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East & west : textiles and fashion in early modern Europe

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Lemire, Beverly and Riello, Giorgio. (2008) East & west : textiles and fashion in early modern Europe. Journal of Social History, Vol.41 (No.4). pp. 887-916. ISSN 0022-4529

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Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/jsh.0.0019

Abstract

What is the origin and essence of fashion? This question has engaged scholars of various disciplines over the past decades, most of whom approach this subject with a Western or European focus. This paper argues instead that Asia was also pivotal in the articulation of the fashion system in Europe. The long interaction between these regions of the world initiated profound changes that included the iteration of the early modem fashion system. Silk and later printed cotton textiles are uniquely important in world history as agents of new consumer tastes, and the embodiment of fashion in Europe. Particular attention is given to the process of the Europeanization of Asian textiles, and the consideration of the intellectual, commercial and aesthetic relationship between Europe and Asia, as the European printed industry developed. Fashion was not just created through the adoption and use of Asian goods, but it was also shaped by a culture in which print was central; and it was the printing of information-visual, as well as literate-along with printing as a productive process, which produced a type of fashionability that could be "read".

Item Type:	Journal Article
Alternative Title:	East and west
Subjects:	D History General and Old World > DA Great Britain > DAW Central Europe N Fine Arts > NK Decorative arts Applied arts Decoration and ornament
Divisions:	Faculty of Arts > History
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Chintz -- Europe, Clothing and dress -- History, Calico -- Europe, Fashion -- Europe -- History -- 16th century, Fashion -- Asian influences, Textile industry -- Europe -- History -- 16th century, Textile industry -- Europe -- History -- 17th century, Fashion -- Europe -- History -- 17th century
Journal or Publication Title:	Journal of Social History
Publisher:	George Mason University
ISSN:	0022-4529
Date:	2008
Volume:	Vol.41
Number:	No.4
Number of Pages:	31
Page Range:	pp. 887-916
Identification Number:	10.1353/jsh.0.0019
Status:	Peer Reviewed
Access rights to Published version:	Open Access
Description:	Final version (as published).
References:	1. C.A. Foley, “Fashion,” Economic Journal 3, no. 11 (1893), p. 460. 2. See, for example, Janet Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony: the World System, A. D. 1250–1350 (New York, 1989); and Andre Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, 1998). 3. John R. McNeill and William H. McNeill, The Human Web: A Bird’s-eye View of World History (New York, 2003), p. 3. 4. Giles Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion: Dressing Modern Democracy, trans. by Catherine Porter (Princeton, 1994), p. 15. Fernand Braudel, for instance, contrasted what he claimed was mobility in European fashion with unchanging Chinese styles, and also Ottoman and Arab sartorial immobility. Fernand Braudel, Capitalism and Material Life, 1400–1800, trans. by Miriam Kochen (London, 1973). 5. Craig Clunas, Superfluous Things: Material Culture and Social Status in Early Modern China (Cambridge, 1991); Timothy Brook, The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China (Berkeley, 1998). 