Moralizing Apparel in Early Modern London: Popular Literature, Sermons, and Sartorial Display

This study investigates the cultural and textual relationship between two types of texts that inveigh against the preoccupation with fashionable attire: imaginative secular writing and sermons. While scholars have noted the influence sermons had on secular texts in the period, this article shows how popular literature of the profane, in denouncing excessive pride in apparel, had a profound and lasting influence on homiletic discourse. Sermons are hybrid texts that incorporate both the themes and literary flourish of texts written by secular, polemical authors, such as Philip Stubbes and Thomas Nashe. Special attention is given to the sermons preached at Paul's Cross to show how the complex social space surrounding the pulpit was crucial in enabling preachers to express the critique against excesses in apparel.