people with brightly colored, conventionalized images of the clothing worn by its officials and citizens

Since styles of dress were assumed to persist as a form of custom, the

traveling student represented each city visited and its people with brightly

colored, conventionalized images of the clothing worn by its officials and

citizens. Like prints or small quartos, such books were highly transportable,

and they were organized according to a scheme shared by costume books:

images were arranged along a hierarchical grid beginning with monarchs

and nobles and descending to laborers and paupers. Sometimes the images

preserved in the albums included interleaved, sheath bridal gown , individual prints from wellknown

costume books already published. Unlike costume books, however,

these collections were personalized, assembled according to the preferences

of the individual collector and of the friend leaving his “signature” in the

owner’s album. The signatures of particular friends met during one’s travels

took the form of autographs of distinguished scholars and noblemen

with paintings of their coats of arms accompanied by sententious mottos;

they thus constitute the album owner’s social circles, Japanese school uniforms . which are mobile, created

and expanded across time. The signatures of friends inserted into an

album amicorum, therefore, represent a particular, ongoing history, while the

clothes depicted within their pages were thought to be relatively unchanging,

and the friendships recorded were considered everlasting. In this sense,

illustrated albums created and represented a social self that was individualized

by the owner’s particular bonds and experiences; they also formed a

collective group portrait of oneself and one’s friends, whose experiences of

the places visited and people seen are recorded in the album. These albums

then eventually became part of the private holdings of the elite families to

which the students returned.

Costume

The term costume book is a misnomer. Costume, as derived from the Latin

word consuetude, implies the customary function or use of dress in multiple

cultural contexts that precede the making of specific items of clothing.

As adornment rather than simple bodily covering, costume, unlike clothing,

assumes symbolic, ritualistic, and even superstitious valences. It can

mask identity or highlight aspects of the body and ritualize social etiquette.

Marieke de Winkel in her recent study of Rembrandt’s portraits defines cosRosenthal

/ Cultures of Clothing 475

tume as “dress for special occasions like a masquerade, theater, or for a deliberate

reconstruction of a particular period.”44 Ann Rosalind Jones and Peter

Stallybrass have demonstrated that the performances of theatrical companies

at the time of Shakespeare were shaped by the costumes they owned: “the

guilds paid for costumes to be made; . . . accounts suggest the ability of the

clothes to absorb the very identity of the actors.” In this sense, “clothes retain

their value better than plays.”

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