6. For a discussion of the interactions between an advanced Asia and a backward Europe see: Lynda Shaffer, “Southernization,” Journal of World History, 5, no. 1 (1994): pp. 1–22. See also Maxine Berg’s several articles on the subject: “Manufacturing the Orient. Asian Commodities and European Industry 1500–1800,” in Simona Cavaciocchi, ed., Prodotti e Tecniche d”Oltremare nelle Economie Europee. Secc. XIII–XVIII. Atti della ‘Ventinovesima Settimana di Studi’, 14–19 Aprile 1997 (Florence, 1998), pp. 385–419, and Maxine Berg, “Asian Luxuries and the Making of the European Consumer Revolution,” in Maxine Berg and Elizabeth Eger, eds., Luxury in the Eighteenth Century: Debates, Desires and Delectable Goods (London, 2003): pp. 228–244. 7. Maxine Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury: Global History and British Consumer Goods in the Eighteenth Century,” Past and Present 182 (2004): pp. 85–142. 8. Abu–Lughod, Before European Hegemony, p. 13. The phrase was coined by Richard Haëpke and also adopted by Fernand Braudel. 9. Sarah-Grace Heller, “Fashion in French Crusade Literature: Desiring Infidel Textiles,” in Désirée G. Koslin and Janet E. Snyder, eds., Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress (New York, 2002), p. 109. For reflections on the expansion of fashions, even through the economic crises of the fourteenth century, see Lipovetsky, Empire of Fashion, pp. 20–21, 38–41. 10. This paper does not employ Barthes’s semiotic definition of a “fashion system”, based as it was in a twentieth century system replete with the imagery and texts of a robust fashion press, functioning in conjunction with production and display. Roland Barthes, The Fashion System, trans. by MatthewWard and Richard Howard (New York, 1983). In contrast, we intend to identify and analyse the early appearance and function of fashion as a self-perpetuating process which informed the historical dynamic, linking itself with other components of the society and economy. The “systemic” nature of fashion thus rested in its interactive relationship with historical change. 11. For a different perspective on the genesis of the male fashionable figure see, Odile Blanc, “From Battlefield to Court: The Invention of Fashion in the Fourteenth Century,” in Koslin and Snyder, eds., Encountering Medieval Textiles, pp. 157–72, and Odile Blanc, Parades et Parures. L”Invention du Corps de Mode à la Fin du Moyen Age (Paris, 1997). 12. Carolyn Sargentson notes, for example, that the trade of the mercer was formally established in Paris in 1268, one of their principal goods being silks and “object de provenance orientale”. Carolyn Sargentson, “The Manufacture and Marketing of Luxury Goods: the Marchands Merciers of late 17th- and 18th-Century Paris,” in Robert Fox and Anthony Turner, eds., Luxury Trades and Consumerism in Ancien Régime Paris (Aldershot, 1998), p. 100. 13. Anna Muthesius, “Silk in the Medieval World,” in David Jenkins, ed., The Cambridge History of Western Textiles (Cambridge, 2003), vol. 1, pp. 326, 332–3. 14. Catherine Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200–1500 (Oxford, 2002), p. 30. 15. Jerry Brotton, The Renaissance Bazaar from the Silk Road to Michelangelo (Oxford, 2002), pp. 124–52. See also Salvatore Ciriacono, “Les manufactures de luxe à Venise: contraintes géographiques, goût méditerranéen et compétition internationale (XIVe– XVIe, siecle)” Crédit Communal—Collection Histoire, 8, no. 96 (1996), pp. 235–51. 16. Giulia Calvi, “Le Leggi Suntuarie e la Storia Sociale,” in Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli and Antonella Campanini, eds., Disciplinare il Lusso. La Legislazione Suntuaria in Italia e in Europa tra Medioevo ed Età Moderna (Rome, 2003), p. 218; Blanc, “Battlefield to Court,” pp. 158–59. 17. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law, 46–7. Kent Roberts Greenfield, Sumptuary Law in Nürmberg: A Study in Paternal Government (Baltimore, 1918), pp. 118–21. See, for example, Lettres patentes de declaration du roy, pour la reformation du luxe des habits & reglement d’iceux (Rouen, 1634), pp. 3–5. 