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
A collection of French fashion prints offers valuable new insight into the life of Samuel Pepys many years after his premature final diary entries. The prints show that the tailor’s son continued to be fascinated by the power of fashion even after he achieved wealth and status. But they also reveal the conflict Pepys had over French style.
Most of what we know about the famous British diarist and First Lord of the Admiralty, Samuel Pepys (1633-1703), comes from the diaries he wrote between 1660 and 1669. He wrote about everything from women to Parmesan cheese to the Great Fire of London, but he also wrote a lot about clothes. But Pepys lived for another 34 years, and although surviving letters provide clues, not much is known about the second, more privileged half of his life.
University of Cambridge historian Marlo Avingdon has uncovered fascinating new insights from his research into Pepys’s private collection of fashion prints in the Pepys Library at Magdalen College, Cambridge, where Pepys was a student. 2024 marks 300 years since Magdalen acquired Pepys’ private library, including the original manuscripts of his diaries.
The library houses one of the world’s largest collections of 17th-century French fashion prints, and Avidon, a postdoctoral researcher at Christ College, Cambridge, focuses on two of its volumes, “Habits de France” and “Modes de Paris,” which contain more than 100 fashion illustrations printed between 1670 and 1696.
Avidon’s article, published today in the magazine The Seventeenth Century, reveals eight images from the collection for the first time, and he connects one of the images to a chilling episode in Pepys’ diary.
In 1669, Pepys wrote that he was “dreading to be seen” wearing a summer suit he had recently purchased, “for the gold lace which I had was so gaudy.” He eventually mustered the courage to wear it, but a socially prominent colleague spotted him in the park and remarked that the sleeves were inappropriate. Pepys decided that he “would never appear at Court in them,” and had a tailor cut them off, “for it is my way.”
Pepys learned his lesson that day, but his interest in fashion did not fade: he went on to buy a print entitled “Abvie Noir” (Evening Wear), which showed upper-class French men sporting very similar lace cuffs and an abundance of ribbons.
“Peppys would have considered this outfit quite risky,” says Marlo Abidon, “it was for a French courtier and probably well beyond his budget. But Pepys probably owned a suit with ribbon loops like this, just not in such large numbers. Fashion has always worked this way: you show your knowledge of style within your means.”
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
“Peppys felt he had to walk a really delicate balance, especially early in his career. His father was a tailor and his mother a washerwoman, and throughout his life Pepys was deeply concerned about how he was perceived and took measures to manage his image. The diaries reveal his anxieties as a young man, and the prints reveal his lifelong determination to prove himself through clothing and cultural capital.”
Pepys was promoted to Chief Secretary to the Admiralty in 1673 and was first elected to Parliament in 1679.
“Pepys stopped keeping his diaries just as his career was beginning to take off, so it’s really difficult to get an idea of what Pepys’ last years were like. These prints give us a unique opportunity to consider his attitudes to fashion during this period,” Mr Avingdon said.
Avingdon argues that Pepys’s diary details, including his first printing purchases and his close observation of his superiors in the civil service, indicate that he was seeking access to high society.
However, as Pepys expanded his print collection, he became part of a network of gentleman scholars with connections to the Admiralty and the Royal Society.
“He began to use fashion to cement his social standing and showcase his cosmopolitan tastes,” Abidon says, “but collecting fashion prints was also a way to cement intellectual connections and maintain his reputation as a scholar.”
“I approached this study with many reservations about Pepys. I never liked him. But the prints offer a more nuanced portrayal of him, a more human portrayal. He was fallible, insecure, and the way he acted out those insecurities feels very familiar today.”
Antoine Trouvin, A Naked Elegant Woman, etching, 1695. A more professionally coloured print in the collection of Samuel Pepys. Credit: Reproduced with permission of the Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge.
Guilty Pleasure
According to Abydon’s research, Pepys appears never to have shaken off his anxieties about inappropriate dress, fashion faux pas, and the moral dilemmas of wearing designs imported from France.
“Charles II’s relationship with the Catholic French king Louis XIV and concerns about the growing French influence in English culture created a sense of moral crisis, especially in England, where there was anxiety about the association of Catholicism with vanity,” Abydon said.
French clothing, combining luxurious silks with ostentatious embellishments, lace, and extravagant accessories, was often seen as grossly excessive in England.
