Fashion: the Preserve of the Aristocracy.

For most of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries participation in the world of fashion was limited to wealthy aristocrats who lived in royal courts. While wealthy merchants and members of the gentry sometimes imitated the clothing worn by nobles, very few were able to dress in the lavish way that the nobility did. Even if they could have afforded the expense of such clothing, the vast majority of the European population could not have worn the luxurious styles due to long-standing moral prohibitions against lavish consumption as well as sumptuary laws (laws that forbade certain kinds of consumption and tried to limit the amount that people spent on their clothing). England was the first country to do away with sumptuary laws; the English Parliament repealed all sumptuary legislation in 1604 because of a legal wrangle with the Stuart King...