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Dressed: The History of Fashion
Spanish Style: Fashion Illuminated, 1550-1700 with Amanda Wunder
01:04:02
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- [00:01]
April
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Amanda Wonder
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Cassidy Zachary
Store near you the History of Fashion is a production of dressed media.
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With over 8 billion people in the world, we all have one thing in common. Every day we all get dressed.
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April
Welcome to Dressed the History of Fashion, a podcast that explores the who, what, when of why we wear we are friends, fashion historians and your hosts, April.
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Cassidy Zachary
Callahan and Cassidy Zachary. How do you tell the story of fashion from a period in history from which little to no clothing or textiles survive?
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If our recent bog fashion episode with Nicole de Rushy was any indicator, it can be done, and it's done quite creatively. And where Nicole and her colleagues use experimental archaeology to tell the story of Bronze and Iron Age fashion to today's guest, Amanda Wonder uses Spanish manuscripts known as letters of nobility to illuminate what upwardly mobile men, women and children of the 16th and 17th century wore to express their status, style and identity in Spain and Spanish colonies. And these manuscripts are at the heart of Amanda's current exhibition, Spanish Style Fashion Illuminated 1550-1700, on view now at the Hispanic Society Museum and Library in New York City until March 22, 2026.
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April
In addition to royal portraits, life size sculptures and sumptuous textiles and jewelry, the exhibition features 16 of these rarely seen letters of nobility, all of which help to weave the rich and textual narrative of this period, defined by Spain's vast power and influence which emanated across Europe and of course, their vast colonial empire which spanned the globe. As Amanda will share, Spain's imperial expansion inspired a fashion revolution among the Spanish elite, who incorporated luxurious colonial imports into opulent garments and accessories that radically reshaped the human body.
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Cassidy Zachary
And if Amanda's name sounds familiar, dress listeners, that is because she joined us last season to discuss her incredible book, Spanish Fashion in the Age of Velasquez, a tailor at the court of Philip iv. And in addition to being the first archival study of dress at the court of the Spanish monarch Philip iv, her book centers around the life and work of royal court tailor Mateo Aguado, whose name and significant contributions Amanda brought to light for the first time. And that was actually one of the best books I've read in a really long time. And we're going to be re airing that interview with Amanda on Friday. But first she is back for a brand new episode discussing her new exhibition and its accompanying soon to be published catalog, both of which we will discuss today.
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April
A brief introduction to Amanda before she joins us on the show. She specializes in the art and History of 17th century Spain and her other published works include the book Baroque Seville, Sacred Art in a Century of Crisis. A Fulbright Scholar and former fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, she is currently a professor of history and art history at the City University of New York. And now she is a repeat guest on Dressed. Amanda, welcome back to the show.
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Cassidy Zachary
Amanda, welcome back to Dressed. I am so excited to be talking to you again.
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Amanda Wonder
Thank you, Cassidy. I am delighted to be back.
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Cassidy Zachary
And over a year ago we talked about your incredibly wonderful book and now you are back to talk about a new exhibition which congratul congratulations by the way, it is so beautiful, set in the most beautiful museum.
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Amanda Wonder
Thank you so much.
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Cassidy Zachary
And I have actually never been to this museum and just seeing all of the exhibition images of this incredibly beautiful space. Can you tell us a little bit more about this museum and the space that the exhibition is set in?
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Amanda Wonder
Absolutely. So it's often described as a jewel of upper Manhattan. It's located on Broadway and 155th Street, West 155th Street. And it's the collection of Archer M. Huntington, started in the early 20th century. I think they opened in 1908. And it's this just spectacular complex that has an inner space which is a courtyard in the style of a Renaissance Spanish patio. And so it's a beautiful evocative space for an exhibition. And the museum itself is an extraordinary place with a spectacular collection of textiles, jewels, paintings including Velazquez and El Greco and Goya, and a really extraordinary rare books and manuscripts library, which as a researcher of Spanish history, I have found to be the best collection I found anywhere outside of Madrid. And often I find things at the Hispanic Society library that I can't find.
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Cassidy Zachary
In Spain, which is what perhaps inspired this exhibition. Can you tell us a little bit more about how this exhibition came about?
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Amanda Wonder
Absolutely. At the heart of the exhibition, we have a group of very unusual illuminated manuscripts. So these are handwritten documents on parchment, which are illustrated with painted portraits of fans, families. And the reason that I started looking at these originally quite some time ago was because they represent families dressed in the very latest fashions of the day. And unlike many painted portraits, they are firmly dated and we know who the people in them are. We can talk a little bit more later on about what these manuscripts are, but this was something I was doing just as a background research for working on fashion history.
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John O'Neill
And.
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Amanda Wonder
And the rare books curator named John o' Neill at one point suggested that this could actually be the subject of an exhibition in and of itself. It's the very first time that these illuminated manuscripts, which are called letters of nobility, have ever been displayed specifically as a resource for fashion history.
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Cassidy Zachary
And actually this is an incredibly creative exhibition when you think about this time period you're working in, which is 1550-1700. Not a time period that has a lot of surviving garments and textiles, maybe more textile fragments perhaps than garments. But you have done an incredible job with bringing this period to life using non fashion objects or non textile objects, because these are certainly fashion archives in and of themselves. Can you tell us a little bit more about working with those sort of limitations and how you have to get creative to tell this fashion story?
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Amanda Wonder
So this really is an exhibition that you could only do at a comprehensive museum like the Hispanic Society, which has these illuminated manuscripts, but then also has all sorts of other objects that I use to flesh out the story of what we're seeing in these painted miniature portraits. And so we do have on display examples of lace, of brocaded silk velvets. We don't have surviving garments from the secular world, as you mentioned, but we do have a really spectacular dalmatic, which is an ecclesiastical vestment which was made for a deacon during the saying of the mass at church. And we also have life size sculptures and what else? Paintings, full size paintings on canvas. And all these objects in this really rich Renaissance style courtyard are used to really evoke this long lost world of Spanish fashion.
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Cassidy Zachary
And we should say the courtyard is inside the museum.
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Amanda Wonder
Yes, yes. There's a roof.
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Cassidy Zachary
There is climate control.
