The Fabrication of Borders: Tailoring and Cartography in Early Modern Europe, lecture by Emanuele Lugli, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA (in person and online), 12 February 2026.
In early modern Europe, fashion and cartography shared far more common ground than is usually acknowledged. Popular costume books, much like geographical atlases, helped shape emerging ideas of nationhood, while maps disseminated notions of local dress across the world. Yet despite these shared aims, the connection between the two fields has gone largely unnoticed. This talk argues that this overlooked convergence is precisely where fashion, as we understand it, first took shape. Fashion is not simply the expression of the self through clothing, nor merely the perpetual recycling and trivializing of cuts; it is a specific mode of engaging with dress—one deeply shaped by early forms of nationalism.
Center for Intercultural Dialogue 