After all the talk about books that are delayed in publication, I thought
that I'd mention one that I've just got in today. Has anyone else seen it?
Beth
Gilding the Market: Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy by Susan
Mosher Stuard 336 pages | 6 1/8 x 9 1/4 | 14 color, 10 b/w illus. Cloth Dec
2005 | ISBN 0812239008
http://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/14208.html
"In the fourteenth century, garish ornaments, bright colors, gilt, and
military effects helped usher in the age of fashion in Italy. Over a short
span of years important matters began to turn on the cut of a sleeve.
Fashion influenced consumption and provided a stimulus that drove demand
for goods and turned wealthy townspeople into enthusiastic consumers.
Making wise decisions about the alarmingly expensive goods that composed a
fashionable wardrobe became a matter of pressing concern, especially when
the market caught on and became awash in cheaper editions of luxury wares.
Focusing on the luxury trade in fashionable wear and accessories in Venice,
Florence, and other towns in Italy, Gilding the Market investigates a major
shift in patterns of consumption at the height of medieval prosperity,
which, more remarkably, continued through the subsequent era of plague,
return of plague, and increased warfare. A fine sensitivity to the demands
of "le pompe," that is, the public display of private wealth, infected town
life. The quest for luxuries affected markets by enlarging exchange
activity and encouraging retail trades. As both consumers and tradesmen,
local goldsmiths, long-distance traders, bankers, and money changers played
important roles in creating this new age of fashion.
In response to a greater public display of luxury goods, civic sumptuary
laws were written to curb spending and extreme fashion, but these were
aimed at women, youth, and children, leaving townsmen largely unrestricted
in their consumption. With erudition, grace, and an evocative selection of
illustrations, some reproduced in full color, Susan Mosher Stuard explores
the arrival of fashion in European history."
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