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Amanda Wonder
Yes.
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Cassidy Zachary
And we will post exhibition images, of course, so that listeners, you can get an idea of just how beautiful this space is and how all of these objects are placed to be in conversation with other objects around them. And if you can't make it to the exhibition in person, dress listeners, there is a wonderful catalog that is coming out and that is actually what I was able to read in preparation for today's talk with Amanda. And that's how we're going to organize and structure this conversation through these three phases that track the evolution and influence of Spanish style from the 1550s to 1700. And in the exhibition catalog, you designated that first phase as the 1550s to the 1580s, and you dubbed it the Rise of Spanish Style. This is a period that reflected a fashion revolution and which was not uncoincidentally intimately connected to the rise of Spain as a global superpower. So how is clothing and Spain's rise as a global superpower intimately connected during this period?
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Amanda Wonder
Thank you so much. So this is a big question, and it was really something I was struggling to figure out in the process of working on the exhibition materials and writing the catalog introduction. And what I found that was so interesting was that really everything sort of happening at the same time. And this is probably the moment that I should more thoroughly introduce these manuscript letters of nobility. And what they do is these are legal documents whose owners had sued in court to prove their status as low level noblemen called hidalgos. Now, it's around the mid 16th century that you see the proliferation of these lawsuits resulting in the creation of these illuminated manuscripts with family portraits of people dressed in this very distinctive Spanish fashion. So what this really highlights for me is that the rise of this distinctive Spanish style isn't just a matter of something we're all pretty familiar with at this point, which is this sudden interchange of global goods. This is certainly a big part of the story that with the rise of the Spanish Empire and Spanish colonialism, that you have the importation to Europe of all sorts of materials from the Americas and from all over the world. This is certainly part of the story about why Spanish fashion is going to change. But there's also a really driving social need for people to prove and demonstrate their social status around this time period. And so what I found was that the majority of the people whose lives I could trace, whose portraits are featured in these manuscripts, are people who made their fortunes in the Americas in some fashion. And so these are the kind of people then who want to turn their newfound wealth into old social status. And so this is why they're working so hard to demonstrate their status as noble. And one of the really crucial ways that you could do this was by the way you dressed. And so what we see as the increasing importance of fashion as a way of showing your status and as a way of publicly making a claim to nobility from the way that you look, because people have greater access to the kinds of materials that had traditionally demonstrated social status in the form of really rich silks and decorations of silver and gold and of course, jewelry and these other very just traditional mechanisms of displaying status through conspicuous consumption.
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Cassidy Zachary
And you write in the catalog that Spain's noble class, so these people suing for their nobility and achieving it through these luxurious records which document that nobility. And you write about how these documents, these letters of nobility, are actually used for generations by the same family to prove that they have that status should it ever be challenged. But Spain's noble class during this period expanded to an astonishing 10%. So 10% of the population is of this wealthy noble class who are eager to distinguish themselves and reflect this status. So that's really fascinating. And just to touch a little bit more on Spanish Empire, can you talk about the way Spain is expanding during this period and where it's expanding to? Because their reach is pretty astounding when you consider how they're traveling there, how long it takes to travel there, and all of those different factors.
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Amanda Wonder
Absolutely. And there is one study that found that it's estimated that 10% of the population of Spain was declared noble. And I should emphasize here that this is low level nobility. This is not the upper aristocracy with named titles. These are what they called hidalgos or the sons of someone. If anyone's a fan of literature and has read Don Quixote, Don Quixote was an impoverished nobleman, an hidalgo. Right. So this is not the super high class, but. But these hidalgos did enjoy lots of privileges, most notably exemption from paying taxes. And so this is one of the things that they really wanted to reinforce their status for, to claim those privileges. As you're saying, the extent of the Spanish empire in the late 16th century is absolutely vast. Leading up to 1550, you have Spain having just. It's just on the heels of having conquered the Aztec empire in modern day Mexico, the Inca empire in South America, you've also got the Philippines. And also, I think something that's often forgotten is vast amounts of territory in Europe. Lots of Italian states were part of the Spanish Empire, including Naples at this time, and also Flanders, which is the southern Netherlands. And so all of these territories are providing Spain with some really luxurious materials that go into making fashions. So for instance, the very richest laces were imported from Flanders. You had spectacular brocaded silks from Naples, pearls, cochineal and logwood to dye silks coming from, from Latin America. And all of these things are being, being folded into Spanish fashion during this time period.
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Cassidy Zachary
And of course, because of this dramatic reach and large reach, Spain becomes this global empire, right? And it also becomes a global fashion capital, not only in how it influen European courts, other fashion across Europe, but also in that, as you just mentioned, bringing in all of these outside goods to influence what people wore. And I would love if we could talk about what people wore specifically during this period as reflected in these letters of nobility in the exhibition. And you write in the catalog that it becomes this fashion arms race where clothing becomes a potent tool for claiming status and distinguishing the quote unquote haves from have nots. So can you talk a little bit more about what people were wearing and how they use that to distinguish status?
