The Material Regulation of Fashion

doi:10.1017/9781108850353.008

6 - The Material Regulation of Fashion

Sumptuary Laws in the Early Modern World

from Part I - Multiple Origins of Fashion

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2023

Giorgio Riello

Edited by

Christopher Breward ,

Beverly Lemire and

Giorgio Riello

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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

In early fourteenth-century Egypt a new fashion spread: women began wearing qamīş (loose robes) with sleeves up to three ells wide that could cost as much as several months of a worker’s salary. In 1350–1 the vizier ordered that such sleeves should be cut and that these garments should no longer be produced. It is said that images of women who had been executed for wearing the forbidden garment were posted on the ramparts of Cairo as a warning. Yet a generation later, in the 1390s, wide sleeves were back in fashion and the new vizier forbade them once again as visible signs of decadence.

Type: Chapter
Information: The Cambridge Global History of Fashion
From Antiquity to the Nineteenth Century
, pp. 148 - 190

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108850353.008 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2023

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