Young Women Negotiating Fashion in Early Modern Florence

For sixteenth-century patrician Florentines, clothing was a potent marker of status and identity. Acquiring and wearing fine clothing and accessories in conjunction with marriage made young women unusually visible. An extended period beginning with plans to make a match for a girl, and often not ending until she was the mother of babies, marked a special time in a Florentine woman’s life. Although, like most family members, young women were far from independent agents, they could have active roles in assembling a dowry and trousseau and later, as wives and new mothers, in arranging clothing for their households. Their success