This essay examines how young women negotiated their position in family life through participation in the larger world of Florentine clothing and fashion. Although young women were far from independent agents, they could take active roles in assembling a dowry and trousseau and later, as wives and new mothers, in arranging clothing for themselves and other family members. Two case studies of correspondence from the mid to late sixteenth century of Florentine women in the Spinelli and Ricasoli

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... milies suggest that daughters and young wives engaged with fashion and the consumption of apparel, before and after marriage, for their households.