Dressed: The History of Fashion · Dressed Media

Spanish Style: Fashion Illuminated, 1550-1700 with Amanda Wunder

December 10, 2025·1 hr 4 min·5 clips

Amanda Wunder explains how Spanish elites used fashion to turn New World fortunes into noble status.

The ad is just noise. The episode really begins with a problem fashion historians know well: how do you tell the history of clothes when most of the clothes are gone? Spanish style comes in through evidence. The hosts link this to an earlier bog fashion conversation, so it feels like part of a longer thread rather than a one off topic. The guest leads with Spanish manuscripts known as letters of nobility, portraits, and the careful reading required when garments are missing from the record. One image stops everyone for a second. A gentleman in a stuffed doublet looks almost pregnant, and that strange silhouette becomes useful, not just funny. The trend was brief. The guest places it in the early 1570s and notes that similar shapes show up in English portraits. Status seems like the clue. A prominent belly may have suggested abundance, though the answer stays provisional instead of getting flattened into certainty. Armor makes it even more interesting. The same protruding shape appears in breastplates, which opens a connection between fashionable fabric and martial design. Function is still partly unresolved. The guest says she would need to check the sources on whether that belly shape helped deflect blows. That honesty is part of the appeal. The conversation treats uncertainty as real historical method, not a gap to hide. Then the scale widens. From the 1590s through the 1650s, Spanish fashion enters a more amplified phase. Ornament gets larger. Artificial silhouettes intensify, and men's and women's styles begin to move in different directions. The pace of taste feels jumpy and alive. What begins with one odd doublet turns into a story about political, social, and visual forces shaping the body. The tone stays close and conversational, even when the vocabulary gets more precise.

As heard by us

A tactile look at Spanish fashion, where silhouette and status stay tied to the body.

Amanda Wunder gives Spanish fashion in this period a clear, useful frame. The discussion moves through silhouettes, ornament, status, and the awkward fact that clothing has to be read when little textiles survive.

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Want Spanish fashion traced through shape, status, and portraiture?

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