Remaking Dress History: Applying Reconstruction Methods to Early Modern Textiles and Clothing

In this Textile History Special Issue, which focuses on fashionable textiles and dress that span from everyday clothing to costly garments c. 1550–1650, we propose an innovative account of how different approaches of ‘re-methods’ offer scholars new ways to research and share findings about the making, wearing, meaning and historical importance of textiles and clothing. As the first focused journal issue to show a breadth of different reconstruction approaches to dress and textiles in action, it reveals what new scholarship emerges about historical dress and textiles and their cultural meanings when close-study and hands-on work with materials is combined with other evidence such as archival documents and visual images. Demonstrating the rich and varied findings offered by hands-on reconstruction, collaborations between makers and scholars, citizen science initiatives, digital animations, and the multi-sensory bodily experience of textiles, this issue will show the wide range of methods available for dress and textile scholars.