Sehen und gesehen werden

This excellent study of the political and social function of dress in late medieval and sixteenth-century courts charts the role of clothing in symbolic communication. Kirsten O. Frieling focuses on Brandenburg, Saxony and Württemberg to argue that, around 1500, German territorial rulers visualised their rank through dress in increasingly regulated and static forms. Dress strategies served to extend their claim to power, and the versatility of cuts, colours and textures was used to great effect. The author first uses her sources to describe this elaborate language of dress achieved through painstaking craftsmanship, ingenious colours, the careful resourcing of furs, fabrics or gems from far away, and a broad range of accessories. She argues convincingly that colour was ascribed specific emotional meanings in some contexts, but could also be used in line with fashionable changes of taste. She sets out how much cultural work ruling men and women invested to find, exchange or buy the materials which constituted their sartorial staging or networks of gift relations. Anna of Brandenburg, for instance, repeatedly reminded her stepson to send her feathers, while her husband faithfully sent hundreds of them every year before returning from the countryside. In order to prepare for weddings, Ludwig of Savoy repeatedly travelled to Geneva in order to buy fabrics and negotiate their considerable expense. Anna dyed feathers and made shirts for family members, while other duchesses made caps and embroideries: elites, in other words, were deeply involved in cultures of intricate making or re-making. Self-made or inherited clothing lent relationships further emotional depth

Archaeology · Art · Art history · Clothing · German · Humanities · Negotiation · Order (exchange · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Taste · European history and politics · Fashion and Cultural Textiles · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · History · Law · Psychology