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Amanda Wonder
So I think if anyone's read the sort of old histories of Spanish fashion, like there's a book from the 1950s or so by Brian Reed called the Dominance of Spain. Amelia Davenport, the great costume historian, they all describe very well the elements of Spanish fashion in the mid 16th century that were, as you say, really exported throughout the rest of Europe. When Spain was at the top of its global influence, European courts were all dressing in Spanish style because they this is a time when fashion really equaled power and reflected political, military, economic dominance on a world scale. And so Spain at the top of its game was also the driving fashion force in the second half of the 16th century. So the elements of Spanish style, the most quintessential garment for both men and women would have been the doublet. And this is a. I've seen some non fashion historians describe it as a shirt in sources, but it's much more than a shirt because it's like a three dimensional sculptural garment that fit the upper body. Spanish tailors were renowned for the quality of their work. And this is a very closely fitted garment with fitted sleeves, buttons up the front, has a very high neck. And it's worn by both men and women over a long linen shirt as their main upper body garment. So this is what's worn by both men and women. And an interesting thing you'll notice then is that female fashion in this period in the second half of the 16th century, compared to some other European traditions in Spain, looks from surprisingly masculine. The male and female garments are really very similar down to the waist and then that's where things divide. And men are wearing trunk hose or breeches, which are often cut out of strips of fabric that are then joined together with a sumptuous under layer of another fabric lining them underneath. They could be stuffed to achieve a great deal of volume. And then a Spanish man was never complete to go outside without his short cloak, which was a shorter version of the medieval cape that men had worn. And also then a rapier or a dress sword, as it was known at his side. And then for women, the doublet was worn with a long floor length skirt that covered the feet, and then also a modest mantle, which could be a floor length garment worn over the head. And then you would also find something I became really interested in looking at these illuminations were these detailed depictions of women's headdresses, which were these white linen or silk garments or accessories, rather called tocas, which covered the head. And there were all sorts of different styles that really depended on your age and marital status. And so you could communicate a lot of information through these kinds of detailed accessories. Now, something I learned that was so interesting to me by actually reading these letters of nobility, which are filled with witness testimony, except explaining how to prove the families were noble, was I really learned that the features of Spanish dress that became so prominent in the second half of the 16th century really reflected these characteristics that were ascribed to the nobility at the time. And so Spanish fashion looks really militaristic. And, well, to be noble, you had to show that your family had served the king by bearing arms for centuries past. So that's one of the ways to show nobility. The Spanish nobility were also obsessed with what they called purity of blood, which was to show that they were old Christian families that didn't have any Jewish or Muslim ancestors. And all these signs of piety that are particularly worn by the women, including these head coverings and devotional jewels, were other ways of signaling their noble status, showing this purity of blood.
- [19:02]
Cassidy Zachary
And another way that they signaled their noble status was by something that we have to talk about when you talk about this period, which is the ruff, right, the ubiquitous ruff. Can you talk a little bit more about the ruff? And then also how it signaled not only purity, but also your status, because.
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Amanda Wonder
It'S white, the ruff, as you can see, as you look at images of Spanish fashion over the decades, it starts off as a fairly modest little ruffle, which the Spanish called a lechugilla, or a little lettuce ruff around the neck. And so it's peeking out from the doublet and it's showing your cleanliness, your ability to. To launder, which is an expensive thing to do, to wash and keep this undergarment. And so the original ruffs were actually attached to the shirts. But Then they grew in size and eventually became their own accessories, which were freestanding and separated from the garments worn on the body until they reach absolutely incredible proportions by the 1590s. And they get so big that they have to be supported by their own support structures worn underneath them. They're like these platters around the head.
- [20:07]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And we talked about this a little bit last time you were on the podcast. But I love the tools of this trade. There's professional rough setters during this period and how they use those heated irons to set what were first started out as these long, starched strips of fabric that then get rolled into what you describe as elaborate scrolls. It's so fascinating.
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Amanda Wonder
It took a huge amount of labor to make and maintain these. And they were made out of just gargantuan quantities of very expensive material. So the finest linen, but then also they could be trimmed with lace. And then, as you can see in some of the miniature portraits that are featured in this exhibition, the platforms the. That supported them could also be decorated. And so women would often wear ruffs on top of these, what looked to be gilded platforms decorated with little spangles. And so you can imagine these golden spangles are just tinkling as you walk around. So there's so much decoration added to the ruffs. And the ruffs, in and of themselves, are such a clear, visible symbol of status and that anyone who's wearing them is obviously not working. You really can't do anything, anything other than just look good when you're standing around wearing your ruff.
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Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And I love to think, actually this just occurred to me. But I love that these letters of nobilities can almost be viewed as fashion plates. They really are, in a way, because fashion is so intimately connected to your status. Right. It becomes a symbol of your status and nobility, just like these letters of nobility are. And exactly because of this, you have these really beautiful and detailed depictions of these fashions from this period. And.
- [21:53]
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- [23:12]
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- [24:27]
And I just wanted to speak to a couple different objects specifically in this section that I found fascinating. For instance, you have the reflection of some fashion fads in some of these portraits. If you can think of these as fashion plates and reflections of what people were wearing or the ideal of what people were wearing, they also reflect some fashion fads, including but not limited to the codpiece and also the padded belly fads, both of which were in menswear in the 16th century. Can you talk a little bit more about those and how they're reflected in these specific letters of nobility?
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Amanda Wonder
First of all, I'm so glad that you refer to these as the ideals of clothing, because that really is what we're looking at in these portrait miniatures. There's no way to know if these people actually owned these clothes, but this is really how they wanted to be seen. They were having their portraits painted to show themselves looking like the ideal of aristocratic dress at any given moment in time. And we do see just these, these really brief, bizarre trends coming and going across the years. And one of the earliest manuscripts that's in the Hispanic society library with a family portrait is from 1553. And it shows the owner of the certificate of nobility named Alonso de Castro, looking for all the world like a knight in shining armor. He looks like a knight of old, like one of the members of the old nobility must have gotten his title from service to the king in battle. The guy was actually a merchant. He was a merchant from Burgos who'd made his fortune in the slave trade working with Seville merchants. And he has himself dressed up in this sort of antique style. But then his little son kneeling behind him, a little blonde boy, is dressed all in black and red in the latest courtly fashions with this prominent red codpiece. And this is from 1553, which is precisely when that would have been at the height of style. And then you referenced the other one with the peas cod belly, as it was called, which is a trend from the early 1570s. And we have an image of Hidalgo named Pedro Moriano, who lived in a small town in Extremadura, which is an arid region of western Spain. And he has this very strange profile where it looks like he's pregnant because he has this stuffed doublet. And this was a trend that was briefly in style for men in the early 1570s. You see it in English portraits as well, where men were stuffing their doublets to look like they had a prominent belly. And this just. This comes and goes. It's a very short lived trend, but. But this gentleman had himself immortalized in the style.
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Cassidy Zachary
Any reason as to any explanation as to why men would want a prominent belly? Is it linked to showing that you can afford a lot of food or.
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Amanda Wonder
That's my best guess. Also we see the same profile in armor at the time. And gosh, I've read about this and I don't remember what I read exactly, but there has been discussion about would that when you have the belly like that on armor. Does that actually deflect blows? Maybe I'd have to look that one up.
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Cassidy Zachary
Oh, interesting.
