The Fabrication of Borders: A New History of Fashion, 1347-1947

What if fashion is less about personal ingenuity and more about geopolitics—a force rooted in the struggle to define the collective and the clashes between nations, where the formal and aesthetic take on a crucial, if often overlooked, dimension? And what if these broader forces shape the actions of individuals? What if fashion is intrinsically tied to national borders, emerging precisely at the moments when those borders are being conceived and defined? This research seminar explores this possibility.

The practical history of tailoring remains woefully underexplored, with scant evidence to guide us. Before 1550, we know little about how tailors measured their clients' bodies or whether they even used patterns. Details about the creative processes behind new designs—sleeves, breeches, or shoe shapes—are almost entirely lost to history. One thing we do know, however, is that tailoring originated in geometria pratica, the practice of converting three-dimensional bodies into two-dimensional geometries. Intriguingly, geometria pratica is also the foundation of cartography—the mapping of land.

This research seminar examines this fascinating convergence, offering a sweeping survey from the Middle Ages to the 1940s. It delves into the evolving relationship between fashion and cartography, focusing particularly on the concept of borders: How were the divides between countries defined? Could there be a connection to the hemming of tunics or the delineation of clothing patterns?

These questions invite us to view fashion and cartography through a new lens—one that moves beyond mere documentation of the real. Instead, it reveals how both disciplines manifest a deeper need for control: over land and over human bodies. This perspective might shift our understanding, showing how the visual and the material intersect to enforce and symbolize authority.

Emanuele Lugli (Stanford University) is an art historian whose expertise spans late medieval and early modern Italian painting, urban culture, trade, and fashion. His research delves into theoretical inquiries such as the interplay of scale and labor, the reach of intellectual networks, and the tension between the erotic and the rational. A scholar curious about the history of measurement, he has authored a trilogy on the subject, which recently culminated in Measuring in the Renaissance, published by Cambridge University Press.

Scientific Organization: Elisabetta Scirocco

Please follow the event also online on our Vimeo Channel: https://vimeo.com/event/4862252

_{Image: Georg Braun and Frans Hogenberg’s View of Edinburgh (Colonia, c. 1580).}

_{© David Rumsey Map Center, Stanford University}