ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a group of print series that communicate anxieties surrounding the influence of foreign customs in seventeenth-century England. In the 1620s and 30s, fashionable English citizens turned to France for sartorial inspiration, adopting such trends as wide-brimmed hats, slim breeches, and lace-trimmed collars. Several literary scholars have brought to light how contemporary moralists denigrated these luxurious styles as incompatible with the English ideals of humility and constancy. This paper complements their studies by investigating three suites of allegorical costume prints that combine visual representations of French fashions with verses critiquing the behaviors of the people who wear them: Robert Vaughan’s The XII Mounthes in the Habits of Severall Nations, John Goddard’s The Seaven Deadly Sins, and William Marshall’s The Foure Complexions. Through their combination of image and text, costume prints were uniquely suited to teach viewers to read clothing as an indication of character. By placing these series in dialogue with contemporary written sources, this chapter discloses how costume prints were an integral means of disseminating disparaging rhetoric about French fashion.