18. As Negley Harte acutely observes: “silk did not slip into the minds of Europeans as easily as it did on their bodies.” Negley B. Harte, “Silk and Sumptuary Legislation in England,” in Simona Cavaciocchi, ed., La Seta in Europa, Sec. XIII–XX. Atti della ‘Ventiquattresima Settimana di Studi’, 4–9 maggio 1992 (Florence, 1993), p. 801. 19. Muthesius, “Silk in the Medieval World,” p. 325; S. A. M. Adshead, Material Culture in Europe and China, 1400–1800 (Basingstoke, 1997), pp. 81–2; Désirée G. Koslin, “Value-Added Stuffs and Shifts in Meaning: An Overview and Case Study of Medieval Textile Paradigms,” in Koslin and Snyder, eds., Encountering Medieval Textiles, pp. 237– 40. See also A. P. Novosel’tsev, “Oriental Silk Trade with Europe in the Middle Ages,” in Cavaciocchi, ed., La Seta, pp. 756–8 and J. Kieniewicz, “Silk Road, Silk Dress and Silk Way of Life. Between Oriental Trade and Western Culture,” in ibid., pp. 901–8. 20. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law, p. 22; Liu Xinru, “Silks and Religions in Eurasia, c. A.D. 600–1200,” Journal of World History, 6, no. 1 (1995): pp. 25–48. 21. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law, pp. 38–9. 22. See, for example, the catalogue based on the exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London: Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Flora Dennis, eds., At Home in Renaissance Italy: Art and Life in the Italian House 1400–1600 (London, 2006). 23. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law, p. 39; John Martin Vincent, Costume and Conduct in the Laws of Basel, Bern and Zurich 1370–1800 (Baltimore, 1935), p. 21. 24. Alan Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 46. 25. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law, pp. 30, 38–39; Hunt, Governance of the Consuming Passions, pp. 29–33, 47; Herman Freudenberger, “Fashion, Sumptuary Laws, and Business,” Business History Review, 37, no. 1/2 (1963), p. 38. 26. Greenfield, Sumptuary Law in Nürmberg, pp. 111, 116. 27. Frances Elizabeth Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation and Personal Regulation in England (Baltimore, 1926), pp. 157–64. 28. Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion, p. 30. 29. Lisa Jardine, Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (Basingstoke, 1996), p. 69. 30. Luca Molà, The Silk Industry of Renaissance Venice (Baltimore, 2000); Francesco Battistini, L’Industria della Seta in Italia nell’Età Moderna (Bologna, 2003), 1–19; Muthesius, “Silk in the Medieval World”; Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: A History from the Black Death to the Present Day (Oxford, 1997) pp. 118–29; Linda Levy Peck, Consuming Splendor: Society and Culture in Seventeenth-Century England (Cambridge, 2005) pp. 73–4, 107–110. 31. As Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli observes for fifteenth-century Italy: “It was the knowledge and evocation of new worlds such as the East that influenced fashion.” Maria Giuseppina Muzzarelli, “Nuovo, Moderno e Moda tra Medioevo e Rinascimento,” in Eugenia Paulicelli, ed., Moda e Moderno dal Medioevo al Rinascimento (Rome, 2006), p. 37. 32. Kovesi Killerby, Sumptuary Law, 38;Vincent, Costume and Conduct, pp. 44–48, 211– 6; Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation, pp. 35–93. 33. Vincent, Costume and Conduct, pp. 45 and 125. 34. A Proclamation, Anent the Sumptuary Act, 1684 (Edinburgh, 1684). 35. See, for example, the various attempts in Tudor England that had little success. The Brief Content of Certayne Actes of Parliament against the Inordinate Use of Apparell (London, 1559). 36. On the imitation of design see Agnes Geijer,AHistory of Textile Art (London, 1979), pp. 141–55. 37. Vincent, Costume and Conduct, 114–116. See also Natalie Rothstein, “Silk in the Early Modern Period, c. 1500–1780,” in Jenkins, ed., Cambridge History of Western Textiles, vol. 1, p. 529. 