In 1687, the East Indies Company wrote to their factors in Bombay asking for, ‘chintzes of all sorts, whereof some to be grave and cloth-coloured, with the greatest variety you can invent, they having become the wear of ladies of the highest quality’ (Figure 11.1). Such requests suggest that the lightweight, colour-fast cotton weaves were rapidly becoming fashionable, and had been easily absorbed into the English market. As Maria Hayward has already shown in the previous chapter, the ladies at the court of Charles II were integral to this trend, as they competed against each other in its observance in the name of fashion. But how did ‘ladies of the highest quality’ agree that these new fabrics were desirable? Who defined and spread these fashions, particularly when supplies might be difficult to obtain? This chapter builds on Hayward's work to show how the fashions that court ladies wore and propagated were determined, not only by the court, but also by structures of colonial exchange, which involved female merchants such as the deceased ‘Testatrix’, whose inventory forms the basis of this study, taking a greater role in sartorial trade than ever before.

In theory, the trajectory should have been straightforward. In a hierarchical society that was supposedly centred on the court, styles should have been set by the elites, facilitated by mercers, haberdashers, and other specialists, before moving out into the countryside and down the social ladder.