textilescottonJapansixteenth–seventeenth centuriesEnglandsixteenth–seventeenth centuriesConsumerism, consumptionThe historical characteristics of consumer behavior have been the subject of intensive study for a generation.Among the pioneer studies see: Jan De Vries “Peasant Demand and Economic Development: Friesland 1559–1700,” in William Parker and E. L. Jones eds, European Peasants and their Markets, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975; Economic Policy and Projects: The Development of a

The impact of Confucian philosophy on all aspects of Chinese life is evident in the attire of the Han people of Taiwan, specifically as regards the notion of the Doctrine of the Mean, which emphasizes personal introspection and emotional control, focused on cultural nurturing and the rejection of human vanity. Dress preserves modesty by covering the body and obscuring its shape. Importance is placed on inner beauty, the term for which literally means “charm”—the spiritual and cultural quality hop

The term secondhand clothing connotes garments that enter a second or new circle of use after they have been worn or used by a previous owner. The handing down, sale, and reuse of previously worn garments have been common practices throughout the history of dress. Even into the twentieth century, garments were expensive goods and often a family investment that was passed on to the next generation or traded and exchanged for other goods. With the wider accessibility of fashion and the acceleration

Only a few urban centers had the status of free royal towns in seventeenth-century Croatia, which was predominately rural; fashion was for the rich. Cultural influences came via trade routes from Austria, Italy, and Germany. Fifteenth- and sixteenth-century traders from Dubrovnik had opened offices in England, wool fabrics from London being prized. Dubrovnik women, living between East and West, wore beautiful clothing from both. Eighteenth-century Croatian aristocrats imitated luxurious Parisian

From the time of the European Renaissance, the West has been fascinated by the image of the “mysterious,” “exotic,” and “erotic” East. Sometimes, as Edward Said explored in his 1978 book Orientalism, this Western view of the East has been so dependent on the fantastical imaginings of European (and North American) authors, artists, and musicians that the realities of Eastern cultures and societies have been deliberately submerged beneath a vision of “theatricalized” Eastern despotism, characterize

For the entire period of its known history, the classic Kashmir shawl, woven in twill tapestry from the finest trans-Himalayan goat pashm (cashmere), was manufactured as an export item, destined for the highest end of the market in plains India, Afghanistan, Iran, and the Ottoman Empire, and later in Europe and the United States. The industry was highly structured, and its output was tailored to the demand of particular markets. Merchants from foreign countries traveled to Srinagar, Kashmir’s cap

Shoemaking in North America dates back to the establishment of the very first colonies. It was one of the trades that the Virginia Company hoped to establish in Jamestown, and one of the early investors in the Virginia Company was the Worshipful Company of Cordwainers, the shoemakers’ guild in London. The first mention of shoemakers, or cordwainers as they were known (a term derived from their work with Cordova leather) dates to 1610. Archaeological evidence from Jamestown suggests that the Engli

Immigrants face many challenges when settling in a new country as they arrive with different cultural beliefs and practices. Immigrants may elect to reject the old and adapt their beliefs to their new culture, to preserve their “Old World” culture, or to blend some aspects of their cultural heritage into their lives as immigrants. The process by which one group takes on the cultural traits of a larger group is called assimilation. A related concept is acculturation, which is a change in the cultu

The history of Taiwanese dress has been deeply influenced by politics and history. Taiwan’s location approximately 150 kilometers (93 miles) off the southeastern coast of China has over the centuries both linked it to and separated it from mainland East Asia. It continues to be a major factor in the geopolitics of the region in the early twenty-first century. Taiwan’s location on major maritime trading routes from Southeast Asia, Indonesia, China, Korea, Japan, and the Ryukyu Islands has also imp

Kabuki as we know it today – a highly respectable ‘traditional’ theatre with male actors playing established roles in dramas with complex plots – did not emerge until the late seventeenth century. In its earliest manifestation, it was a dance theatre with female performers, whose dances and skits appealed to the warrior elite and commoner alike. The word for Kabuki drama is now properly written with three Chinese characters, ‘song’, ‘dance’, and ‘skill’, but it has a less flattering etymology rel

The Broker (skorning to bee called Vsurer) will lend none money, at ten in the hundred, vpon bond or securitie, but (for sooth) Sir if you will bring a pawne worth double the summe you desire, and make a bill of Sale, you shall haue halfe, or sometimes the third of the value thereof … Item, deliuered to Mistris Spendthrift vpon a bill of Sale, the first of Ianuarie, 1618, for a Taffata Peticote, a Beuer Hat, Gold Band, Yellow Feather,

it was not lawful for women to swear by Hercules, nor to enter into his temple: this was a punishment laid upon that sex, for the insolency of Queen Omphale over Hercules, in causing him so effeminately to serve her.AlexanderRoss, Mystagogus Poeticus, or the Muses Interpreter (London, 1648), pp. 169–70.

