ABSTRACT
This essay addresses the intriguing topic of mobility in dress, both physical and social, as viewed through the case of the hybrid styles adopted by the upper class in the Fanariot Period in the Romanian principalities (see Figure 4.1). This period in the history of dress, little attended to until recently, reveals a complex interchange between Ottoman and southeast European cultures during the Enlightenment, an interchange that appears to have survived the anti-Eastern modernisation of Romanian culture. During the eighteenth century we witness an intense process of cross-cultural encounters between East and West which resulted in a melting pot where literature, philosophy, music, the visual arts and, not least, sartorial dress converged, with positive consequences on both sides. The Ottomans had already made their presence felt on the Western European scene for several centuries, beginning with the conquest of Constantinople on 29 May 1453, which resulted in the subsequent disintegration of the Byzantine Empire. Although geographically it belonged to Eastern Europe and the Middle East, as a descendant of the Roman Empire, Christian Byzantium continues to be regarded as part and parcel of Western European history and heritage.
