Re-fashioning the Renaissance: Popular Groups, Fashion and the Material and Cultural Significance of Clothing in Europe, 1550-1650

ended

This study of Renaissance dress offers a better understanding of how fashion developed at popular levels of society in Europe, 1550-1650. Drawing on documentary, visual and material evidence, it investigates fundamental questions relating to the transformation of fashion that will shed light on popular taste, dissemination, transformation and adaption of fashion, on imitation and meaning, and on changing cultural attitudes to dress among popular groups. The central goal of the project is to develop a new methodology that combines my previous experience of empirical research and theoretical models with the tradition of textile analysis and costume conservation. This involves experimenting with a range of techniques, including technical analysis of textiles, dye- and fibre analysis, and the reconstruction and visualization of historical fashions using both 16th-century recipes as well as modern digital tools such as 3D printing and digital reconstruction. This framework of dress and textile history at both scientific and experimental levels helps me to provide a more comprehensive interpretation of the value, variations, and material experiences that were associated with dress and dressing in the Renaissance, and to develop methodologies that allow us to explore new ways in which narratives from historical documents, books, images, and material objects can be created. The new historical knowledge and methodologies built during the ERC will lead to the ultimate theoretical objective of the project –to rethink the scientific foundation and theory of dress studies within the ‘new materialist’ framework. By creating a material-based approach and methodologies to the study of fashion in the context of popular groups, my research will not only build new horizons for the study of popular dress and its material and cultural significance in the Renaissance, but it will also create a theoretical model that challenges dress historians to go beyond semiotic analysis of dress.