Clothing the female life. Self‐fashioning and memory making at the Malatesta network of women between the fourteenth and the fifteenth centuries

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between women and their garments by examining written, visual, and material sources about dress drawn from the historical records of the Malatesta family. The objective of this research is to understand whether women of this House had any degree of autonomy regarding the garments that they chose to ‘self‐fashion’ their identity, and whether they were aware of the multiple meanings the clothing held beyond economic, political, and social status, in addition to their cultural and symbolic values. Indeed, these last two factors rendered these objects into powerful and immediate transmitters of expression and communication that surpassed the conventions of their time, as will be shown in this analysis that includes secular and religious clothing. From two different perspectives, that of the clothing of nobility as emblems of luxury, in line with the conventions of the time, and that of the clothing of religious orders as emblems of abstention perceived as unconventional when the abstention was radical, this article aim to discuss the strong relationship between women and clothing and the diverse ways adopted by women to identify themselves and their radius of action, to reinforce their social networks and their authority.