‘They tell me they were in fashion last year’: Samuel and Elizabeth Jeake and Clothing Fashions in Late Seventeenth-Century London and Rye

Abstract

This article examines high fashion culture in late seventeenth-century London and Rye, focusing on the ways that Rye merchant, Samuel Jeake (1652–1699), and his wife, Elizabeth (1667–1736), engaged with the London fashion market at a time when the transmission of fashion styles was still primarily by word of mouth. Both Samuel and Elizabeth were intensely concerned to appear fashionable in provincial Rye. Correspondence between Samuel and Elizabeth and their London relatives shows how fashion information was being communicated between London and Rye and the speed with which clothing fashions changed in the capital. The discussion of Samuel and Elizabeth’s engagement with fashion is framed by an analysis of contemporary satirical literature which takes the supposed obsession of the English with fashion as its theme.