896 margaret f. rosenthal
communicated by new and quickly changing fashionable styles of dress,
regulatory practices were supported by legislators and preachers. their
moral rationale stressed the need to utilize some of the resources of the
rich for social measures regarding increased and out-of-control consump-
tion. the political nature of the laws isolated fashion as the culprit and
spoke to the need to maintain and signal political order on the local level.
ironically, this advertised rather than eliminated Venetians’ desire for the
great variety of materials and luxury goods in circulation such as buttons,
fans, shoes, and more.27
in the early modern period, luxury was an important factor in economic
growth. Paradoxically, moralist and ecclesiastical criticisms of the uses of
luxury sustained fashion rather than curtailed it. so, too, novelty no lon-
ger could be easily absorbed into traditions of dress. With the advent of
fashion as a system of appearances, and with the parallel recognition that
this phenomenon was eluding the control of political systems, sumptu-
ary legislation in Venice inadvertently called attention to ways by which
individuals could overcome social hierarchies. the fines (a kind of luxury
tax) exacted upon transgressors actually redistributed the city’s resources,
while the perpetrators participated in an economic system designed to
recycle their wealth into “the good of the city” and “in order to render the
coexistence among unequals less unfair and more acceptable.”28
increased social mobility, however, did not necessarily translate into
the invention of new styles. Venetian merchants, university students, sol-
diers, and ambassadors continued, for the most part, to wear their cities’
and regions’ styles while traveling abroad. While there was great variation
in fashions from place to place, Venetian dress tended to signify shared
cultural belonging and collective identity rather than follow the whims of
personal taste.29 Changes in social rank and position still required a style
of clothing declaring one’s regional origin and profession. Vecellio recog-
nized, however, that political changes affecting the elite—the takeover of
the court of naples by the spanish, for example—did lead to the adoption
of new styles.30 But for most social ranks, the difficulty and expense of
27 muzzarelli, “reconciling the Privilege of a Few,” pp. 604–05.
28 alan hunt, Governance of the consuming Passions: A History of Sumptuary Law (new
York, 1996), pp. 36–37, 90–1, 338; rosenthal, “Cultures of Clothing,” pp. 472–73.
29 John Jeffries martin, “the myth of renaissance individualism,” in guido ruggiero,
ed., A companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance (oxford, 2002), pp. 211–14.
30 rosenthal and Jones, ed. and trans., cesare Vecellio, Habiti Antichi et Moderni,
p. 298.