“I have much wondered why our English above other nations should so much dote upon new fashions …”

1663. Two years after Charles II’s triumphant return as the English monarch, the unspeakable horror of the plague yet two years in the future with the Great Fire to come after that, and Samuel Pepys was facing a personal dilemma. He wanted to try wearing a wig, but lacked the resolution to cut off his hair. While two years earlier he had been very particular about how it was trimmed, ‘finding that the length of it doth become me very much’, by May 1663 he was experiencing such difficulty keeping

Wrapping us into flexible parcels of flesh, skin holds the inside and outside apart. It is our boundary with the rest of the world, keeping us contained and discrete: skin defines where we stop and everything else starts. Histories of its fashioning usually view it as a kind of blank canvas on which decoration is inscribed, as in the case of tattooing, scarification, piercings, and cosmetic adornment. In this chapter, however, I want to look not at how our cutaneous envelope has been decorated, b

This chapter is a very preliminary exploration of the territory at the intersection of two rapidly developing fields of historical study. One is the history of consumption in early modern Europe which is the focus of this volume. The other is the history of maritime Asia in early modern times. Recent changes in the historiography of the latter field have not been very widely noticed outside the circles of scholars who are making direct contributions. I would suggest the nature and depth of the ch

In the long period of human history in the West before the full force of industrialization changed the world, the scarcity of goods ensured their careful husbanding. Use and reuse defined the everyday for all but a tiny minority of the population. However, by at least the late sixteenth century, dramatic and progressive changes in trade and manufacturing were stimulating regional economies, changing social relations, as scarcity slowly and very gradually began to give way before a rising abundanc

In his diary entry for 8 October 1666, Samuel Pepys recorded the beginnings of a new look. England was at war with France and London reeling from the aftermath of the Great Fire, and so the King intended to create a fashion for clothes that was both anti-French and anti-extravagance. ‘It will be a vest’, wrote Pepys, but ‘I know not well how’. By the following week, however, Pepys had discovered more: This day the King begins to put on his Vest, and I did see several persons of the House of Lords

The story of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century fashion can be told very simply. Our starting point is a sketch of a clothed male figure dating from the 1570s (Figure 1). The drawing comes from the marginalia of a York Archbishop’s Register, and was presumably penned idly by some bored clerk.BIHR, Cons. AB. 33 (1570–2), fol. 13v. There are two almost identical sketches on fols 12v and 13v. The sketch indicates that our modern gestalt of the appearance of an Elizabethan was very close to theirs. T

Later generations tend to look back in sartorial judgement, and impute to early modern dress a negative range of values. It was surely restrictive, unhygienic, uncomfortable, unhealthy and impractical. It must have got in the way. To wear it would have needed endurance, and those who did are pitied, and wondered at. Such sentiments are found expressed in much historiographical comment. For example, G.R. Elton wrote of Tudor dress that ‘the huge hooped skirts rendered movement difficult, while the

Phineas Pett (Figure 6), eventually to become a master shipbuilder and naval commissioner, described his strategy for advancing his fortunes. As a young man in dire financial straits he was yet ‘contented to take any pains to get something to apparel myself, which by God’s blessing I performed before Easter next after, and that in very good fashion, always endeavouring to keep company with men of good rank far better than myself’.The Autobiography of Phineas Pett, ed. by E.G.Perrin, Navy Records

From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century there were nine major statutes relating to apparel.There were also minor laws passed in 1355, 1364, 1420 and 1477. In addition to this legislative activity, the Commons unsuccessfully petitioned the Crown for sumptuary regulation in 1402 and 1406. Frances Baldwin gives a detailed account of all of this in the first four chapters of Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926). The first appeared in 1337 and prohibited al

A powerful image of exclusion, and of a dangerous marginal lurking on the fringe of decent society, is represented in the figure of the vagabond or wandering rogue. Roaming beyond normal geographic and social boundaries, the rogue embodied the breakdown of good order. Undo the ties that bound family, household and commonweal, and the rogue emerged in dangerous isolation, potentially criminal, but in essence offending simply by existing. ‘Vagrancy is perhaps the classic crime of status, the social