Tag: fashion

Concerning the noveau riche and fashion; wouldn’t their status preclude good taste regardless of how “in fashion” or “fashion forward” they are? I can’t help but picture a merchant’s wife wearing the queen ‘s brand new style and the style being immediately declared out of fashion, the bourgeoisie making it bourgeois.

That can happen, but it’s more of a gradual thing:

“Anne the queen wears yellow, as she did when she first appeared at court, dancing in a masque: the year, 1521. Everyone remembers it, or they say they do: Boleyn’s second daughter with her bold dark eyes, her speed, her grace. The fashion for yellow had started among the wealthy in Basle; for a few months, if a draper could get hold of it, he could make a killing. And then suddenly it was everywhere, it sleeves and hose and even hair-bands for those who couldn’t afford more than a sliver. By the time of Anne’s debut it had slid down the scale abroad; in the domains of the Emperor, you’d see a woman in a brothel hoisting her fat dugs and tight-lacing her yellow bodice.” 

Hillary Mantel, Bring Up the Bodies

If the nouveau riche instantly devalued fashion, they wouldn’t be a social threat to the old aristocracy – the terrifying thing for the nobility was the way that they could blur the lines between noble and commoner, pass among the former while still being the latter, confusing what ought to be the most basic (and to people’s thinking, natural) visual distinction. 

But the ability of the nobility to fight back to declaring things out of fashion is that time and distance conspire against them: there’s no group DMs or Slack channels or (going prehistoric here) email listservs to coordinate these decisions – eventually, there will be women’s magazines and the like, but that comes along a bit later and has a bit of a problem of needing to sell to mass, and thus, common audiences – you have to write letters and for a lot of this kind of stuff you really need to get everyone together in person, and that can be difficult. (Versailles was such a help in that regard.) 

Because of this, there was this liminal space, whereby a sufficiently fashion-forward/culturally capitalled bourgeois could penetrate aristocratic spaces and snatch up titled husbands and wives before being detected, which is why it became such a major topic of literature. 

Hello, Do you know any “rules” about wealth that make a noble person seem cultured/refined/ect? What would be considered nouveau riche and garish? Things with jewelry, food, clothing, horses would be nice to know. I mean this in context of ASOIAF/medieval and not today’s standards. The Lannisters are ridiculously wealthy, but since they are an old money family would they make big displays of wealth like the Tyrells? The Tyrells seem to use their wealth to deal with people who covet Highgarden.

The tricky thing is that there were different fashions for this kind of thing that changed dramatically over the course of the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, etc – especially when you factor in the complicating factor of commoners getting richer than nobles by getting their hands dirty “in trade,” which makes the dividing line harder to enforce. 

So for example, big displays of wealth could be very “on-brand” at various times, because nobles are supposed to be “magnificent.” This fashion obviously works in a context in which commoners either can’t afford to keep up with their betters, or aren’t legally allowed to due to sumptuary laws. At other times, understatement and the display of refined aesthetic might be considered the mark of true nobility – this fashion works in a context in which merchants, the rising bourgeoisie, etc. have tons of money but don’t have the social and cultural capital to know the “right” way to display it. 

In general, I would say that some good rules of thumb for refinement are:

  • Don’t Talk About the Price Tag: regardless of what the fashion is about the degree of opulence at the moment, one of the key attitudes of the nobility w/r/t money is that you don’t care how much stuff costs, because you’re supposed to be stupendously wealthy, generous and open-handed, and more concerned with refined aesthetics than commercial calculation. It’s not an accident that one of the oldest tropes about “nouveau riche” is that they constantly talk about how much various things cost, because they’ve still got that bottom line mentality going on.
  • Know the Fashion, Know the Scene: one of the advantages of being a wealthy parasite who doesn’t work for a living is that you have a lot of spare time to do things like keep up with what’s in fashion and what’s not, what the trends are, who the best craftsmen are, etc. Especially in an aristocratic context where what’s fashionable is less decided by manufacturers and specialized press and more about what important individuals (the monarch, the monarch’s immediate family, the monarch’s mistress/mister, various long-time fixtures at court) are wearing, a lot of this knowledge is very personal and having a grasp of it is a sign that you’re close to the right people. 
  • Making Fashion, Not Just Taking It: of course, one of the clearest signs of refinement is that the noble in question doesn’t merely follow the latest fashions but makes them, bending it to their personal aesthetic. To give an example, “Beau” Brummell was a leading aesthete of his day and, thanks to his close connections with the Prince of Wales and his own personal force of charisma, changed the dominant well-to-do men’s fashion of the day from the fop (powdered wigs anf faces, knee britches, stockings, and buckled shoes, tailcoat, lace cravats, etc.) to the dandy (hair worn naturally, clean face, long trousers, white linen cravats, frock or morning coats).