Redressing the Past: New Clothes, Old Estates, and Anne Clifford's Fashioning of Community

Loney explores how Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676), a woman who was deeply invested in defending her claim to vast ancestral estates, deployed fashions novelty rhetorically. In the first two decades of the seventeenth century Clifford was engaged in a legal battle to assert her claim to her family�...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Early modern women 2020-09, Vol.15 (1), p.51-72
Main Author: Loney, Emily L
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Estates
Families & family life
Fashion
Nobility
Novels
Property rights
Womenswear
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Summary:Loney explores how Lady Anne Clifford (1590-1676), a woman who was deeply invested in defending her claim to vast ancestral estates, deployed fashions novelty rhetorically. In the first two decades of the seventeenth century Clifford was engaged in a legal battle to assert her claim to her family's ancestral lands. In these years she was also the subject of a number of portraits, and she produced a substantial collection of life-writing, including a diary in which she recorded the events of 1616, 1617, and 1619. Even as Clifford demonstrates a fervent respect for tradition, history, and England's lands, she repeatedly emphasizes the importance of fashion in her diaries and portraits. She argues that fashion allows Clifford to construct a new form of social identity for herself in which new clothes are not a danger to land but rather help to form an alternate community for her in the years in which she was alienated from her family estates.
ISSN:1933-0065
2378-4776
DOI:10.1353/emw.2020.0004