In the economy of Renaissance Florence, the textile and garment industry dominated the urban marketplace for consumer goods. In addition to the 909 household heads Franceschi found who listed some aspect of the woolen cloth business as their occupation at the turn of the fifteenth century, Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber counted 866 clothiers in 1427 that identified themselves by some aspect of the clothing trade within the city. Clearly, the commerce in cloth, clothing and accessories provided a livelihood to many hundreds of households. The occupation of rigattiere, or used-clothing dealer, had an important role in this city industry. As newly finished cloth in general was an expensive commodity produced for the rich, and new luxury cloth was certainly out of the reach of most, the shops and inventories of the dealers in second hand clothing filled an essential function for the rest of the urban populace, that of providing them with garments and personal/household linens at a cost they could afford. They acted in effect as the first clothing retailers. This chapter will consider those Florentines who practiced this trade, to try to situate the used-clothing dealer within the guild community itself. The question of who the rigattieri were, whether primarily males or females practiced this trade, and what their socio-economic role was in the complex economic life of the city will be explored. It appears that these tradespeople served an important function in the commerce of cloth and clothing in the early modern period. Some even got rich. But whether he or she was an official male guildsman regulated by communal statute, or one of the independent female vendors who traversed the crowded marketplace on a regular basis, the men and women who acted as rigattieri were crucial to the circulation of textile goods among the various social strata of the city.
The entire populace, from the poor to the wealthiest, participated in this
commerce as consumers of these locally produced textile products.
Scholars have attempted to understand the circulation of goods and services in the economies of the early modern time period. See, for example, the work of Elizabeth Sanderson (1996, 1997). These studies, for the most part, have focused on alternative currency models such as barter systems, and been centered on northern European cities such as London and Paris. Beverly Lemire’s work has recently included the utility of used clothing as a means of exchange within these models (1998). Patricia Allerston’s study on the place of second hand clothing in Venice, expanded our understanding of this currency southward, by examining this practice specifically within the Italian guild setting (1999). While she has focused on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venetian practices, this essay will endeavor to extend the scope of scholarship to the city of Florence. Here, fourteenth- and fifteenth-century urban guild records and family log books among other Florentine archival sources, will be utilized to begin to examine the second hand clothing trade in the city.
The Florentine chronicler Giovanni Villani, in his Cronica of 1336, referred to the earliest guild of used-clothing dealers informally as the Arte di Baldrigari. It was first formed in 1266 as the retail guild of second hand clothing, cloth, household linens and related items of cloth (Davidsohn, 1956: IV: II: 328). Each city in Italy had its own name for this occupation. In Bologna, it was regattieri, while the completely different term strazzaruoli was used in Venice. In the city of Florence by 1280, some fourteen years after the guild was first organized, the formal designation for the used-clothing dealers’ guild was the Arte de’ Rigattieri e Linaiuoli. They were at the bottom of the list of the five so-called ‘middling guilds’ or Arte Mediante, that were brought down to the status of the lesser guilds in 1293 (Staley, 1906: 45–6). This association grouped together used-clothing and linen retailers, linen-producers, and tailors – all livelihoods that dealt with supplying the basic clothing needs of the local population.
Goods had been sold in the various fixed marketplaces established from the earliest history of the Commune. The rigattieri as a group dominated the ready to wear textile market (Davidsohn, 1956: IV: II: 328). By providing a commercial venue for used items of clothing brought to them for sale by private citizens or bought up at public auction, and by buying up traditionally home or convent-produced linens and goods willed to the Church, the rigattieri sold their acquired inventories within retail stalls in one of the town’s many outdoor marketplaces (Frick, 2002: 21–2, 36, 38–9). The local resale of used clothing in Florence was here coupled with the marketing of a variety of household linens. Personal linens-making was one of the few areas of Renaissance clothing that remained for the most part unprofessionalized, and women on all levels of society sewed continually on an informal basis, often selling their output to these guild-run venues in the city. By dealing in a category of clothing for the most part outside guild incorporation, the rigattieri were undoubtedly able to keep their shelves cheaply stocked. Statistics compiled in 1442 show that the Arte dei Rigattieri e Linaiuoli handled imported and domestically made doublets (farsetti d’ogni ragione), bed linens (choltre e chopertojo), and towels and tablecloths (sciugatoi e tovaglie da tavola) as well as its basic staple of used clothes (Pagnini, 1765–66: IV:1–8). Also included in this complex commercial center were those more elusive participants, independent female vendors (venditrice) selling veils, caps and headscarves, and roaming shop workers, seamsters, seamstresses, and shoe-makers.
~~ Old Clothes, New Looks: Second Hand Fashion -ed- Alexandra Palmer and Hazel Clark
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