Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com – Although fashion magazines and social media significantly impact contemporary dressing styles, it’s fascinating to consider that in early modern European cities, there were actual fashion police enforcing strict dress codes.
Art history scholar Ana Cristina Howie highlights how local laws meticulously dictated every detail—from the gold buttons to the color of silk—specifying what different groups could or could not wear. This historical precedent underscores the profound influence of societal norms on personal style, suggesting that today’s trends are just as shaped by external forces as they were in the past.
Left: Under sumptuary laws, women could be denounced for new and fashionable jewelry items, such as the randiglia, or metal support that propped up stylishly large ruffs, worn in this 1610 portrait, “Veronica Spinola Serra,” by Guilliam van Deynum (c. 1575—c. 1624). Credit: Galleria Nazionale della Liguria a Palazzo Spinola, Genoa.
Right: Lucas de Heere (1534–84), Genoese nobleman and noblewoman, in Théâtre de tous les peuples et nations de la terre…, fo. 19r, watercolor illustration, sixteenth century, Ghent University Library. Public Domain
“You can wear silk, but only in a certain number of colors—black, white, yellow, green, dark blue, red, purple, or tawny brown,” Howie said of “sumptuary laws” local to 16th century Genoa. “You can wear wool in any of the colors silk comes in, plus fawn, white, rose, and porcelain. You can wear velvet, but not if it has any kind of pattern. It’s hard to wrap your head around what’s forbidden because it’s so detailed.”
In new research, Howie, assistant professor of history of art and visual studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, points out how sumptuary laws in early modern Genoa—designed to “control luxury clothing consumption and the social ills it could encourage”—constrained women more than they did men, even while fashion was an important means of self-expression for women, who were seen as “the silent sex,” Howie wrote.
In early modern Genoa, a bustling hub of commerce, the approach to sumptuary laws was notably distinct, as Howie pointed out. Unlike other cities that factored in class and birthplace, Genoa categorized its population solely by gender—men and women. This unique classification makes Genoa an essential case study for understanding how societal norms around gender differences were shaped through regulations on dress and adornment.
Howie’s research delves into a 1598 ledger documenting over 200 instances where citizens violated these laws. One notable entry describes a noblewoman’s daughter being stopped in Piazza San Lorenzo for wearing an extravagant yellow and mulberry silk ungaresca. Similarly, a nobleman was seen in Piazza di Ponticello adorned in richly embroidered taffeta attire. Many offenders hailed from the nobility.
The city’s aim was to curb excessive displays of wealth—particularly among women. At that time, dyes like red, purple, and black were costly due to their production challenges; precious metals also carried high costs.
“Being overly ostentatious was seen as a vice—gluttonous appetite for material goods. And women were seen to be more easily tempted into luxuria because of weaker constitutions, which led them more easily into temptation,” Howie said, adding that regulations for men were not even a page long; women had three times as many.
“Which is part of why the articulation for feminine restrictions is so overboard. It betrays this misogynistic theological understanding of women and women’s nature, so you need more regulation to keep women under control.”
Howie is writing a book that expands on these ideas, looking at the ways in which Genoese women expressed themselves and maneuvered in their social worlds through fashion, portraiture and material culture, some of the only means available to them.
Bernardus Paludanus (1550–1633), Sposa di Genoa in his Album amicorum, fo. 285r, National Library of the Netherlands. Credit: Publi Domain
“For me, the sumptuary law dimension was foundational for this larger story I want to tell,” Howie said. “What are the fashion rules of the day that women are negotiating?”
In Genoa, the people who were making up the laws and those who were stretching the limits were all from the same small pool of about 1,000 ruling nobles, Howie said.
“There was an office dedicated to regulating luxury, comprised of the nobles who—I know because I’ve seen their inventories—are also consuming all the things they are saying are forbidden.”
Governments no longer prescribe down to the last button what people should be wearing, but Howie does see realms of modern western society in which fashion literacy still plays an important part.
“I have friends in the corporate world, for example,” she said. “Their handbag cannot cost more than their boss’s handbag because everybody knows and you’d be overstepping your rank in that way. For men, it’s watches. It’s interesting how these forms of social policing persevere.”
The study has been published in The Historical Journal
Written by Jan Bartek – AncientPages.com Staff Writer
