CONNECTIONS THE MAY FLOWERS IISSUE MAY 2016

My Connections Magazine
CONNECTIONS May 2016
weavers who were unable to produce the
by-now popular fabric.
When merchants started importing
them in the 17th century, the surge in
popularity alarmed the linen, wool and
silk weavers of England who didn’t have
access to cotton nor the fast dyes to
make the exotic, hand painted textiles.
With everyone who was anyone
suddenly simply mad about chintz it
threatened the ruin of the European
textile market.
Gucci leather trimmed printed canvas
shoulder bag, £600, Net-a-Porter; Mule
sandals, £45.99, Zara
Imported from India, chintz had been
used initially as a furnishing fabric. But
when the upper classes handed down
their older textiles to their household
servants these exotic patterns started
being used as clothes linings and then
garments.
“In an interesting move this was then
adopted by the higher classes who also
saw the attraction in wearing these fast
bright colours on clothes,” says Divia
Patel, curator of The Fabric of India, last
year’s exhibition at the Victoria & Albert
Museum. “The furnishing fabrics
required large flowers, but when people
started wearing them the merchants
went back to India saying that a
European audience might prefer, say, a
cream background to a red and smaller
sprays of flowers to the larger, so you
started getting smaller patterns and a
different look to the fabrics.”
Black sleeveless floral dress, £590,
Emilia Wickstead at Matches Fashion
Such was the risk to the domestic textile
industry that in the late 17th century five
thousand weavers protested outside the
Houses of Parliament. In 1701 imports
of Indian dyed or printed cottons were
banned and in 1720 Parliament enacted
a law that forbade 'the Use and Warings
in Apparel of imported chintz, and also
its use or Wear in or about any Bed,
Chair, Cushion or other Household
furniture.” The ban remained in place
for fifty years, by which time European
manufacturers had worked out how to
do it themselves.
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