“Peppys had a French wife, was friends with French merchants, and had a strong interest in French culture,” Abidon said, “but he mocked those who returned from France for their gaudy French fashion and believed the French elite to be frivolous.”
“Peppys felt pressured to maintain the moral high ground, not only by dressing appropriately for his social status, but also by upholding what was morally and economically appropriate for his country.”
In his diary, Pepys criticised the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting for wearing masculine French riding clothes, writing that “in no way did anyone regard them as female. It was a strange sight, and not pleasing to me.”
But a year earlier he had thought the opposite, writing that it was “beautiful to see young, pretty women dressed like men,” and later Pepys bought a French print featuring a military-style coat, an evolution of this style.
“Pepys’ tastes and views on women’s clothing were constantly changing and often contradictory,” Avidon said.
Interior of Pepys Library, Magdalen College, Cambridge. Photo by Douglas Attfield
Pepys’s Fashionable Women
Viewed together, Pepys’ diary and print collection highlight that, although women bore the brunt of accusations of vanity and over-consumption, fashion remained a very masculine concern during this period.
Pepys’ French wife, Elizabeth, died at the age of 29 in 1669, shortly before Pepys began collecting fashion prints.
“Peppys’s diary shows that he really loved his wife and wanted her to dress well,” says Avidon, “but he worried that she was spending too much on clothes, so he would sometimes go shopping with her. Pepys put Elizabeth in the same kind of fashion limbo as he did himself.”
Pepys’s diary entries suggest that Elizabeth herself had an interest in prints, and Avingdon believes that she influenced the works Pepys collected.
Elizabeth died shortly after a trip to Paris with the Pepys family in May 1669. Not much is known about their stay, but they probably shopped for prints, as Pepys’ friend John Evelyn had advised him how to do so, and may have also purchased clothing.
“Peppys was deeply saddened by Elizabeth’s death,” says Avidon, “and these prints of fashionable young women must have reminded him of Elizabeth, so the collection can be seen as a homage to her.”
Pepys quickly hired a teenage housekeeper, Mary Skinner, who soon became his mistress. The two lived together until his death, and she was often referred to as Mrs. Pepys. Little is known about Mary, but Avedon believes his print collection allows us to get to know her better.
The inscription “Bibliotheca Pepysiana 1724” carved into the frieze marks the date 300 years ago when the Pepys Library arrived at Magdalen College, Cambridge. Above the inscription are Pepys’ coat of arms and his motto, “Mens cujusque is est quisque” (“The mind is the man”). Photo courtesy of Magdalen College, Cambridge
Pepys played a leading role in Mary’s education, raising her to be a sophisticated lady like Elizabeth, and Avedon speculates that Pepys may have given Mary black-and-white fashion prints to color.
“Some of the prints were clearly not professionally coloured and look amateurish,” Avidon said. “Peppys acquired these prints during his relationship with Mary, and it’s entirely possible that he taught Mary how to colour them. We don’t know for sure, but by the time Mary died, she had become quite a fashionable woman.”
In “Abide Noir,” Avidon notes that the coloring has unprofessional white gaps. In other prints, the coloring bleeds into the lines, obscuring the details of the clothing. In “Abide de Ville,” an engraving of a fashionable city gown, the embroidered silk pattern has amateurish squiggly lines. Avidon suggests that both prints may have been colored by Mary Skinner.
Avedon studied Pepys’s collection of prints as part of her doctoral research on the role of fashion in constructing elite women’s identities in the late 17th century.
“The Pepys Library is a really intimate space to research,” Avidon said. “Peppys’ diary is in a display case right next to it, surrounded by bookshelves filled with his precious possessions. I was so excited. Pepys would have taken these prints out and told his friends about them. Now I can.”
Further information: M. Avidon, “Leading Types” or Mere “Fancies”: An Assessment of French Fashion Prints in the Library of Samuel Pepys, Seventeenth Century (2024). DOI: 10.1080/0268117X.2024.2373990
Provided by University of Cambridge
Source: Samuel Pepys’ Fashion Prints Reveal His Guilty Pleasures: Ostentatious French Clothes (July 21, 2024) Retrieved July 21, 2024 from https://phys.org/news/2024-07-samuel-pepys-fashion-reveal-guilty.html
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