ABSTRACT
Matthäus Schwarz, accountant to the Fugger bankers, inhabitant of Augsburg and clothing devotee, was in no doubt that clothes and appearance were matters of the utmost importance for the upwardly mobile, sixteenth-century German male. His Trachtenbuch (clothing book) contains 139 watercolours depicting a wide selection of the garments, including doublets, gowns, hose and riding coats, that he wore from his birth to shortly before his death. These images are accompanied by notes giving the date the clothes were made and the reasons for their commission (Fink 1963). While Schwarz used a range of specialist terms to describe his clothes, the problems posed by less precise vocabulary such as costume, dress, fashion, and clothes has proved challenging for researchers in the ways that they write about clothes (Harte 2010). The positive or negative connotations of each term are dependent upon the reader’s viewpoint. Equally, these words contrast with contemporary early modern terms such as apparel and robes, which were used alongside a rich, specialist terminology covering specific garments, fabrics, colours, trimmings and accessories. These linguistic challenges link back to the bigger questions noted earlier of whether clothing is a valid topic for academic research (Styles 1998) and, if it is, how it should be approached (Taylor 2002; 2004).
