890 margaret f. rosenthal
Venice had acquired over time as a seafaring empire, and through its col-
onies at Constantinople, aleppo, tripoli, Cairo, and alexandria.3 these
mercantile networks both at home and abroad bolstered the formation
and continuation of business networks and material exchanges over many
centuries.
new patterns of production, merchandizing, and consumption in the
creation and dissemination of Venetian textiles for clothing also changed
how Venetians selected and acquired goods to form their identities.4
as a hierarchical system, fashion and dress served as social markers for
distinct social registers by adhering to specific colors and fabrics which
announced the vocation, marital status (particularly for women), and gen-
der and social echelon of the wearer. much like a renaissance garment is
made up of many distinct but interrelated parts that need to be assem-
bled carefully and precisely in order to function as a whole, Venetian men
and women over two centuries used textiles, designs, and trims to adorn
and make their bodies legible to vastly different groups of people. two
published costume books, one by Cesare Vecellio in the 16th century and
the massive, encyclopedic work of the 18th century by giovanni grevem-
broch, depict the dress codes and collective modes of socialization and
representation of Venetian men and women. Venetian inventories also
provide a view of the kinds of textiles owned by all social registers, as do
dotal dowries housed in the Venetian state archives.5
Fashion throughout this long period refers to the act of transforming
textiles into clothing in new ways, according to its cut and shape, and,
moreover, its ability to introduce change in social and gender practices.6
Women up to and throughout the 18th century were spinners, weavers,
embroiderers, mercers, petty retailers, hawkers, and laborers who were
fustian weavers, tailors, doublet-makers, and perhaps designers.7 as Vene-
tian households increasingly were linked to foreign urban markets, women
3 Joanne m. Ferraro, Venice: History of the Floating city (oxford, 2012), p. 108.
4 margaret F. rosenthal, “Cultures of Clothing in later medieval and early modern
europe,” JMEMS 39.3 (Fall 2009), 459–81.
5 Ferraro, Venice: History of the Floating city, pp. 109, 110, 117, 219.
6 Christopher Breward, “Cultures, identities, histories: Fashioning a Cultural approach
to Dress,” Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body and culture 2.4 (1998), 301–13; Breward,
The culture of Fashion: A New History of Fashionable Dress (manchester, 1995); giorgio
riello and Peter mcneil, eds., The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives (london/
new York, 2010), pp. 3–14; ulinka rublack, Dressing Up: cultural Identity in Renaissance
Europe (oxford, 2010), pp. 10–16; ann r. Jones and Peter stallybrass, Renaissance clothing
and the Materials of Memory (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 1–6.
7 Ferraro, Venice: History of the Floating city, p. 186.