894 margaret f. rosenthal
publishing centers of costume books.18 Beginning in the early 16th cen-
tury, costume books printed in northern europe acted as an identification
system—a sort of renaissance ethnography. in a largely pre-literate soci-
ety, people were read by and learned to read the value of textiles and
the cut of clothing as fixed signs of profession, wealth, social status, and
geographical provenance that they often wanted to imitate.19
Costume book compilers and writers such as the 16th-century Venetian
author and painter Cesare Vecellio commented in print on the “other”
or the “exotic” by deciphering the language of clothing as the making of
the human subject in relation to his or her geographical place and time.20
and yet a person’s fashionable clothing in the early modern period was
a complex patchwork of dress from multiple nations. Printed in Venice
in 1590 and 1598, both of Vecellio’s volumes are accompanied by wood-
cuts provided by Christoph Chrieger, a german printmaker. Presenting
415 woodcuts paired with commentary in the 1590 volume and 503 in
1598, Vecellio offers information about nearby and faraway costume and
custom surpassing any provided in the dozen costume books published
before or after his.21 this pairing of image and text had a large influence
on histories of dress that followed in the 17th and 18th centuries as, for
example, the noted costume book of the Venetian, giovanni grevem-
broch, even though cracks in the hierarchical method of organizing dress
had already become evident in Vecellio’s volumes.22
Venetian printers who specialized in prints, mapmaking, and model
books for lace making, for example lo Zoppino, Vavassori il guadagnino,
and Bindoni & sessa, were the first to recognize this fervor to collect infor-
mation about different cultures and regions via their “habits” or costumes.
the term costume book, however, is a misnomer. Costume, as derived from
the latin word consuetude, implies the customary function or use of dress
in multiple cultural contexts that precede the making of specific items
of clothing. like encyclopedias that organize knowledge into distinct
and comprehensive categories, or atlases that chart renaissance cartog-
raphy’s efforts to map the entire world, costume books arrange people’s
clothing according to rank, ethnicity, and gender and in accordance with
18 rublack, Dressing Up, p. 161.
19 Wilson, The World in Venice, pp. 70–104.
20 Wilson, The World in Venice pp. 72–74, 77–92, 104; guérin dalle mese, L’Occhio di
cesare Vecellio; hodorowich, “armchair travelers,” pp. 1039–62; ilg, “the Cultural signifi-
cance of Costume Books,” pp. 29–47.
21 rosenthal and Jones, ed. and trans., cesare Vecellio, Habiti Antichi et Moderni.
22 Jones, “ ‘Worn in Venice,’ ” pp. 483–509.