He may be best known for his juicy diary, administrative prowess and wandering eye – but new research has highlighted a different side of Samuel Pepys: that of a budding fashionista.
A historian from Cambridge University has conducted a fresh analysis of the diarist’s collection of French fashion engravings, arguing they not only show Pepys was keeping up with the scholarly and gentlemanly trend of collecting prints, but reflect a long-term interest in the latest styles of dress, and the link between clothes and social status.
“It demonstrates that Pepys had – to put it in very colloquial terms– a finger in a lot of pies,” said Marlo Avidon, whose study has been published in the journal The Seventeenth Century. “[He] was very concerned with appearing a certain way and cultivating this gentlemanly reputation – both in an intellectual capacity but simultaneously as a member of fashionable society.”
But Avidon added while these concerns have previously been considered separately, the prints show they are not mutually exclusive.
Born in London in 1633, Pepys was the son of a tailor and a washerwoman, who became an MP, secretary to the Admiralty, and president of the Royal Society.
But he is perhaps most famous for the diary he kept for almost a decade during the 1660s. As well as offering a first-hand account of a number of momentous events such as the plague and Great Fire of London – during which he buried his wine and parmesan cheese in the garden for safekeeping – it provides fascinating insights into more mundane aspects of daily life.
After Pepys’s death, his diary and other papers were bequeathed to his alma mater, Magdalene College, Cambridge. Among them were ballads referencing clothing, and two volumes that contained his collection of French fashion illustrations. Printed between 1670 and 1696 these depicted the latest styles, as modelled by the French elite.
While not the first time the prints have been examined, Avidon said her work considers them alongside Pepys’s diary to demonstrate that throughout his life he had a very keen interest in clothing – his own, and that of the people around him.
“Even when he stopped writing the diary in 1669, what these prints help us see is that that interest in clothing didn’t necessarily go away, it just manifested in another form,” she said.
The diary reveals Pepys could be controlling and overbearing regarding the attire of his wife, Elisabeth, while reflections on his own wardrobe are also carefully noted.
Avidon cites one entry of 1663, in which Pepys records a colleague approving of some of his new clothes – including a velvet cloak. As a result Pepys writes he is “resolved to go a little handsomer than I have hitherto”.
But not all of his clothes struck the right chord. In 1669 Pepys shelved his new summer suit “because it was too fine with the gold lace at the hands, that I was afeared to be seen in it”. When he did wear it out and about, a colleague criticised the cuffs as being too fancy for Pepys’s position. Pepys subsequently resolved to have the trim removed.
Yet, perhaps tellingly, he later bought a print depicting an elite Frenchman bedecked in similar lace cuffs, with ruffles and ribbons.
Avidon said Pepys’s diary also reveals his eye for new trends, be it the introduction of periwigs or the emergence of the vest – a precursor to the three-piece suit.
The prints not only tie into these interests, Avidon suggested, but provide a lens through which to consider wider social behaviour and cultural attitudes towards French fashion in the late 17th century – including economic concerns regarding textile imports, and moral worries arising from the association of French fashion with vanity and excess.
Yet while Pepys criticised Frenchified English fops in his diary – describing one as “an absolute Monsieur” – he also seems to have admired the styles.
The prints may even provide a link to Pepys’s later life, with Avidon suggesting the “unsteady, untrained hand” that coloured them could have been that of Mary Skinner, who became Pepys’s housekeeper and mistress after Elisabeth died.
Robert Blyth, senior curator of maritime history at the Royal Museums Greenwich, said Pepys had a fascination about the world around him and a desire to be at the forefront of knowledge.
“It doesn’t surprise me that this applies to fashion prints as well,” Blyth said, describing Pepys as “a man of the now”.
Blyth noted Pepys would not only have seen the latest trends on the streets, but had access to the court of King Charles II where he would have seen high-end fashions.
“During the diary, he is a young man. He’s a man about town,” Blyth said. “So he’s continuing this interest in fashion into his middle age.”