clothing, fashion, dress, and costume in venice 895
prescriptive codes of conduct that regulate human behavior. according to
these systems, “costume” signifies manners and behaviors or customs and
styles of life in much the same way that “habit” or “abito” characterizes the
“habit” or “dress” of a specific group of people.23
Vecellio’s two books on clothing worn throughout the world are the
product of an early modern Venetian artist and writer with a merchant’s
eye for textiles, trims, and more. nostalgic for earlier periods in Venetian
dress when Venice was politically more stable and less influenced by out-
side forces, Vecellio is often critical about the swift-changing dress of his
fellow Venetian citizens.24 Profiting from a direct knowledge of the city
as a mecca of trade, a center of publishing, and a meeting point between
the east and the West, Vecellio brings to the reader a mine of information
about material culture—art, textiles, and world trade systems. indeed, his
commentary on Venetian dress is unprecedented in the history of cos-
tume books prior to the 18th century for the sheer wealth of informa-
tion regarding fabrics, weaves, dyes, cut, styling, and cultural customs.25
While the notion of the costume book was to consolidate cultural ways of
life and regional identity formation (even though fixed notions of place
were continually being called into question), the reaction to the rapid
print circulation of costume images among some costume book compil-
ers was to try to reinforce rather than to break open strict dress codes
or eradicate luxurious spending. even Venetian legislation against luxury
expenditures did not mean that the government was necessarily against
luxurious objects in and of themselves. rather, officials were opposed to
useless spending that might ruin well-to-do families or reduce marriages
and reproduction rates because families could not amass sufficiently large
dowries to find acceptable husbands for their daughters. indeed, sumptu-
ary legislation was mostly concerned with social stability and preserving
hierarchies.26 officials attempted, not always successfully, to control the
use of fabrics, their colors, and their weaves and cuts not only in order
to enforce equality among citizens, affirm gender prescriptions, and cur-
tail excessive spending but also to protect precarious economies. more-
over, as a way to maintain and reinforce quickly eroding social barriers as
23 Wilson, The World in Venice, p. 102.
24 guérin dalle mese, Il Vestito, pp. 11–13.
25 Bridgeman, “the origins of Dress history,” pp. 43–44.
26 maria giuseppina muzzarelli, “reconciling the Privilege of a Few with the Common
good: sumptuary laws in medieval and early modern europe,” JMEMS 39.3 (Fall 2009),
600, 602–04.