Fashion in History: A Global Look, 1300-2000 Tutor: Giorgio Riello Week 3 Tuesday 20 October 2009

1. Fashion in History: A Global Look, 1300-2000 Tutor: Giorgio Riello Week 3 Tuesday 20 October 2009 The Origins of Fashion in the Middle Ages

2. 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

3. 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

4. 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 called ‘Houppelande’. Men and Women before c. 1300 Men after c. 1300

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

6. 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’.

7. 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

8. 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

9. 3. The “Birth of Fashion”: Where and When? Hypothesis 2. Fashion from the East Is this really a viable hypothesis to explain the birth of fashion? 1. Only if the exotic, the foreign and the different is valued rather than dismissed. 2. It implies the importance of ‘encounters’. Fashion is not a national phenomenon but the result of connections across space. 3. Fashion is about ‘novelty’, something unexpected, rather than something luxurious.

10. 3. The “Birth of Fashion”: Where and When? Hypothesis 2. Fashion from the East Is this really a viable hypothesis to explain the birth of fashion? CRITICISM 1. Unclear who engages with fashion: crusaders? Merchants? Women? 2. There is nothing inherently ‘fashionable’ in silks 3. Why didn’t fashion exist outside Europe?

11. 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’.

12. 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.

13. 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 2. The majority of people lived in the countryside and did not engage in fashion 3. the money needed to buy expensive and fashionable clothing, luxuries, silks etc. came from the land. Town and country worked together. 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.

14. 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)

15. 5. 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: • Georg Simmel (1858-1918) talks about ‘Compensation’: • Fashion is a compensation for what women cannot achieve in the economic and cultural spheres of society

16. 5. 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

17. 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

18. 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