Antoine Trouvent, Nude Elegant Woman, Etching, 1695. A print from the collection of Samuel Pepys, which appears to have a more professional color scheme. The print depicts a French upper class woman in casual loungewear. She appears to be getting ready in her bedroom. She is holding a necklace and wearing a head dress made of stiff lace and a sumptuous nightgown inspired by Asian textiles. Credit: Reproduced with permission from the Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge
Samuel Pepys is also famous for keeping an extremely detailed diary from 1660 to 1669, which has given historians a fascinating insight into middle-class life in 17th century England.
However, he had a lifelong love of fashion and clothing.
His personal library, which has been housed at Cambridge University in England for the past 300 years, contains a vast collection of exquisite French fashion plates.
University historians say the prints offer insight into both the fashion of the time and Pepys’ later years.
Eight of the prints were first published as a monograph in the journal The Seventeenth Century.
Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge. Photo by Douglas Attfield
“I scheduled two days at Pepys Library last summer to try to see all of the fashion prints,” Marlo Avidon, a PhD student at Cambridge University and author of the study, told Cosmos.
“Since photography isn’t allowed in the library, I had to take detailed descriptions of each image so I could look back on them later and think about which photos I wanted to use when I started writing my story.”
The son of a tailor, Pepys wrote detailed clothing notes in his diary, including an embarrassing episode when a colleague told him that the gold lace on the sleeves of his summer dress was too gaudy for his status, leading him to resolve “never to appear before a court in those sleeves”.
Jean Dieu de Saint-Jean, Habit Noire (Evening Wear), etching, c.1670. A print collected by Samuel Pepys, it depicts elite fashionable Frenchmen proudly wearing lace cuffs and ribbons. Credit: Reproduced with permission of the Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge
Avedon connects this diary episode with an engraving entitled “Abie Noir,” or Evening Wear, which shows a ribboned Frenchwoman wearing similar lace cuffs.
“Peppys would have considered this outfit quite dangerous,” says Avedon.
“This was for a French courtier and was probably way beyond his budget. But Pepys probably owned a suit with ribbon loops like this, just not in this many.”
However, prints from the 1670s to the 1690s also give some insight into Pepys’ state of mind after his failing eyesight prevented him from writing in his diary.
Some of the prints are hand-coloured, but Avedon believes the colouring was done by an amateur – perhaps by Mary Skinner, Pepys’s long-time housekeeper who became his mistress while still a teenager, or perhaps by someone in his family.
“All the prints are incredibly fascinating, but the one that stood out to me the most was the print of ‘Aby de Ville’ from around 1670,” Avedon says.
Jean-Dieu de Saint-Jean, Abyss de Ville, etching, c.1670. An engraving of a fashionable city gown, from the collection of Samuel Pepys. The embroidered silk pattern has amateurish squiggly lines. Marlo Avingdon suggests that the engraving may have been colourised by Mary Skinner. Credit: Reproduced with permission of the Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge
“I think the most interesting thing about this print is the color pattern. There are a variety of pigments used – pinks, reds, golds, greens – and they all look incredibly vibrant.”
“We also can see that whoever filled this area attempted to create patterns that were not originally part of the print, adding some interesting wavy lines and what appear to be floral patterns. Unfortunately, we can’t know for sure, but we suspect that the design is meant to resemble real floral silks from the period.”
Avidon says the print is “the most iconic example of what women of the time actually wore from head to toe.”
“She has an elaborate hairstyle with ribbon loops and a veil, and she has some beauty patches on her face.
“Her dress is incredibly elaborate, with lace and detailed embellishments, and she is holding a fan with a landscape painted on it.”
Avington suggests that Pepys’s French wife Elisabeth, who died in 1669 at the age of 29, may have influenced his purchases of fashion prints: his diary records his wife’s interest in prints and his concern that she was spending too much on clothes, despite his wanting her to be well-dressed.
“These prints depicting fashionable young women must have reminded Pepys of Elizabeth, and the collection can be seen as a homage to her.”
Marlo Avidon, Christ’s College, Cambridge. Photo by Marlo Avidon.
Avidon says he didn’t like Pepys when he began the project.
“I first became aware of Pepys through his diaries, and in particular the many accounts of his inappropriate behaviour towards women,” she says.
“It was unpleasant to read, even though such behaviour was quite common in the late 17th century. Also, I thought the fact that Pepys chose to write in a foreign language to hide the details of his careless behaviour showed that he knew what he was doing was wrong.”
But after re-reading his diaries, collections and letters, she says she now has “a bit of a good feeling” for him.
“Not only was Pepys entertaining, but I also found many of the anxieties and worries he had in his everyday life incredibly modern.
“Obviously, he’s no saint, but at the end of the day, he’s a human being just like the rest of us, and his life and emotions were a lot more complicated than I initially thought.”
Avidion is currently researching Pepys’ contemporaries, including the diarist John Evelyn, to find out more about elite fashion in the 17th century.
“Evelyn was Pepys’s closest friend in his later years and although they shared a common interest in collecting prints, they had very different ideas about clothing,” she says.
“I’m also interested in finding out more about the upper class women of court during this period. I’ve always been fascinated by Charles II’s mistresses, in particular Barbara Villiers, Lady Castlemaine.”
