Everyday Dress and the Reconstruction of Early Modern Material Culture, 1550–1650
ERC Refashioning the Renaissance Conference
10–11 September 2021
Online | Aalto University, Finland
This international conference develops new perspectives in early modern dress and fashion history by asking two interrelated key questions: How did fashion beyond groups of wealthy elites develop in early modern Europe, and how can we gain access to the culture of lower social groups when so few garments survive, and sources about clothes are fragmentary? Combining archival, material, and pictorial evidence with experimental hands-on work and reconstruction, this conference explores the key agents of fashion change at the lower social levels in Early Modern Europe, and investigates how experimental work, reconstruction, and material-based approaches can help us understand and access early modern dress and material culture.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference will be
streamed and attendance is possible only online.
Conference Programme
Speakers and respondents: John Styles, Pamela H. Smith, Sven Dupré, Evelyn Welch, Marta Ajmar, Amanda Wunder, Giorgio Riello, Luca Molà, Andrea Caracausi, Elizabeth Currie, Maria Hayward, Tessa Storey, Flora Dennis, Jenny Tiramani, Paula Hohti, Sophie Pitman, Stefania Montemezzo, Victoria Bartels, Anne-Kristine Sindvald Larsen, Piia Lempiäinen, Maarit Kalmakurki, Valerio Zanetti, Elena Kanagy-Loux, Jordan Mitchell-King, Miriam Pugliese.
Refashioning the Renaissance Exhibition
This exhibition brings together written sources, historic images, and contemporary reconstructions to answer the key question of the ERC-funded Refashioning the Renaissance project: How did artisans engage with fashion in the early modern period? The exhibition will be open for conference participants.