“Mis wants an upper Coate…”: Sartorial Literacy and the Fashionable Lifecycle in 17th Century England

The economist Gregory King posited in 1688 that over £10,992,500, a quarter of England’s national expenditure, was spent on clothing, making it the second largest expense in contemporary households. Thus, over the course of one’s life, seventeenth century men and women required significant amounts of fashionable knowledge and accounting skills to access the latest styles. Tracing the development of this consumer prowess through a combination of diaries, correspondence, bills, and account books, this paper recovers the multifaceted experience of clothing consumption across the lifecycle in early modern England. Coalescing the attitudes of both well-known and understudied members of the peerage, upper gentry, and urban elite, including John Evelyn, Sir William Petty, Lady Anne Clifford, and others, suggests that clothing was central to early modern family dynamics. From childhood, parents taught their progeny the economic and social value of clothing, allowing them to gain a sense of sartorial literacy and agency. This direct engagement with the fashionable world from childhood would play specific, highly influential roles on an individual’s youth, adulthood, and old age, shaping how they learned, utilised, and passed down these sartorial skills. Thus, in addition to highlighting the diverse ways clothing was consumed by different age demographics, this research sheds crucial light on the affective bonds and relationships mediated between parents, children, and extended family through apparel. In turn, it provides novel insights into the role of dress and material culture in the construction of individual and intergenerational identities across the lifecycle.