Fashion as Meaning: ‘the pattern of your imitation’

Writing in 1673, Hannah Woolley's The Gentlewoman's Companion; or, a Guide to the Female Sex advised women to ‘incline somewhat to the Mode of Court (which is the source and foundation of fashion); but let the example of the most sober, moderate, and modest be the pattern of your imitation’. Female clothing materialised both fashion and virtue, engagement with the court and with traditional female values. Medieval and early modern concepts of ‘costume’ and ‘habit’ embodied outer appearance or clothing as well as manners or moral qualities. As such, clothing was inherently powerful. It worked to link a person to the (fashionable) authority of the court, but it also had the potential (and limitations) of communicating personal morality.

Essentially, clothing embodied identity. As Ulinka Rublack states, clothing was not ‘something external to the body, that could be simply put on and taken off, or that could function as an abstract sign: rather, it was seen to mould a person and materialize identity’. Likewise, looking specifically to the early modern court, Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter Stallybrass trace the term ‘fashion’ to its Latin origin as the verb ‘to make’, or, in its biblical sense, ‘to create’, i.e., creating a self through their appearance. The power of clothing in creating an immediately recognisable identity was readily understood by early modern theatre companies who relied on dress to communicate character and social status in a symbiosis of inner and outer appearance. Rank, wealth, magnificence, and personal virtue was embodied in dress, and, as such, dress was inherently political, richly materialising the qualities associated with the wearer, whatever their rank.

Clothing necessitated careful selection across every aspect of the attired body – the choice of garment type, the fabric, the cut, the colour, the texture, and the decoration. This was based on the inherent dialectic in clothing between the subject and the observer, presentation and perception. At the early modern court, elites were keenly aware that they were always on display, performing and being observed, with Rublack characterising the social group as being ‘supremely dress-literate’. This was not new to the Renaissance, however, for it was in strong evidence at the medieval court where, as Susan Crane states, the secular elite understood ‘themselves to be constantly on display, subject to the judgment of others, and continually reinvented in performance’.