Venice: Trade, Production, Consumption of Textiles and Dress in the Early Modern, Dressing the Early Modern Network Conference 2025, Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani, Venice, May 28–29, 2025

Venice in the early modern period flourished as a centre of textile production and trade, shaping and fostering global networks of connections that directly impacted dress in Europe and elsewhere. Due to Venice’s impenetrable location, its proximity to the centre of Europe and a long-standing tradition of merchants and seafarers, Venice had positioned itself as a principal gateway between Europe and the East. Whether it was through the importation of luxury goods such as textiles and carpets, exports of beauty products and perfumes or exchanges of ambassadorial gifts, Venice aided in the dissemination and infiltration of ideas, styles and designs between Europe and the East. Furthermore, due to the flourishing art production and the thriving printing press in sixteenth-century Venice, textile patterns and dress styles were able to spread throughout Europe and the rest of Venice’s trading posts around the world influencing fashions, designs, methods of production and patterns of consumption. Apart from the unaffected patrician government attire, infiltrations of new styles were particularly noticeable in Venice itself, throughout Carnival festivities, dogal and ambassadorial processions, operas and theatres, gambling dens and in everyday life where both spaces and bodies were adorned.

This conference aims to generate a discussion about the role of Venice as a centre of a global network of connections as seen through its trade, production, and consumption of textiles and dress as well as carpets, haberdashery, beauty products, perfumes, dyes, feathers, jewellery and design.

The conference is open to all, but we particularly welcome submissions from PhD candidates and early career researchers, who are invited to speak about the topic with reference to their current or previous projects. 

Organised by Jola Pellumbi, Sara van Dijk, and Torsten Korte, Dressing the Early Modern Network, in collaboration with Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani.