Renaissance Fashion: The Birth of Power Dressing

At what point did it begin to matter what you wore? Ulinka Rublack looks at why
the Renaissance was a turning point in people s attitudes to clothes and their app
earance.
I shall never forget, while staying in Paris, the day a friend s husband returned
home from a business trip. She and I were having coffee in a huge sunny living r
oom overlooking the Seine. His key turned in the door. Next, a pair of beautiful
, shiny black shoes flew down the corridor. Finally the man himself appeared. My
feet are killing me! he exclaimed. The shoes were by Gucci.
We might think that these are the modern follies of fashion, which now beset men
as much as women. My friend certainly valued herself partly in terms of the war
drobe she had assembled and her accessories of bags, sunglasses, stilettoes and
shoes. She had modest breast implants and a slim, sportive body. They were movin
g to Dubai. In her spare time when she was not looking after children, going sho
pping, walking the dog, or jogging, she would write poems and cry.
Yet neither my friend nor her husband would be much out of place in the middle o
f the 15th century. Remember men s long pointed Gothic shoes? In the Franconian vi
llage of Niklashausen at this time a wandering preacher drew large crowds and go
t men to cut off their shoulder-length hair and slash the long tips of their poi
nted shoes, which were seen as wasteful of leather. Learning to walk down stairs
in them was a skill. Men and women in this period aspired to an elongated, deli
cate, slim silhouette. Very small people were considered deformed and were given
the role of grotesque fools. Italian doctors already wrote books about cosmetic
surgery.
When, how and why did looks become deeply embedded in how people felt about them
selves and others? The Renaissance was a turning point. I use the term in its wi
dest sense to describe a long period, from c.1300 to 1600. After 1300 a much gre
ater variety and quantity of goods was produced and consumed across the globe. T
extiles, furnishings and items of apparel formed a key part of this unprecedente
d diffusion of objects and increased interaction with overseas worlds. Tailoring
was transformed by new materials and innovative techniques in cutting and sewin
g, as well as the desire for a tighter fit to emphasise bodily form, particularl
y of men s clothing. Merchants expanded markets in courts and cities by making chi
c accessories such as hats, bags, gloves or hairpieces, ranging from beards to l
ong braids. At the same time, new media and the spread of mirrors led to more pe
ople becoming interested in their self-image and into trying to imagine how they
appeared to others; artists were depicting humans on an unprecedented scale, in
the form of medals, portraits, woodcuts and genre scenes, and print circulated
more information about dress across the world, as the genre of costume books was b
orn.
Dressed to thrill
These expanding consumer and visual worlds conditioned new ways of feeling. In J
uly 1526 Matthus Schwarz, a 29-year-old chief accountant for the mighty Fugger fa
mily of merchants from Augsburg, commissioned a naked image of himself as fashio
nably slim and precisely noted his waist measurements. He worried about gaining
weight, which to him signalled ageing and diminished attractiveness. Over the co
urse of his life, from his twenties to his old age, Schwarz commissioned 135 wat
ercolour paintings showing his dressed self, which he eventually compiled into a
remarkable album, the Klaidungsbchlein (Book of Clothes), which is housed today
in a small museum in Brunswick. From the many fascinating details the album reve
als we know that, while he was courting women, Schwarz carried heart-shaped leat
her bags in green, the colour of hope. The new material expression of these emot
ions, which were tied to appearances, heart-shaped bags for men, artificial brai
ds for women or red silk stockings for young boys, may strike us as odd. Yet the

