Dress and Undress

Abstract This chapter examines the significance of dress, and its capacity to mould the body into idealized forms, for shaping perceptions of body size. It maps the development of dressed ideals for German women and men, and relates these to contemporary notions of Germanness which drew on gendered values of modesty, honour, and robustness. The proliferation of tailored, figure-moulding clothing in the sixteenth century meant that dress became the primary means through which changes in body size were recognized and experienced in a period before it was common to weigh bodies. The chapter thus argues for the importance of clothing for ‘sensing’ body size. Dress was integral to conceptions of body size among early modern Germans, and the final section considers the implications of this for German accounts of the bodies of enslaved and Indigenous people who were frequently described in terms of their nakedness.