38. Vincent, Costume and Conduct, p. 48. 39. Europe had developed since the twelfth century a dynamic fustian (mixed linen and cotton) industry in Central and North Italy and parts of Spain, and later in the thirteenth century in Southern Germany and Switzerland. However, this production was confined to coarse bleached fabrics. Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, “The Cotton Industry of Northern Italy in the Late Middle Ages: 1150–1450,” Journal of Economic History, 32, no. 1 (1972): pp. 262–86; Maureen Fennell Mazzaoui, The Italian Cotton Industry in the Later Middle Ages 1100–1600 (Cambridge, 1981); H. Wescher, “The Beginning of the Cotton Industry in Europe,” Ciba Review, 64 (1948): pp. 2328–33; H.Wescher, “Fustian Weaving in South Germany from the Fourteenth to the Sixteenth Century,” Ciba Review, 64 (1948): pp. 2339–50. 40. Ruth Barnes, “Indian Trade Cloth in Egypt: the Newberry Collection,” in Textiles in Trade (Washington, 1990), pp. 178–191; Ruth Barnes, Indian Block-Printed Textiles in Egypt. The Newberry Collection in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Oxford, 1997). 41. Abu-Lughod, Before European Hegemony, pp. 239–41; Eliyahu Ashtor, “The Venetian Cotton Trade in the Later Middle Ages,” Studi Medievali 17, no. 3 (1976): pp. 675– 715; Eliyahu Ashtor, Studies on the Levantine Trade in the Middle Ages (London, 1978). 42. Donald King, “Textiles and the Origin of Printing in Europe,” Pantheon 20 (1962), p. 29. 43. The Voyage of Franc¸ois Pyrard of Laval to the East Indies, the Maldives, the Moluccas and Brazil, translated into English from the Third French Edition of 1619, edited by Albert Gray (London, 1888), vol. 2.i, p. 246. 44. John Ovington, A Voyage to Surat in the Year 1689, edited by Hugh George Rawlingson (London, 1929), p. 167. 45. See for instance the description by Bernier of the palampores of the King of Aurangzeb representing large vases of flowers. Francois Bernier, Travels in the Mogul Empire A.D. 1656–1668 (London, 1916). See also: George Percival Baker, Calico Printing and Painting in the East Indies in the XVIIth and XVIIIth Centuries (London, 1921), p. 6; Margherita Bellezza Rosina, “Tra Oriente e Occidente,” in Marzia Cataldi Gallo, ed., I Mezzari: Tra Oriente e Occidente (Genoa, 1988), pp. 15–17. 46. James C. Boyajian, Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Hapsburgs, 1580–1640 (Baltimore, 1993), p. 141; John Guy,Woven Cargoes: Indian Textiles in the East (London, 1998), p. 9. 47. Personal communication, Renato Barahona, Northwestern University. See, for example, T. Beaumont James, The Port Book of Southampton 1509–10 (Southampton, 1990), vol. 2, pp. 279–81, for commentaries on cargoes. Edward Roberts and Karen Parker, eds., Southampton Probate Inventories, 1497–1575 (Southampton, 1992), vol. 1, pp. 65–70; 150–2; 159–62; 165–7; 2: 244–52; 346–7; 358–9; Beverly Lemire, “Domesticating the Exotic: Floral Culture and the East India Calico Trade with England, c. 1600–1800,” Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture, 1, no. 1 (2003), pp. 67–8. See also Chandra Mukerji, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism (New York, 1983), chapter 5. 48. Berg, “In Pursuit of Luxury,” pp. 116, 123. See also John Styles, “Product Innovation in Early Modern London,” Past and Present, 168 (2000): pp. 124–169. Alfred P. Wadsworth and Julia de Lacy Mann observed that if “the first thought of European manufacturers had been prohibition, the second was imitation.” The Cotton Trade and Industrial Lancashire, 1600–1780 (Manchester, 1931), p. 118. 49. Therle Hughes, English Domestic Needlework, 1660–1860 (London, 1961), p. 34; Dilys E. Blum, The Fine Art of Textiles: The Collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art (Philadelphia, 1997), p. 56, Image 95, 1996-107-3, late seventeenth-century English embroidered beg hanging. Similar examples can be found in the Victoria & Albert Museum. 