messages they contained (of self-esteem, erotic appeal or social advancement; a

nd their effects, which ranged from delight in wonderful craftsmanship to concer
n that a look had not been achieved or that someone s appearance was deceiving) re
main familiar to us today.
Gallery: Renaissance fashion in pictures
When cultures throw up new words, historians can be fairly sure that they have s
truck on new developments. The word fashion gained currency in different languages
during the Renaissance. Moda was adapted from Latin into Italian to convey the
idea of fashionable dressing as opposed to costume, which denoted more stable cu
stoms relating to dress. In 16th-century France, the word mode began to supersed
e the Old French expression cointerie to mean in style . The French term was adapte
d in 17th-century German as la mode. The English word fashion came from the Latin
word for making . It was first used c.1550 to refer to a temporary mode of dress in
the physician Andrew Boorde s Book of Knowledge. Boorde depicted an almost naked
Englishman on a woodcut, cheerily announcing: Now I will wear I cannot tell what,
all fashions be pleasant to me. Boorde thought that the English would never be r
ole models for other nations if they assimilated other fashions. His book was al
so the first in Europe to include woodcut depictions of people in different dres
s from across Europe. Yet the new preoccupation with fashion reached beyond the
continent. In 1570 the Chinese student Chen Yao wrote of how hairstyles, accesso
ries and styles in his region of China changed without warning. It s what they call
fashion (the word he used was shiyang, which literally translates as the look of
the moment ).
Many people reacted with shock to these cultural transformations. Stability, or
a return to old customs, signalled order, whereas change, and especially constan
t change, seemed threatening and corrupting. Moralists warned that there should
be clear principles concerning who should wear what in terms of their profession
and bodily needs in different climates. Once the right kind of clothing had bee
n identified there would be no need ever to change. Elites naturally tried to pr
eserve the signalling of high rank through fine clothing. Sumptuary laws, dating
from Roman times and so called after the Latin word sumptus meaning expense, ha
d multiplied during the Renaissance. These sought to limit the amount of money w
ealthy people could spend on apparel, so as to limit competitive spending. They
also typically set out what kinds of materials and sometimes even colours each r
ank could wear. Like Andrew Boorde, many worried about the introduction of forei
gn styles. Moralists across Europe really believed that dress shaped people s ment
alities, so that fine foreign clothing, for instance, would make a person more a
ffected and licentious. Such commentators were concerned about the money that wo
uld be taken from one country to another and about people losing their virtuous,
national customs of behaviour; the worst was when people mixed fashions from diff
erent cultures and thus became completely unidentifiable in any national, politi
cal or moral sense.
Alongside these reactions was the dawning realisation that clothing made one his
torical. Matthus Schwarz was in his early teens when he started talking to old pe
ople about what they had worn in the past and began to make drawings of his own
apparel. People began to be aware that future generations would look at them wit
h a sense of historical distance and incredulity, simply on account of what they
looked like. Rather than revering their ancestors, they might be laughing at th
eir funny shoes. This uncomfortable realisation raised the question which underl
ies all cultural history: how were these changing customs to be explained?
One answer suggested by contemporaries, such as the Strasbourg-born poet and sat
irist Sebastian Brant (1457-1521), was that humans were like apes because they i
mitated others. Such a view was neither sophisticated nor uplifting. It presente
d two choices: either to join the apes and take part in the folly of human life
or to turn rigidly moral and refuse the dance. The latter position was as ridicu

lous as the former because those opting out of fashion appeared archaic, particu
larly at a moment when beauty and inventions were highly esteemed. Cities such a
s Florence were praised for the beauty of their women and sumptuary laws were su
spended, often for months, when important foreign dignitaries visited. People st
ored finery for such moments or forged links with those from whom they could bor
row garments. Consequently inventories that record the kind of clothing people p
ossessed when they married or died often provide an incomplete account of the go
ods they had access to via networks of friends and family.
Colour and class
Lending and borrowing sustained much of early modern life, especially among poor
er sections of society. Women in particular relied on such connections, because
they were paid less than men or were engaged in unsalaried labour. At the same t
ime unmarried women were expected to look attractive in their efforts to gain a
partner, so sumptuary legislation sometimes made allowances for accessories they
might wear. For example, a 1530 Imperial Police Ordinance permitted daughters a
nd unmarried peasant women to wear hairbands of silk.
There was general disdain of slovenly dress, a strong theme, for example, in the
writing of the Dominican priest Thomas Aquinas (1225-74), who thought that wive
s needed to look their best to keep their husbands faithful. New colours excited
people and since outfits were usually composed of many individual elements, suc
h as detachable sleeves, those lower down the social scale might be able to affo
rd one section in a fashionable colour, perhaps purchasing it second hand. Yello
w, for example, became a fashionable colour at the beginning of the 16th century
. Inventories from the Swiss city of Basel at this time show that the colour was
first adopted by wealthy men and women, but within a few years it became popula
r with prostitutes, journeymen, apprentices and maidservants, as well as minor o
fficials and artisans. In 1512 the widow of the town piper in Basel is registere
d as owning a yellow bodice and her husband s yellow and green hose. By 1520 just
about everyone in the city wore yellow and the colour appeared in many innovativ
e combinations yellow-brown, yellow-red, yellow-green, yellow-black.
Fashion gained favours for men and women alike. Matthus Schwarz had three expensi
ve outfits tailored for himself to please Archduke Ferdinand I of Austria, whom
he met twice during the Imperial Diet of Augsburg of 1530, presided over by the
archduke and his brother, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Members of the empe
ror s entourage were certain to write about how civilised or not a city appeared t
o be. Such diaries and travelogues were frequently published. Visitors were keen
to see craft workshops and examples of urban ingenuity on display; they would d
ance, dine, be waited upon and bestow gifts. Few people wanted to seem behind the
times , especially since Italians had ingrained in European society the notion th
at a refined civilisation was a superior one. But what bearing did Schwarz s appea
rance have on the imperial party in 1530? Schwarz, who had slimmed in advance an
d had grown a beard like Ferdinand himself, used fashion to produce an image of
himself which made the archduke like and trust him. In 1541 Schwarz himself rec
eived a particularly special reward from the emperor, whom he had also had a cha
nce to impress in person; he was ennobled. Of course he had been loyal to the Ca
tholic Habsburgs during the Reformation and had worked as head accountant for th
e firm that did most to finance them. Schwarz celebrated this achievement and ha
d himself depicted in a coat lined with marten skin, a fur which was restricted
to the highest elites. Such fur was homogenously coloured dark brown and came in
rectangular pieces measuring up to 60 centimetres. It materialised the rich man s
garb in relation to that of the poor man, whose coat, in contrast, was likely t
o have been made of scraps of different furs.
What was new in the Renaissance is the dynamic ability of fashion to reach down
the social scale. Schwarz was not an aristocrat, but a wine merchant s son. In the
depictions he has left us (as well as the book of clothes he also commissioned
two surviving oil paintings of himself) we see a burgher who knew how to create