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Amanda Wonder
See what the sources say. But you definitely see a relationship between fashion and armor. You certainly see this protruding belly, both in breastplates and in actual soft fabric doublets. And then it becomes this again, a symbol of status and being with it, being with the times.
- [27:51]
Cassidy Zachary
Now we are going to move into what you deem the second phase of Spanish style, which is from the 1590s to the 1650s. And this is a period that is particularly noteworthy because all of these artifices of fashion that we've just discussed, they get amplified.
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And so all of this ornamentation gets bigger. You have even bigger increased artificiality in silhouettes and shape of silhouettes. So I'd love if you could introduce us to some of these styles that characterize this era, as well as the societal and political forces that quite literally shaped men and women's fashion.
- [28:24]
Amanda Wonder
So this is a period from the 1590s to the 1650s of enormous change in Spanish fashion. And the pendulum really swings back and forth with an increasing speed and extremity in this time. Men's and women's fashions go on slightly different tracks. When we're looking at the. When these changes take place now for both men's and women's fashions, we see in the 1590s, the incredible augmentation of those rough collars which grow from little lettuce leaves into just absolutely gobsmackingly huge structures that go around the neck. Then these become really, in Spain, a symbol of decadence and decline. Because what happens is, you see. See the roughs growing and growing right in the wake of the humiliating Spanish defeat by the English in the English Channel, when Elizabeth I's forces defeated the Spanish Armada, which was this supposedly invincible naval force that Philip II had sent to. To conquer England. Supposedly Spain is really losing its footing. It's really losing its status on the world stage. There are lots of economic problems hitting Spain. We're seeing less treasure coming in from the Americas, a real loss of reputation abroad, and a real sense of crisis in Spain, and a lot of debate among the political classes about what has happened and how do we fix this. And so, of course, everyone fixates on fashion naturally. Naturally. Right. It's impossible to emphasize just how politically important fashion was in this time period. This was not a frivolous thing of women. This was something that the kings of Spain took dead seriously and made a lot of efforts to control, because controlling fashion was seen as a way of controlling morality and controlling power. And the huge rough becomes associated with Spanish decline. You have all sorts of critics talking about back in the day when Spanish men wore armor, when men were men and we conquered an empire. But now men are dressing like women with these huge ruffs. And that's the source of all of our problems. And so when Philip IV became king in 1621, one of the first, one of the earliest really important pieces of legislation that he passed was to ban men from wearing those huge rough collars. So he's showing visibly to the public that this is going to be a new regime. And he shows that by the way he's dressing. So we have this huge reform of men's dress in 1623. And so the pendulum swings from this extreme of incredibly opulent, ostentatious menswear to this very rigid, austere black and white that we see famously in Diego Velazquez's early court portraits of King Philip iv.
- [31:11]
Cassidy Zachary
And that's what happens to menswear. But womenswear has an entirely different trajectory, quite literally getting wider.
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Amanda Wonder
It does. Spanish women's fashions stay fairly consistent in the early 1600s. They're still wearing this cone shaped farthingale which is known in Spanish as a berdugado. And this was a, an underskirt that was. Had rigid hoops sewn into it which created this really a conical lower half to the body shape. And this was first worn at the Spanish court starting in the 1490s. It spread to all the other courts of Europe. Women at the English courts and elsewhere wearing this in the 16th century. But then this really fell out of fashion for women elsewhere in Europe as French styles rose into prominence in around the turn of the century. But Spanish women continued to wear this cone shaped skirt with, with their very high necked, rigid dresses. And this was the, this was the standard elite woman's dress really up until about the 1650s. Things start to evolve around the 1630s or so. But it's in the 1650s that we see a radical evolution of women's dress with the maximum extension of a new kind of undergarment, a shaping garment which we've talked about before. Cassidy. This was the guarda infante, which was the huge hip extending hoop skirt that was such a controversial Spanish style in the mid 17th century, mirrored by their.
- [32:44]
Cassidy Zachary
Hair, which you may remember, dress listeners, which is just so incredibly fascinating and very famously depicted in a lot of Velazquez's portraits of the queens and the princesses of this Period. It's just so fascinating. And this is actually a place I want to talk about something you specialize in or. I've certainly read multiple articles by you about sumptuary legislation in the Spain because some of these styles were so extreme that they were banned by the Spanish crown, or at least the Spanish crown tried to regulate them. And sumptuary legislation is really fascinating in the context of Spain because it serves all of these different purposes, not only to regulate what the nobility are wearing, but also to distinguish them from the lower classes, also to protect local trade from foreign, local manufacture from foreign goods. So can you talk a little bit about sumptuary legislation within the context of, of what people were wearing?
- [33:35]
Amanda Wonder
This is a time period when the, the crown could govern what people could and could not wear. And they exercised this power with great frequency. And so in Spain in particular, you see really the, the high point of sumptuary legislation during the reign of Philip IV, who was king from 1621 until 1665. And he was really the king of sumptuary legislation. And he used this, these dress laws more than any other monarch as a tool for governing, as a way to exert political power. And also it's important to keep in mind this is a time when people thought about morality as something that affected divine will. And when Spain is doing poorly politically, economically, militarily, one of the solutions that always comes up is we need to reform people's morals so we'll have God on our side. And to do that we need to dress appropriately, particularly women. And so we see Philip iv, I've mentioned already his law on men's ruffs, trying to get men to clean up their act in order to, to improve the state of the Spanish nation. He also imposed quite a few laws about women's clothing, especially in 1639 when he banned three things. One, the Guarda Infante, which is that huge hoop skirt that I've mentioned. Another is the esco tado, which is a low cut bodice. Now keep in mind, our idea of low cut is different from the idea of low cut. In 17th century Spain, two fingers below the neck was considered the path to hell. This was, this was, this was really, was really considered scandalous. And then also he banned women from dressing as tapadas. This was women who used their head coverings, their mantles to cover their faces, leaving only one eye exposed. This was a trend that was seen as impossibly sexy and very dangerous and scandalous. So all of these things were outlawed in 1639, unlike the rules Governing ruffs. These rules on women's wear were not successfully enforced, at least not for very long. Not least because the Spanish queens continued wearing things like guardian pantes and low cut bodices. And so really, you find that when there are laws being issued by the crown, it's only when they're worn at the royal court and modeled by the royal family that they're actually effectively enforced.
