Blumer (1900-1987) develops the ideas of Sombart into his theory of ‘collective selections’ and suggests that:

1. fashion emerges from the desire to be in synchrony with time, not to be “old-fashioned” and therefore excluded.

2. this might have started in the middle ages when the new culture (Dante, Boccaccio etc.) of the ‘modern’ highlighted the difference between the present (14th and 15th centuries) and the (Ancient classical) past

Adam ed Eve at work, ms. 3878, f. 7, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris

8. Producing Fashion in the Middle Ages

Champaigne Philippe de (attr.), Portrait d'un homme sur son lit de mort, 1625.

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes. © Direction des Musées

Tosatura delle pecore, in Petrus de Crescentiis (Pier de' Crescenzi), Ruralia commoda, 1493. Bayerische Staatsbibliotek, München

Panni tinctor (dyeing cloth), in Schopper Hartmann, Panoplia omnium illiberalium mechanicarum aut..., Frankfurt, 1568, f. 49. Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome

Portrait of Ranuccio Farnese by Tiziano Vecellio. 1542, National Gallery of Art, Washington.

The Tailor, in Albucasis, Tacuinum sanitatis, Milan, c. 1390-1400 Paris, BnF, NAL 1673, fol. 94. .

Complete Tacuinus at:http://www.godecookery.com/tacuin/tacuin.htm

Tailor’s shop at the Castle of Issogne, Val d’Aosta, Italy, c. 1400.

9. Buying Clothing in the Middle Ages