effective and lasting self images. Real life was less glamorous. In April 1538,
at the age of 41, Schwarz married Barbara Mangolt, the not very exciting and not
very young daughter of a local manager in the Fugger firm. In the picture of hi
mself marking the occasion Schwarz is shown in his home from behind wearing a da
rk coat trimmed with green half-silken taffeta. The text accompanying the image
reads simply: 20 February 1538 when I took a wife this coat ... was made . After th
is he got fat, had a stroke and afterwards looked his age. Politics, too, did no
t work out the way he hoped because the Reformation made headway and in the 1550
s German trade entered a profound credit crisis. Schwarz left long gaps in betwe
en images of himself in his album. It was difficult to find a fitting end. When
he had decided on his final image in September 1560, he could not help but look
back at the paintings of himself in his prime to note, sardonically, that he loo
ked so different now from then. Social expectation did not permit older people t
o be so playful with dress. Now his days in bright red were over and he wore mos
tly black and white.
Schwarz s extraordinary record of his clothes has wider meanings. It shows why it
is too simplistic to treat fashion, as the French sociologist Gilles Lipovetsky
does, as an engine of western modernity since the Middle Ages, in his view becau
se it broke with tradition, encouraged self-determination, individual dignity an
d opinion-making. It did this in part, and importantly so, but not in uniform wa
ys and not in the West alone. Clothes already formed an important part of what w
e might call people s psychic landscapes . Wardrobes could become repositories of fan
tasies and insecurities, as well as reflecting expectations of what a person mig
ht look like and behave. These cultural arguments and tensions lie at the heart
of our struggle to understand the Renaissance. People s interaction with material
goods and visual media added further complexities to their lives. Images could s
ometimes be manipulated in highly controlled visual displays designed to achieve
a specific response from large public audiences evoking, for example, divine ma
gnificence at papal rituals. But they could also be used to explore more openly
what was local, regional and foreign, to manage conflicting emotions, or to refl
ect ways in which an individual tried to appear to others.
New ideas of luxury
When we study the Renaissance, therefore, we need to trace the process by which
increasing numbers of people outside courts became attached to material possessi
ons and tried to work out how virtue and decorum might be maintained amid selfis
h, vain and competitive human tendencies. In southern and northern Europe this p
rocess was crucial to people s attempts to give meaning to life. Even English Puri
tans were able to acknowledge that possessions could be God s temporal blessings a
s ornaments and delights . Protestants, however, developed a particular notion of n
ew, justifiable luxury as opposed to corrupt old luxury . According to this view, old
luxury was the preserve of a narrow elite trapped in a vicious circle of self-con
gratulation and greed, which cultivated extravagant, effeminate and over-sensuou
s tastes. Protestants saw examples of papal, oriental and monarchical splendour
as excessive and guilty of creating a false world of fantastic illusion which ov
erwhelmed onlookers and engendered envy even among elites. Furthermore such mani
festations of conspicuous consumption suggested an emotional style pertaining to
uncontrollable passions rather than manageable emotion. Old luxury was perceived
as doomed and, as in ancient Rome, set to lead to a republic s decline, as well as
evincing the misery of human nature after the Fall.
New luxury could, by contrast, be declared virtuous. Together with the defence of
new decencies, it could be identified with a republican spirit, public gain, gen
tility and politeness. This notion enshrined clear codes of honourable, often mo
re frugal, consumption based on self examination of whether one needed something
or was being over-indulgent.
In the 17th and 18th centuries bourgeois consumption qualified as