- [35:58]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, I was gonna say I'm looking at one of the letters of nobility in the catalog from Antonio de Contreras, and his wife is clearly. I mean, her. You don't actually see the bottom of her dress, but you do see her hairstyle. So I'm assuming she's wearing Aguardian Fonte.
- [36:15]
Amanda Wonder
Yes, because as you've seen, hair always shape goes according to the shape of the rest of the outfit. In that case, from this manuscript from 1651, she has this rainbow shaped wig which imitates precisely the shape of what her skirt would have been.
- [36:29]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, and actually, I want to talk about the men's hair as well, because men's. If you look at men's hairstyles from even maybe a decade prior, maybe two decades prior, men are now sporting longer hair, which I find fascinating. And you write about how they were having a lot of fun with their hair, and you actually call men's hair a playground for novelties. So can you talk a little bit more about that?
- [36:50]
Amanda Wonder
Exactly, yes. And this is an area where these illuminated manuscripts were such a fun source, because since we have so many of them, and I should highlight here, the Hispanic Society has over 120 illuminated manuscripts with family portraits. So you can trace the evolution of styles decade by decade, sometimes year by year. And what you find is that menswear gets pretty boring after these reforms of 1623. They're wearing these black suits with white collars. And the shape of the collar might change a little bit here and there, but it's pretty stagnant. But the hair is where they really have some fun. And so, as you said, Cassidy, like men's hair starts to get longer. You see them playing with their mustaches. There's a phase where you have these really Salvador Dali looking mustaches that are turned up at the tips. You start to see them wearing what they called gedejas, which are these little locks of hair that are curled in front of the ears. And something I thought was very fun was noticing how men's and women's hair really evolves in tandem. And so when you look at all these images of family portraits, over the years, you see that men's and women's wear, it changes and evolves, but it's always in the same vein. And so men and women both start having very long hair in the 1660s and 1670s. And so there always is some. There's something in the air where they always look pretty similar, but men's hair becomes incredibly long and luxurious towards the end of the 17th century.
- [38:15]
Cassidy Zachary
And that transitions perfectly to the next object in the exhibition that I want to discuss, which is this fascinating and fantastic portrait of these two almost identical women, Dona Baltasada and Dona Inez. Can you talk a little bit about them and their blonde hair?
- [38:30]
Amanda Wonder
Oh, my God, I love these women. This, I have to say, was the manuscript that I think, really originally caught my eye. So this is a letter of nobility from 1601, issued in Granada in southern Spain. And it was issued to a pair of brothers, the Ortega Vallejo brothers, and their wives, Dona Ines and Dona Baltazara, are depicted in a portrait miniature, kneeling in prayer. And they've got these incredible hairstyles. They look like flames. There are these blonde updos. And this was a fashion that was really popular at the turn of the century, the early 1600s, when the ruff collars had gotten so huge, there was only one thing for the hair to do and that was to go up, because there was nowhere else for it to go. And so this was a hairstyle known as the copete, where women would have false hair pieces that were incorporated into their real hair. You'd have some sort of padding on the top of the head, and then sweep all this fake and real hair up over it into this tall shape, which could be decorated on top with some kind of little tiny hat or jewel or something like that. And these two women in particular are. They reflect this moment in the early 1600s. And it's just a few years, really, where the trend was for women to dye their hair blonde and to wear this blonde hair with very pale white faces and with red lips and dark eyebrows. And so it's very funny when you look at examples of these manuscripts from this period, all the women look the same. They've all got this very particular style, and it's incredibly artificial. And. And it really goes to highlight the way that women's role in this time was really to be ornamental. It was the men who would achieve the status of noble, and it was the men's bloodlines that mattered when it came to these. These court cases that resulted in these documents. And the women's function was really purely ornamental. And these women did their job very well.
- [40:23]
Cassidy Zachary
But also speaking to women's function, you have included in the exhibition catalog. In the exhibition is a rare pregnancy portrait. Can you talk about that a little bit more?
- [40:33]
Amanda Wonder
Absolutely. So this comes from a manuscript that was made in 1604 in. Comes from Burgos in northern Spain. And the first thing that caught my eye, opening this manuscript was just. Just the glittering painting. It's a really. It's an illumination in spectacular condition, and it shows a man and a woman kneeling at an altar of a virgin. And it's a sculpture of the Virgin that is made to be dressed, which is very common in Spanish devotional tradition. And the man and wife are both wearing. Dressed all in black with very large white ruffs around their necks. And looking at the woman, I thought, wait a minute, she looks like she. Her abdomen is quite rounded. And it's just a. It's a really striking image. And again, this is from 1604. And I know that from this time period, it happens to be right around this moment, you do actually see portraits of pregnant women, both in England and in Spain. There's a portrait of the Queen of Spain, Margaret of Austria, from the early 1600s, which is a very striking pregnancy portrait. It's in Vienna today. And there was also a phase of. There's a few portraits in the National Portrait Gallery in London that depict aristocratic women who are very clearly visibly pregnant. So there was something in the air in the early 1600s where women were having their portraits painted while pregnant. And I had learned from researching my previous book about pregnancy and fashion and that there weren't maternity clothes at the time. And so women would have their clothes let out at the waist when they were pregnant and then taken back in once the pregnancy was over, and then let out again and taken back again, because pregnancy was really the job of the elite woman, and they were pregnant much, much of the time. So I. One of the things I really wanted to do was try to find out who this woman was and if she was actually pregnant, try to confirm my guess from the visual. And what I found was I wasn't able to pin it down exactly, but the man who commissioned the manuscript did in fact have a daughter 19 years later who married a secretary of the king. So I suspect that could very well be the result of what I think is a pregnancy in 1604.
- [42:46]
Cassidy Zachary
I love it. I loved the sleuthing.
- [42:48]
Amanda Wonder
I can't say it for sure, but I'm pretty sure that's right.
- [42:59]
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- [43:29]
April
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body.
- [43:32]
Amanda Wonder
Relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
- [43:36]
April
Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts.
