Description
Book SynopsisIn 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
Trade Review
"Gilding the Market effectively links the material and cultural, showing that fashionable clothing is not simply a matter of visual discourse and self-representation but a primary item of exchange." * Journal of Interdisciplinary History *
"This wide-ranging book on the late medieval marketplace for luxury goods by a historian of enormous erudition and experience brings a lifetime of research to bear on the world of luxury consumption and . . . the advent of 'fashion.'" * American Historical Review *
"An ambitious book that leads . . . into one of the most complex issues in the study of late medieval and early Renaissance Italy: the consumerist growth of a strong taste for and purchase, by those wealthy enough, of fashionable clothes and artifacts." * Speculum *
Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Introduction
Chapter 2. Desirable Wares
Chapter 3. Gravitas and Consumption
Chapter 4. Curbing Women's Excesses
Chapter 5. Costs of Luxuries
Chapter 6. Shops and Trades
Chapter 7. Marketmakers
Chapter 8. Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