50. Lipovetsky, The Empire of Fashion, p. 20. 51. Georg Simmel, “Fashion,” International Quarterly 10 (1904), p. 136. 52. K. N. Chaudhuri, The Trading World of Asia and the English East India Company (Cambridge, 1978), pp. 96–7, 282. Aiolfi also provides a division into categories of imported cottons. Sergio Aiolfi, Calicos und gedrucktes Zeug: die Entwicklung der englischen Textilveredelung und der Tuchhandel der East India Company, 1650–1750 (Stuttgart, 1987). Similarly, in the second half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch VOC (Verenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie) imported into Europe on average 200,000 pieces of cotton textiles a year. However, cottons accounted for only one-third of the Dutch company’s imports. See in particular Femme S. Gaastra, “The Textile Trade of the VOC: The Dutch Response to the English Challenge,” South Asia 19/Special Issue (1996), pp. 85–95 and Michel Morineau, “The Indian Challenge: Seventeenth to Eighteenth Centuries,” in Sushil Chaudhuri and Michel Morineau, eds., Merchants, Companies and Trade: Europe and Asia in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, 1999), pp. 243–275. 53. Jás Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés, “Introduction,” in Jás Elsner and Joan-Pau Rubiés, eds., Voyages and Visions: Towards a Cultural History of Travel (London, 1999), p. 50. 54. Negley B. Harte, “The Rise of Protection and the English Linen Trade, 1690–1790,” in Negley B. Harte and Kenneth G. Ponting, eds., Textile History and Economic History (Manchester, 1973), and specifically on the banning of calicoes Natalie Rothstein, “The Calico Campaign of 1719–1721,” East London Papers 7 (1964), pp. 3–21. See also Tim Keirn, “Parliament, Legislation and the Regulation of English Textile Industries, 1689– 1714,” in L. Davidson, Timothy Hitchcock, Tim Keirn and Robert D. Shoemakers, eds., Stilling the Grumbling Hive: The Response to Social and Economic Problems in England, 1689– 1750 (Stroud, 1992), pp. 1–24; Raymond L. Sickinger, “Regulation or Ruination: Parliament’s Consistent Pattern of Mercantilist Regulation of the English Textile Trade, 1660– 1800,” Parliamentary History 19, no. 2 (2000): pp. 211–32; Patrick K. O’Brien, Trevor Griffith, and Philip Hunt, “Political Components of the Industrial Revolution: English Cotton Textile Industry, 1660–1774,” Economic History Review 44, no. 3 (1991): pp. 395– 423. For France see: CharlesWoolsey Cole, French Mercantilism, 1683–1700 (New York, 1943). 55. See, for example, Rothstein, “The Calico Campaign”; AudreyW. Douglas, “Cotton Textiles in England: The East India Company’s Attempts to Exploit Developments in Fashion 1660–1721,” Journal of British Studies 8, no. 2 (1969), pp. 28–43. 56. Barbosa spent sixteen years in India working for the Portuguese government. His El Livro is an important testimony of the structure of trade and the relationship between Muslin merchants and Portuguese traders. See also Rudolf Pfister, “The Indian Art of Calico Printing in the Middle Ages: Characteristics and Influences,” Indian Art and Letters, 13 (1939), p. 24. 57. Beverly Lemire, Fashion’s Favourite: The Cotton Trade and the Consumer in Britain, 1660–1800 (Oxford, 1991), chapter 1. 58. Ada K. Longfield, “History of the Irish Linen and Cotton Printing Industry in the 18th Century,” Journal of Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 58 (1937), p. 26. 59. John Irwin, “Golconda Cotton Paintings of the Early Seventeenth Century,” Lalik Kala 5 (1959): 11–48. 60. Alexander I. Tchitcherov, India: Changing Economic Structure in the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries: Outline History of Crafts and Trade (New Delhi, 1998), p. 72.
URI:	http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/id/eprint/190