- [43:39]
Amanda Wonder
In time for this class.
- [43:40]
April
I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts.
- [43:43]
Amanda Wonder
Oh my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe.
- [43:45]
April
Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry.
- [43:52]
Amanda Wonder
Namaste. Visit 1-800-contacts.com today to save on your first order. 1-800-contacts.
- [44:02]
Cassidy Zachary
And now we are going to move into your final section, which covers the years of 1660s through the 1690s and explores the fall of Spain and the rise of France as what you deem the unrivaled leader of European fashion. So France has now replaced Spain as that global fashion superpower. So what happened to facilitate that changing of the fashion guard? And then how did Spanish fashion, but also these letters of nobility as status objects in and of themselves, how did those reflect that change?
- [44:31]
Amanda Wonder
So we start to see France really comes to supersede Spain as the European fashion superpower over the course of the 17th century. And that as early as the era of Elizabeth I of England, when she's wearing those famous drum like hoop skirts, which is a French influence, having turned in her Spanish style farthingales to replace them with the French style ones. So that's, that's as early as the late 1500s, very early 1600s. Now, French fashion really develops in a totally different trajectory from the Spanish in the early 17th century. And that in French and English styles you see a much more natural kind of silhouette. You women stop wearing farthingales under their skirts, Hair becomes more natural, less makeup, more decolletage. Whereas Spanish fashion in the women's sphere remains very buttoned up and becomes more extreme, more artificial than ever before. It's like they're doubling down on everything that made Spanish fashion look Spanish. And so you continue with these hoop skirts in whatever form they are at any given moment. Spanish women were known for wearing an enormous amount of makeup. And we've talked about the artificial hair and the hair, whether in the form of hair pieces or wigs. And so Spanish women's fashions look very different. And when you have accounts of foreigners visiting Spain, the male foreigners frequently comment on Spanish women's appearances and the heavy makeup, the wigs and the hoop skirts, for instance. But despite this, you did start to see the incursion of certain French trends into Spanish women's dress. Also some things in men's dress as well as early as the 1630s. And so when women start wearing lower cuts, and again, this is not what we would consider to be low cut necessarily, but showing the bit of the neck, a bit of the, a bit of the shoulders, that this is seen as a French influence. And you have lots of critics just screaming fire and brimstone about this being the end of Spain and calling it a French influence and considering that to be really problematic. But it's not until 1660 that you really see the floodgates open to French fashions in Spain. And that's because a very long standing war between the two countries came to an end. War had officially broken out in 1635. It concluded in 1660 with the marriage of the Spanish Infanta Maria Theresa to King Louis XIV of France. And once the two nations were officially at peace, then you really start to see French fashion influence in Spain accelerating. And so you can have the importation of French laces and other luxury goods that are used in Spanish dress and Spanish women's dresses in particular, you start to see becoming lower and to the point where they're actually like exposing the whole shoulder. Men's fashions at some point, really, it's really interesting. We have some manuscript illuminations that will show men dressed fully in French style. So with a long coat that buttons down the front in a. In a bright color with maybe a contrasting brocade vest underneath and a lacy cravat, shoes with heels on them. And what's really fun is you see some family portraits where you can tell the families are hedging their bets politically. And you'll have one male member of the family dressed in the very traditional Spanish style in black with a white collar, and the other one dressed fully in French and reflecting both national trends all in one group. Family portrait.
- [47:51]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, there you're specifically speaking about this one. I believe it's dated to 1694. And I think it's.
- [47:56]
Amanda Wonder
It's two brothers or.
- [47:57]
Cassidy Zachary
No, himself and his son. And the son is dressed in the French inspired fashion and the father is very conservative.
- [48:05]
Amanda Wonder
Yeah, I'm actually not sure who they Are. I never was able to pin down if those are brothers or father and son, but they're definitely members of the same household.
- [48:13]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah. And then the women next to them, again, I think at this time, you can definitely say this is low cut and a bit sexy, even to us today, because it's really showing the entire top of their shoulders, the two women next to them. And what a dramatic change in women's fashion. Fashion from just a couple decades prior, or maybe 60 years prior, when they were completely buttoned up. And I also want to talk about a couple different things, but one, women's jewelry, because I think this is a really interesting moment. And you talk about this in the catalog, about how it transitions from fashion being a symbol of piety, of women's piety, which of course, it is not now, if a woman is showing and exposing her whole shoulder. And one of the ways in which that transition from religiously informed fashion to more secular fashion is through the jewelry and the significance of the jewelry that they're wearing on their bodice. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- [49:03]
Amanda Wonder
Absolutely. So this was one of the really interesting things I learned going through all of these images systematically was. And again, as we've talked about before, these are images that show the ideal of masculine and feminine dress at any given moment. And what you see when you look closely is that images of noble women from the late 16th century, they always have their hair covered with this fine white kerchief or toca. And very often you can see in the image that the ends of this kerchief worn over the head, they meet at the center of the chest, and they're held down by a devotional jewel. And whether it's a crucifix or maybe an image of the Virgin Mary, but you had religious jewelry as figures very prominently in women's attire in the late 16th century.
- [49:51]
Cassidy Zachary
And you have really beautiful examples in the exhibition. One of these made me gasp out loud. The one that has the heart and then the little pieces of paper in it. It just is so beautiful.
- [50:02]
Amanda Wonder
Yeah, that's one of my absolute favorites. This is a reliquary jewel. It's made out of rock crystal. It's in the shape of a heart, and it's semi transparent. And inside this rock crystal heart, you have relics. And so the remnants or remains related to Catholic. And there's these little slips of paper which have written on them identifying which saint the relics come from. Although you can't actually really read those slips of paper today. But it's an Absolutely stunning artifact.
- [50:29]
Cassidy Zachary
And would a woman have worn that?
- [50:31]
Amanda Wonder
Yes, absolutely. So fascinating and interestingly, in the images that we have, the illuminations, we only see women, for the most part, see women wearing devotional jewelry, but jewelry was not just for women. Men also wore jewels as well. And you do see images of men wearing insignia, specifically of the Spanish Inquisition. They had jewels, enamel jewels of the Inquisition, or showing their membership in one of the elite military orders, like the Order of Santiago, for instance.
