{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.040021344717182494, 'fraction_numerical': 0.015474919957310566, 'mean_word_length': 5.399317406143345, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Fashioning the Early Modern: Dress, Textiles, and Innovation in Europe, 1500–1800

If the title of this book sounds familiar, you may be thinking of the three-year scholarly initiative of the same name funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area (HERA) between 2010 and 2013, which sought “a much more detailed understanding of how fashion functioned in the past” using “evidence from the early modern period itself rather than assuming that past practices were precursors of contemporary habits,” according to Evelyn Welch, editor of this volume (28). Linking an international who’s who of European historians, curators, and conservators—including Giorgio Riello, Lesley Miller, Johannes Pietsch, Peter McNeil, Clare Browne, and Corinne Th epaut-Cabasset—the collaborative project “Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe, 1500–1800” addressed not just how clothes were made and used but also how they often were remade, adapted, and reused. This collection of essays and short, object-based case studies—published by Oxford University Press as part of the Pasold Studies in Textile History series—is the fruit of that endeavor. In her introduction, Welch points out that “fashion” is both a noun and a verb, derived from the Latin verb facere, meaning “to make.” In the early modern period, it “was used flexibly, shifting between the concepts of manufacture and novelty” (4). By contrast, adds John Styles, today “it has come to be employed indiscriminately as an exciting, alluring way of saying ‘clothes’” (32). This volume recaptures the word’s historic meaning, revealing how innovation in manufacturing was integral to the aesthetic progression of fashion. Styles opens the collection by debunking false, if longstanding, notions about the early modern period, such as that Eastern dress was stagnant and unchanging, while Western