Book Review: Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From Sprezzatura to Satire
Eugenia Paulicelli, Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From Sprezzatura to Satire, Routledge, $50.36, 278pp., June 2016
Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From Sprezzatura to Satire, a new volume in Allison Levy’s “Visual Culture in Early Modernity” series, represents one of the first comprehensive studies related to sixteenth and seventeenth century Italian fashion. Taking a deep dive into the way in which the discourse around fashion was born and how, from the first reflections around style, this volume explores how fashion shaped the social, political, and cultural landscape in Italy.
The author, Eugenia Paulicelli, is Professor of Italian, Comparative Literature and Women’s Studies at Queens College and the Graduate Center of The City University of New York. She is also director of two programs related to Fashion Studies: a PhD concentration and an MA in Liberal Studies. As such, it is through the lens of the Italian literature of the Renaissance that Paulicelli formulates her considerations, thereby bringing a multidisciplinary approach to the realm of fashion studies.
The book is divided into three parts, each of which examines some literary texts that have never before been translated to English. The first part is titled The Cultures of Fashion and offers an overview of the concepts of moda and moderno in Renaissance Italy. In this introduction, Paulicelli gives several examples of texts and authors who started to talk about fashion and the feminine noun “la moda.” She explains the etymological origin of the two terms as having two connotations, whether the first indicates the materiality of clothing, the second denotes rather the more modern concepts related to newness and change. Another relevant theme explored in the introduction is the tension between fashion and the norms of simplicity established by Christian doctrine, which are further examined in “l libro del cortegiano” (The Book of the Courtier), written by Baldassarre Castiglione and published in Venice in 1528.
“Italy is the place where the first attempts are made to codify dress and habits. This awareness, combined with the fear and anxiety over dress as unreliable identifiers of self, are visible in the various kinds of writing about clothing and appearance we find in literary texts and in the sumptuary laws.”
Through her analysis, Paulicelli’s aim is to demonstrate that this text testified the establishment of fashion as a social institution. The concepts of political and personal identity are examined, as much as the growing contraposition between the materiality of clothing, which represents “the fabric of memory” and “the anxiety of the new.” Above all, it is through literature that this investigation takes place, as it creates a bridge between materiality and the emotional value through language and words. Indeed, as further explained by the author: “The theorization of the dressed body and the recognition of the affective power of objects and clothing come to the fore in early modernity. Italy is the place where the first attempts are made to codify dress and habits. This awareness, combined with the fear and anxiety over dress as unreliable identifiers of self, are visible in the various kinds of writing about clothing and appearance we find in literary texts and in the sumptuary laws.” [1]
Part two is titled The Fabric of Cities: Nations, Empire in Costume Books by Cesare Vecellio and Giacomo Franco. Here, fashion studies reaches new heights as Vecellio, the author of the book Degli Habiti antichi e moderni di diverse parti del mondo (1590), makes an accurate description of looks not only with words but with images as well, showing fashion through an encyclopedic approach, not only that coming from Italy but also the one coming from the world known. Vecellio’s aim was to identify a culture of dress that was different depending on where people came from; he was also conscious about the volatile connotation of fashion as it always changed depending on times and tastes. Also of significance is the question of gender, starting from the construction of the female and male bodies to the forms of dress.
The power of images is what lies at the center of Giacomo Franco’s work titled Habiti d’huomeni et donne venetiane, published in Venice in 1610. What seems crucial in this work is the depiction of the city of Venice as one of the first “fashion cities” of Europe, due to its central position for the exchange of goods and cultures, and the richness of its traditions. Fashion was therefore at the center of a narrative that helped establish the mythic status of Venice in the cultural imagination . Through Paulicelli’s careful analysis, the role of literature, and more precisely of a literature of fashion that functions as a tool to establish power, both political and cultural, is made manifest.
“With this remarkable work, Professor Paulicelli highlighted the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to fashion and therefore made fashion studies more inclusive in terms of the disciplines applied for its understanding.”
Fashion as Excess is the final part of the book. It focuses on Arcangela Tarabotti, a Venetian woman who was forced by her father to become a nun. She is the author of several books, namely La tirannia paterna (Paternal Tyranny), L’inferno monacale (The Monastic Hell), Il paradiso monacale (The Monastic Paradise) and Antisatire. In her works, Venice is depicted in a much more realistic light, which is in contrast with the works previously examined. Tarabotti makes a convincing critique of Venetian institutions, especially when these concern women’s social identity.
Through a determined and disenchanted view on the city, Tarabotti tackles gender stereotypes and customs, showing the public to be a real feminist ante litteram. Her deep knowledge of the fashion of her time was a powerful instrument she used to reject the general assumption that vanity belonged only to women with proven example coming from menswear. Thanks to Paulicelli’s clear investigation in Tarabotti’s works, we understand how she wanted to elevate women’s status by highlighting their capacity to control their own identity.
The final text put into examination was Agostino Lampugnani’s La carrozza da nolo, ovvero del vestire e usanze alla moda (The Rented Carriage, or of Clothing and Fashionable Habits), first published in 1648. From a linguistic and sociolinguistic point of view, this text provides an essential definition of the term “moda” in the Italian language. Here, for the first time, fashion becomes an object of excess and satire. Several words were coined to express the strangeness of certain ways of dressing, specifically those that resembled the French way, as for example modate meaning “fashion statement,” or modante, which we might translate into today’s “fashionista.” With Lampugnani’s way of ridiculing Venetian dress codes, fashion appears as a source of entertainment, an art of deception and a form of narcissism.
With this remarkable work, Professor Paulicelli highlighted the importance of a multidisciplinary approach to fashion and therefore made fashion studies more inclusive in terms of the disciplines applied for its understanding. Literature in this case, was a significant instrument to uncover ways in which one can actually “write” fashion and therefore expand the way to experience it.
Notes
[1] Paulicelli E., “Writing Fashion in Early Modern Italy: From Sprezzatura to Satire,” Ashgate Publishing Limited, England, pp. 4.
