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18 - Imperialism and Fashion: South Asia, c. 1500–1800

from Part III - Many Worlds of Fashion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 August 2023

By
Jagjeet Lally
Edited by
Christopher Breward ,
Beverly Lemire  and
Giorgio Riello
Christopher Breward
Affiliation:
National Museums of Scotland
Beverly Lemire
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Giorgio Riello
Affiliation:
European University Institute, Florence
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Summary

What (not) to wear? A mirza should never wear brocade or cloth of gold; these are beneath his dignity, intended for adorning domestic spaces, not the body. In winter, a shawl – plain or imprinted with gold and silver leaves – would keep out the cold over garments of Indian material fastened with pearl buttons, ‘for pearl is natural while other jewels have to be cut’. In summer, ‘when he sits on a wooden seat with a white covering, he should wear the silver-threaded cap round the head and ears […] and a silver threaded upper garment (bala-band)’.1 From its initial use as a title for princes or noblemen, mirza had become the watchword of (courtly) refinement, denoting a gentlemanly bearing by the seventeenth century. Flushed with cash through burgeoning trade, the Mughal Empire reached its zenith; home to an increasingly cosmopolitan nobility whose ranks had increased rapidly, an expanding population of theologians and administrators, and a prosperous mercantile elite.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Global History of Fashion
From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century
 , pp. 599 - 629
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

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