How the worst pandemic in human history prompted the birth of Italian luxury A reflection on how things worked in 1300's

In 1347, the deadly disease known as the Black Death or the Bubonic Plague struck Western Europe and England and was ranked as the most devastating pandemic in human history, killing an estimate of 75 to 200 million people. Italy was one of the first European countries to be hit, and from there it was spread throughout France, Spain, Portugal, England as well as other European nations. The killer virus not only had a huge effect on local populations, but consequently also had an arguably positive effect on the economy as well, an effect which resulted in the birth of luxury spending.

At the time, luxury spending became so popular that many political & religious rulers began to worry about this new trend of ordinary people and peasants engaging in wasteful spending which resulted in them enforcing and tightening the laws of spending. In her book Sumptuary Law in Italy, 1200-1500, author Catherine Kovesi explains the sumptuary law, which was a law designed by the government to restrict personal expenditure. The law implemented a limit each person could spend on clothing, household equipment, food etc. and in this period in the 14th century the amount of regulations on the spending of female clothing were raised to twenty.

Following this, in the 15th and 16th century, these amounts of regulations doubled and tripled as the government attempted to control the idea of luxury fashion while the idea became more and more popular. Historian Susan Mosher Stuard also wrote on the years that followed, in her book ,Gilding the Market Luxury and Fashion in Fourteenth-Century Italy: 

“Over a short span of years important matters began to turn on the cut of a sleeve. Fashion influenced consumption and provided a stimulus that drove demand for goods and turned wealthy townspeople into enthusiastic consumers. Making wise decisions about the alarmingly expensive goods that composed a fashionable wardrobe became a matter of pressing concern.”

Thus, with the emergence of a new society, a new idea of luxury also emerged. An idea that, in the field of fashion in the strict sense, gave rise to new fields of commerce and social roles and entered the collective cultural language, testifying to the new centrality assumed by man compared to previous eras.