Regional Dress, International Fashions and foreign Costumes: the Dress of Danish Townswomen c. 1536-1650

Project by Camilla Luise Dahl

The project Regional dress, international fashions and foreign costumes: the dress of Danish townswomen c. 1536-1650 is a project in two parts; the first a more practical project dealing with the probates themselves which includes transcribing a selection of probates from Danish towns and making them accessible to the public the second exploring the dress of townswomen in probates from selected Danish towns. 

1) Transcribing Danish probates and making them accessible to students and researchers of dress:

Probates are some of the most informative sources to dress in 16th and 17th century Denmark. A large number of probates for townspeople have survived and are stored in Danish and Scanian public archives. So far only little of the large material has been transcribed and published to make it accessible to a broader audience. The majority has remained difficult to read and undigested. The aim is to transcribe and publish a larger selection of dress inventories in probates from a number of Danish towns. The transcriptions will eventually be published and made accessible to students and researchers of dress.

2) Exploring the dress of townwomen in probates from a selection of Danish towns:

The time from the Danish reformation (1536) to the mid-17th century is a period in which much was said about dress. Sumptuary legislation sought to control certain behaviour in regards to dress, the ideal was that the upper classes could dress internationally while lower classes had to settle for regional and local styles. At the same time religious spokesmen of the new church formulated a new kind of dress for the growing Danish-Norwegian bourgeoisie: a reformist dress that underlined the wearer’s nationality and class. The project aims to explore how the ideals of fashions correlated with growing national identity among the bourgeoisie in this period and what styles of dress Danish townswomen in fact did possess: regional styles, the national dress and/or international fashion.