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Crimes of Fashion: Clothes in early modern England

44 points by Vigier 5y ago

PaulHoule 5y ago
I have been watching the 1987 TV version of Dream of the Red Chamber which is set in China around the same time. Although the story is mostly about a rich family which is dressed in elaborate brocades the background is that clothing is super-expensive and that it would be an important gift to give somebody 11 talkers of silver to buy some winter clothes.
ggm 5y ago
The use of "early modern" is so quaint. Many and many an Australian with convict ancestry will have clothes stealers in their heritage, even up to Victorian times clothing was relatively expensive. As part of the Edinburgh Georgian society I've worn Victorian era clothes, and the sheer amount of embedded labour is unbelievable. Every stitch a hand stitch, little to no machinery capable of making clothes of quality. Some of the first truly modern production lines were clothes making. Marc Brunel made machines to produce shoes and boots for the Napoleonic war, as well as ships blocks. (The war ended: he went bust) I strongly recommend "It's a small, medium and outsize world" by John Taylor, if you can find it. https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Small-Medium-Outsize-World-TAYLOR-John/22684247249/bd https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Small-Medium-Outsize-...
- tokai 5y ago
  What do you find quaint about it? Its a common term for that time period.
  - ggm 5y ago
    If you're in the field, I'm sure it makes sense. It's so far from modern it's before we knew most common elements in the periodic table. It's the dual meaning of modern: if you say "modern warfare" you don't mean pikes and halberds (unless its the home guard). I'm not even sure early modern warfare would be understood.
- konschubert 5y ago
  Not just the stitches, but also hand-woven! And the thread was hand-made. It's really crazy how much work was needed to make a shirt.
trhway 5y ago
>But, for early modern people, fashion was just as connected to identity. Most could not afford to change their clothes often, but their outfits became part of how they were seen and how they saw themselves. i remember a mid-80ies article in a USSR magazine discussing pros and cons of Western jeans for 180 roubles (a monthly salary of an engineer, and for many people who could get a flashy Western piece of clothing it was a part of their identity) vs. USSR made jeans for 30 roubles - the main point was that the former can be worn for 5 years and still look better during all that time than the USSR made that one would have to buy new every year due to their low quality (yep, such supposedly unpatriotic things sometimes made their way into mass media under the premises of healthy criticism and to show that criticism of some supposedly rare yet still existing issues of USSR economy is allowed).
- zivkovicp 5y ago
  Sure, they weren't rich enough to buy cheap things...
neonate 5y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20211228154159/https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/crimes-fashion http://web.archive.org/web/20211228154159/https://www.histor...
b0rsuk 5y ago
heikkilevanto 5y ago
Bret Devereaux has a nice series of blogs of ancient cloth-making, mostly from the Roman times. https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-high-fiber/ https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t... A long read - you get to part III before he even gets to spinning the thread, which btw was by far the most labor-extensive part of textile production.

44 points by Vigier 5y ago

I have been watching the 1987 TV version of Dream of the Red Chamber which is set in China around the same time. Although the story is mostly about a rich family which is dressed in elaborate brocades the background is that clothing is super-expensive and that it would be an important gift to give somebody 11 talkers of silver to buy some winter clothes.

ggm 5y ago

The use of "early modern" is so quaint. Many and many an Australian with convict ancestry will have clothes stealers in their heritage, even up to Victorian times clothing was relatively expensive. As part of the Edinburgh Georgian society I've worn Victorian era clothes, and the sheer amount of embedded labour is unbelievable. Every stitch a hand stitch, little to no machinery capable of making clothes of quality. Some of the first truly modern production lines were clothes making. Marc Brunel made machines to produce shoes and boots for the Napoleonic war, as well as ships blocks. (The war ended: he went bust) I strongly recommend "It's a small, medium and outsize world" by John Taylor, if you can find it. https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Small-Medium-Outsize-World-TAYLOR-John/22684247249/bd https://www.abebooks.com/first-edition/Small-Medium-Outsize-...

tokai 5y ago
What do you find quaint about it? Its a common term for that time period.
- ggm 5y ago
  If you're in the field, I'm sure it makes sense. It's so far from modern it's before we knew most common elements in the periodic table. It's the dual meaning of modern: if you say "modern warfare" you don't mean pikes and halberds (unless its the home guard). I'm not even sure early modern warfare would be understood.
konschubert 5y ago
Not just the stitches, but also hand-woven! And the thread was hand-made. It's really crazy how much work was needed to make a shirt.

trhway 5y ago

>But, for early modern people, fashion was just as connected to identity. Most could not afford to change their clothes often, but their outfits became part of how they were seen and how they saw themselves. i remember a mid-80ies article in a USSR magazine discussing pros and cons of Western jeans for 180 roubles (a monthly salary of an engineer, and for many people who could get a flashy Western piece of clothing it was a part of their identity) vs. USSR made jeans for 30 roubles - the main point was that the former can be worn for 5 years and still look better during all that time than the USSR made that one would have to buy new every year due to their low quality (yep, such supposedly unpatriotic things sometimes made their way into mass media under the premises of healthy criticism and to show that criticism of some supposedly rare yet still existing issues of USSR economy is allowed).

zivkovicp 5y ago
Sure, they weren't rich enough to buy cheap things...

neonate 5y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20211228154159/https://www.historytoday.com/archive/history-matters/crimes-fashion http://web.archive.org/web/20211228154159/https://www.histor...

b0rsuk 5y ago

heikkilevanto 5y ago

Bret Devereaux has a nice series of blogs of ancient cloth-making, mostly from the Roman times. https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-i-high-fiber/ https://acoup.blog/2021/03/05/collections-clothing-how-did-t... A long read - you get to part III before he even gets to spinning the thread, which btw was by far the most labor-extensive part of textile production.