good , if it did

not encourage travesty

men as effeminate gallants, for instance, or women in bre
eches. In a rare miniature exploring sexual identities beyond the clear division
s of masculine and feminine so rigorously upheld by society, the Dutch artist Ad
riaen van der Venne depicts a vomiting cat next to an ordinary couple having fun
by cross dressing. The cat symbolises sexuality, the act of vomiting a satire o
n the couple s subversive act. Bourgeois consumption was meant to establish men as
respectable heterosexuals, who would marry and take on public roles; women as d
istinctly feminine as well as destined for fidelity in marriage. The appearance
of small flower patterns and pastel colours, meanwhile, created a softer, more d
elicate style, which took its cues from Persian designs and was an alternative t
o the hyper-masculinity of much of the 16th century, with its bold stripy patter
ns, daring slashes and frequently loud colours. Meanwhile, black, in its differe
nt shades, continued for some time as the international shade indicating sumptuo
us restraint for both sexes. New models of luxury consumption endorsed measured
innovation and the notion of aesthetic pleasure to reinforce cultural competence
. Sensations such as surprise and delight could be regarded as refined, because
they were not linked to simple utility or physical pleasure. Necessity pointed t
o functional utility, whereas luxury suggested honourable decorum and progressiv
e, though polite , creativity. Such evaluations were connected to the notion that c
onsumers should obtain a high degree of product information and an understanding
of intricate cuts and constructions of clothing from artisans, shops and trades
men, or books and magazines. Hence the cultivation of taste based on knowledge a
nd civil sociability rather than the kind that advertised conspicuous wealth. Bo
urgeois classes could positively cherish fashion as a forward-looking social too
l. It could now be presented in a positive light as fuelling the wealth of natio
ns and engendering emotional well-being.
The Renaissance watershed
Debates about fashion that started in the Renaissance did not end with Molire. Th
e idea that the defence of decorous fashion was compatible with a good Christian
existence evolved as did complex debates about clothing, of the kind we are fam
iliar with today. But the development of fashion in this period marks a historic
al watershed. How one dressed began to be seen as the right of an individual and
this conviction helped gradually to erode sumptuary legislation. Interest in wh
at one wore was increasingly informed by lure of what craftsmen were able to pro
duce. Different kinds of half-silks, beautiful dyes and lovely patterned textile
s seemed delightful to explore and purchase. Yet these choices could also cause
confusion and cultural arguments. Women were worried about what colours would be
considered seemly and students angered their mothers by asking for money for cl
othes. Family exchanges now included children bargaining with parents over what
they might wear, while parents desperately sought to exercise control. Take the
case of Paul Behaim, son of a Nuremberg merchant, who in 1574 aged 17 travelled
to Italy with two friends. Having left unsettled debts in Leipzig, where he had
been a student, he knew that he now needed to display to his widowed mother a mo
re frugal attitude while simultaneously arguing his case. In his first letter ho
me, he wrote:
Dear Mother ... I have used the money from the sale (of a horse) to have the sim
plest coarse green clothing made for myself
a doublet with modest trim, pleatles
s hose (like those Gienger [the tutor] wears at home), and a hooded coat ... Les
t you think things are cheap here, all this has cost me approximately 17 or 18 c
rowns, even though it was as plain and simple as it could be. I could not have b
een more amazed when I saw (that bill) than you will be when I send it to you.
In all these ways, then, clothing has changed the ways in which we feel and beha
ve.
The Renaissance is in some ways a mirror which leads us back in time to disturb
the notion that the world we live in was made in a modern age. Messages reflecte

d in clothing about self-esteem, erotic appeal or social advancement of the wear

er are all familiar to us today. Since they first surfaced we have had to deal m
ore intensely with clever marketing, as well as with questions about image and s
elf-image and whether clothes wear us or we wear them. In short, dress has chang
ed in history and it changes history.
Ulinka Rublack teaches early modern European history at Cambridge University and
is a Fellow of St John s College. She is the author of Dressing Up. Cultural Iden
tity in Renaissance Europe (Oxford University Press, 2010).