This is a wonderful series, and the framing of secondhand markets as engines of identity rings true far beyond medieval England. In Herero-speaking Namibia, the long dress women wear today began as mission-era clothing and was reworked over generations until it became one of the strongest identity markers in the region. Clothing rarely stays what it was once it changes hands. Thank you for researching this so carefully.
I love how the growth in second hand clothing both pushes back against environmental destruction and connects us with our own history. Clothing should be valued, reused, and not just thrown away.
Fascinating! I have read about the historical uses of fabric dyes but never the clothes themselves. How we live says more than we realize. Imagine how synthetic clothes will be viewed in the future (because we know it will still be around, if only in landfills).
There are any number of garments which would be better used as toilet paper, save that you can't flush them. All our dust cloths when I was a kid were cotton undies sans elastic, even though we could have afforded brand new. But mom and dad were both kids in the Depression, so waste not want not. I still use my old ones for the task. You can use hot water and bleach, even!
Maybe our post-apocalyptic descendents will find some use for the synthetics as they wander the barren hellscape. 😆
The Margery Wood detail is a lovely an interesting one. Her legal position is straightforward, given that coverture simply ended at widowhood, and a widow reverted to ordinary "feme sole" personhood. But the fact that marital status wasn't specified for the other Canterbury women leaves open the intriguing possibility that some of them were feme sole traders, or married women who, under specific local law, could trade independently of their husbands and contract in their own name. If so, the upholder trade wasn't just a domain for widows. It may have been one of the places where the feme sole trader custom was actually being used to let married women act as legal persons in their own right.
This is a wonderful series, and the framing of secondhand markets as engines of identity rings true far beyond medieval England. In Herero-speaking Namibia, the long dress women wear today began as mission-era clothing and was reworked over generations until it became one of the strongest identity markers in the region. Clothing rarely stays what it was once it changes hands. Thank you for researching this so carefully.
I love how the growth in second hand clothing both pushes back against environmental destruction and connects us with our own history. Clothing should be valued, reused, and not just thrown away.
Fascinating! I have read about the historical uses of fabric dyes but never the clothes themselves. How we live says more than we realize. Imagine how synthetic clothes will be viewed in the future (because we know it will still be around, if only in landfills).
There are any number of garments which would be better used as toilet paper, save that you can't flush them. All our dust cloths when I was a kid were cotton undies sans elastic, even though we could have afforded brand new. But mom and dad were both kids in the Depression, so waste not want not. I still use my old ones for the task. You can use hot water and bleach, even!
Maybe our post-apocalyptic descendents will find some use for the synthetics as they wander the barren hellscape. 😆
The Margery Wood detail is a lovely an interesting one. Her legal position is straightforward, given that coverture simply ended at widowhood, and a widow reverted to ordinary "feme sole" personhood. But the fact that marital status wasn't specified for the other Canterbury women leaves open the intriguing possibility that some of them were feme sole traders, or married women who, under specific local law, could trade independently of their husbands and contract in their own name. If so, the upholder trade wasn't just a domain for widows. It may have been one of the places where the feme sole trader custom was actually being used to let married women act as legal persons in their own right.
I can't imagine a second hand dress today costing 3 years worth of wages! So ostentatious!