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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - RE-FASHIONING (Re-fashioning the Renaissance: Popular Groups, Fashion and the Material and Cultural Significance of Clothing in Europe, 1550-1650)

Teaser

Summary

This project combines empirical research with scientific textile analysis and historical and digital reconstruction, in order to understand the development and meanings of popular dress and fashion both through the written and visual record, as well as through historical materials, objects and technological processes. The aim of our project is, on the one hand, to produce new knowledge of the dissemination and development of early modern European fashion, and, on the other, to evaluate how experimental â€˜hands-onâ€™ methods, such as historical reconstruction, digital modelling and scientific testing, can be used as a methodology in cultural studies of dress, especially to understand the complex material and cultural meanings and processes that are associated with historical dress. By developing a new material-based approach in studies of fashion, this project will not only evaluate how European fashion has evolved, but it will also create a real debate and discussion about what is the significance of the \'material\' in cultural studies of fashion, and how these results can be translated in our contemporary society to create, for example, more sustainable textile products.

The overall objectives of the project are:

1.To build knowledge in four areas relating to the transformation and dissemination of fashion and its cultural impact on popular social groups, including 1) the markets and regulation for lower-cost fashion manufactures 2) the key agents of new consumer tastes 3) construction of fashionable appearance and the everyday experience and practice of fashion 4) dissemination of fashion ideas and knowledge
2.To carry out primary historical research by identifying and analysing sixteenth- and seventeenth-century visual, written and material primary sources with an interdisciplinary interpretation, that sheds light on the transformation of popular fashions, and its links to broader European culture for fashionable dress.
3.To develop new cross-disciplinary methodological tools and scientific models for experimental research that combine the tradition of empirical historical research with the tradition of scientific and experimental research in textiles, through collaboration with textile and fashion historians, archaeologists, museum curators, conservators, textile technicians and craft professionals outside academia.
4.To provide a new theoretical and methodological framework to study Renaissance and early fashion that connects the research with material-based analysis and reconstruction.

Work performed

The implementation of our project during the first reporting period has focused on three main areas: recruitment, creation of the research and operations structures (website, operations, database), and kick-off of research.

The implementation has progressed as planned. We have completed the recruitment, and succeeded in hiring some of the most talented young researchers in our project, including two postdoctoral researchers, a doctoral student, two research assistants and a project administrator, as well as set up an international advisory board. We have set goals and evaluated our progress twice a year in our kick-off and milestone meetings, and organised workshops to discuss their relevance for our research. All our sources and research data will be made available to the general public both through our website and the dedicated database.

Following our strategic decision to divide our research in three distinct phases (data collection, historical reconstruction and methodology, digital reconstruction and methodology), our entire team has focused on data collection during this first reporting phase of research. This has involved identification of the sources in libraries and four archives (Siena, Florence, Venice, Copenhagen & Wellcome collection London), photographing the documents, transcribing the sources, and preparing the data for the database. As a result, we have now identified, photographed and transcribed all the project quantitative and qualitative historical data, which provides the scientific basis both for our work in this project, including both our publications as well as for the forthcoming methodological historical and digital experiments that we intend to carry in the second and third phases of our research. This includes:

* c. 1500 archival inventories (with photos and transcription
* C. 650 printed manuals
* Qualitative evidence (visual and material evidence, documentary sources, literature)

In addition, we have created a database and project website in order to provide effective open access platforms to share our research and data with the general public.

Final results

We have identified a significant body of previously unidentified and unpublished sixteenth- and seventeenth-century research data that concerns the non-elite segments of population. The focus on lower social groups makes our study new and innovative. Renaissance lower classes have been regarded with suspicion and unworthy of study, in part because many believe that they were too poor to dress well, but also because the dominant trickle-down theories of dress have reduced their relationship with fashion to \'social emulation\', which is just passive copying. Our project is the first in Europe to carry out extensive research on this topic, and our initial data on dress demonstrates that ordinary Europeans were incredibly responsive to fashion already way before the consumer revolution.

The historical data identified so far provides also an important basis for our scientific and experimental \'hands-on\' experiments which will start in January 2019. The ultimate aim of the experimentation is to establish a new methodology that focuses on experimental \'hands-on\' work on real textiles, as well as on historical and digital reconstruction of materials, objects and historical technologies. We have already been trained to use a wide range of historical textile techniques, such as historical weaving and dyeing, but in this project we will also make extensive use of contemporary digital tools, such as 3D printing and digital weaving. The use of digital, historical and scientific methods in our historical research allows us to gain access to the hidden knowledge and complexities that lie behind the historical artefacts, to understand the physics and chemistry of historical garments, as well as to develop tools to recreate the past material world that no longer exists.

We will publish extensively on the topic, addressing issues such reconstruction and science as methodology in historical research; novelty, innovation and change in popular fashion; the meaning and technology of textiles and dyes, tailoring practices and zero-waste cutting; imitation; the history of second-hand clothing markets; recipes and instructions for making and dyeing garments; and meanings of popular dress.