- [50:59]
Cassidy Zachary
And then you move into the later 17th century and this sort of jewelry loses its significance. So it's purely ornamental.
- [51:06]
Amanda Wonder
Exactly what we start to see. And again, this is in the. In these manuscript illuminations showing these ideals of dress. This doesn't necessarily reflect. Reflect what people were actually doing all the time, but you really see a very clear transition from displays of nobility through devotional jewelry to pure conspicuous consumption with very large brooches worn at the center of the chest. These were called, like, chest roses or Rosas de pecho. And you also see these enormous dangling chandelier earrings. They're just huge. And so this really, really opulent, excessive, heavy jewelry we start to see really being very predominant in the later 1600s. As you were saying, Cassidy, we see this just really striking and startling shift from this model of covered piety to just this pure expression of richness and this kind of joyful, exuberant fashion in the later 17th century.
- [52:01]
Cassidy Zachary
Yeah, and speaking of joyful and exuberant fashion, we can't talk about fashion in this period without talking about the excessive use of ribbons in the hair, which is, I guess, a direct influence from Louis XIV and is so fascinating. And it's not only reflected in several of the letters of nobility you have featured, but also this wonderful portrait you have from 1670 to 75 of this young woman. And it almost looks like she has huge earrings, but they're ribbons in her hair. Can you talk a little bit more about those?
- [52:30]
Amanda Wonder
This really, as you said, clearly comes from the influence of the court of Louis xiv, who was famously fond of ribbons, particularly in scarlet red. And you see all these wonderful images of men at the court of Louis XIV with these ribbon bedecked breeches, for instance, just. Just with loops of ribbons absolutely everywhere. And you see this, you'd. It's inconceivable that you'd have a Spanish man suit like that, but you find women wearing them. It's not clear to me exactly how they're being attached. They're around the ear. Maybe they're being worn on some sort of like, headband or looped around the ear itself, but they have these huge clusters of ribbons around the ear. One of my absolute favorite images in the exhibition is we see the portrait of the woman you mentioned with these loops of ribbons, but then you see the exact same ribbon earrings adorning a little tiny dog at the foot of a man in another portrait. And it's, I think, just such, such an interesting statement that women and puppies were adorned with the same decorations at this time period.
- [53:25]
Cassidy Zachary
And one of my favorite portraits depicting this from one of the letters of nobility, is of Dona Isabel Darrigas and her children, her three daughters. And they're all wearing identical headwear, maybe in different colors, but they all have the low cut gowns around the neck in the very distinctive fashion. And then the three young daughters are imitating their mother's hairstyles. And I just find that so charming. And again, fascinating. Of course, at this time, children dress like their parents very much. And so these are just her little mini me's.
- [53:58]
Amanda Wonder
Exactly. And there's so many interesting details, and I learned so many things about the representation of age across different stages of life from researching this exhibition. And so in this particular example, we see the two adults, the husband and the wife, are dressed in what's clearly black moire. So it's a watered silk fabric. And the artist has been very careful to render this to show us that it's this rich water silk. And then the children are dressed in this just verdant green color. And green was associated with youth. And so you're clearly distinguishing maturity of the parents wearing black and then the youthful children wearing green, and as you say, dressed as little mini mes, like imitations of their parents. But we also see lots of images of children in the exhibition at different stages of life. And you can trace how kids move from these very gender neutral garments of infancy, where boys and girls both wear skirts and wear a lot of protective devices like amulets to protect them from the evil eye at a time when infant mortality was really high. And then you see them growing up and dressing in adult style garments in bright colors. And then as they mature and reach a certain age, they shift over to wearing the sober Spanish black, which is the color that you wear when you're a mature adult. And so you can really see this sort of evolution of fashion over the lifespan of an individual, but also the gender mythology.
- [55:19]
Cassidy Zachary
Right. Of dress, because blue is so famously associated with boys and girls with pink. And you talk about how at this time that was not the case. There's Plenty of images of boys in pink and girls in blue and almost wearing identical garments at certain periods until the boy has his breaching ceremony and the girl gets her first crinoline. Right. There's so much information jam packed into this catalog that is so fascinating, and this is just such a wonderful intro into this exhibition and this incredibly fascinating topic. And we are nearing the end of our time together and nearing the end of the exhibition which ends in the year 1700. Can you talk about your decision to end in the year 1700 and kind of what that meant in terms of the influence of Spanish fashion, but also the influence of these letters of nobility, which decline in influence in the years following this as well?
- [56:07]
Amanda Wonder
So 1700 is this real watershed year in Spanish history, where you have the death of. Of King Charles ii, who's the last of the Habsburg monarchs in Spain. And when Charles II dies, there's no clear heir apparent. He died childless. And ultimately the question of who's going to wear the Spanish crown is settled when the grandson of King Louis XIV of France inherits the throne, renouncing any claims to the throne of France in order to avoid going to war with the rest of Europe. And this is the king who's going to become known as Philip Van. And once you bring in this member of the French Bourbon dynasty, we see this absolute transformation of Spanish fashion, where this traditional Spanish style, which was already on its last legs, as we've seen, goes out the window. And you see the Spanish court dressing fully in French for the next century, although with a few exceptions, like the Spanish man suit with the black suit with the starched white collar, remains the outfit of bureaucrats at the Spanish court. And so it's interesting. It goes from being the outfit worn by courtiers who were in the king's circle or any one of the aristocracy, to being the uniform of a bureaucrat. So it's no longer a symbol of status the way it had been. And so that was the natural endpoint for the exhibit, because you no longer have, after 1700, a distinctive Spanish style of dress, although it doesn't mean it's the end of these letters of nobility, although it certainly is the end of their heyday, because the same social conditions that had made those documents necessary had really faded out as well. And so they really lose their cachet as a way to express social status. But there are some wonderful examples from the 18th century in the Hispanic society library. I think the last portrait dates to 1726, if I remember correctly, and it shows a Spanish family dressed entirely in French style. And so that really was a striking change. And so 1700 was a fitting end for the exhibition.
- [58:03]
Cassidy Zachary
Amanda, thank you so much for coming back and taking us through this, this fascinating journey through 1500 years of Spanish style.
- [58:11]
Amanda Wonder
Thank you so much. And I would like to welcome your listeners to please come to New York. Come visit the exhibition at the Hispanic Society Museum, which is on Broadway and West 155th Street. And the exhibition is open until March 22nd of 2026.
- [58:26]
April
Amanda, thank you for joining us again on Dressed with this fascinating look back at Spanish fashion history. As a reminder, Dressed listeners, you have until March 22, 2026 to see this exhibition. But if you can't make it, you can also get your hands on the beautiful catalog.
- [58:43]
Cassidy Zachary
Yes. And I will say, if you are in New York City or you're going to be visiting New York City in the near future, I really cannot recommend visiting this exhibition enough. And also because of where it's located, which is this incredible museum and it's a bit off the beaten path, it's 155th and Broadway, but it's super easy to get to just off the one train. And I actually had never even heard of this muse prior to learning about Amanda's exhibition. But it really is quite special as she spoke to a little bit. This art collection is unparalleled outside of Spain, as is their incredible research Library, which has over 250, 000 manuscripts, letters and documents dating back to the 11th century. And as Amanda and I mentioned, it's also just this exceptionally beautiful place. And also while you're on the Upper west side, why not continue heading up and continue heading back in time with a trip to the Cloisters, which is also up there and also just an incredible museum.
- [59:41]
April
Both of these museums are actually two of my favorite museums in New York City.
- [59:45]
Cassidy Zachary
Cass.
- [59:45]
April
Many years ago I was doing some work on fashion and the work of Goya and they have some really beautiful Goyas and important Goyas at the Hispanic Museum. And of course, the Cloisters. Who doesn't like a trip to the Cloisters? Always charming as well. And especially in winter, if you've never been in winter. It's really nice too. That does it for us today. Dress listeners, until next time, may you consider the various global influences and materials that inform your wardrobe next time you get dressed. If you'd like to follow the social media for this episode, you can search the hashtag Dressed573. That's Dressed573.
- [60:24]
Cassidy Zachary
Also, April, we have some New classes that just opened up for registration last week. Would you like to share a little bit more about yours? Sure.
- [60:33]
April
So coming this January 4th and 11th, 2026, I will be offering a course that I have been promising you all for years now entitled Hard Chic the House of Schiascia. In two 90 minute sessions on Sundays, we'll explore the life, career and legacy of Elsa Schiaparelli. From her youth growing up in the Italian intelligentsia to a very difficult early marriage and her time spent in and York to her blossoming into an haute couturier after the age of 40. We're going to talk not just about Elsa herself, but also her collaborations with the surrealist artists and the design iconography of the Schiaparelli brand, which is of course alive and well today under the direction of Daniel Roseberry and Cass. I think you know this, but our listeners might not know this. Daniel is actually an alum of FIT just like us.
- [61:24]
Cassidy Zachary
Yes.
- [61:25]
April
So if you are interested in signing up for my Schiaparelli class, which is going to be, I don't know, pretty chic, I would say maybe a little bit shocking, wink, wink, you can head over to dresshistory.com to sign up. And also if you would like to gift or receive the class this holiday season, we do have gift certificates available for not just my class, but Cassidy's class, us, which she's going to tell you about now.
- [61:52]
Cassidy Zachary
So dress listeners, what do Marie Antoinette, Jane Austen and a young Queen Victoria have in common? Well, you can find out in my upcoming four part course what Women Wore to the Revolution 1770s-1840s where we are going to explore the evolution and revolution of women's fashion between the years of the 1770s to the 1840s. So we will first explore how the queen of fashion, Marie Antoinette, wielded fashion as a powerful tool during the early years of her reign before it was turned against her during the French Revolution where she sadly lost her life. And ironically, the simple chemise gown that she made popular in the years leading up to the revolution would survive the revolution even if she herself did not, transforming into a Grecian inspired corset free gown that embodied the post revolutionary enlightenment ideals of democracy and liberty. So those are our first two classes. For class three, we are going to move into the dawn of the 19th century and we will follow that thread over to England where versions of the chemise gown were worn in the real and storied worlds of one of the most beloved authors in history, Jane Austen. And then class four we will conclude with exploring fashions as they evolved into the 1830s and 40s, so back in artificiality, supported by corsets, petticoats, and this is all going to be explored through the lens of the early life and reign of Queen Victoria. So coming your way, Sundays after the conclusion of April's class starting January 18th.
- [63:20]
April
Yeah, so basically just set aside a little portion of your Sundays all throughout January and maybe a little smidge into February for fashion history class.
- [63:28]
Cassidy Zachary
Yes.
- [63:31]
April
Please head to Dressed Underscore podcast on Instagram or Rest podcast without the underscore on Facebook to check out the visual content associated with each week's episodes.
- [63:43]
Cassidy Zachary
And remember, we always love hearing from you, so if you'd like to write to us, you can do so@hellorusthistory.com DressedHistory.com is also our website where you can sign up for our monthly newsletter, our in person tours and online fashion history courses. And you can check out whatever else we have up our finely tailored sleeves.
- [64:01]
April
We we get so many questions from you all about our recommendations for fashion history books. So if you are interested you can always find a link in our show Notes to our Bookshop Bookshelf. So that address is bookshop.org shop dress and there you can find over 150 of our favorite fashion history titles and.
- [64:22]
Cassidy Zachary
Do you love dress but want to skip the ads? You can now sign up for ad free listening with any tier on our Dressed History Patreon.
- [64:30]
April
We are also excited to now be part of the Airwave Network and their premium ad free history subscription Airwave History plus available on Apple Podcasts. The subscription brings dressed and also 27 other popular history podcasts ad free for just $5.99 per month. More information on Patreon and Airwave is available at the link in our bio.
- [64:53]
Cassidy Zachary
Thank you as always for tuning in and more dressed coming your way very soon.
- [64:59]
The history of Fashion is a production of dressed media.
- [65:05]
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- [65:36]
John O'Neill
This is Anne Bogle, author, blogger and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016 I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things Books and Reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and visit our website what Should I read next podcast.com to find out more.