"Spanish Style: Fashion Illuminated" at the Hispanic Society Museum in New York explores the role of fashion in the Habsburg Spanish court from 1516 to 1700. Curated by Amanda Wunder, the exhibition draws on the museum's archives to show how clothing served as a uniform of power and piety, using materials like logwood black, gold, silver, silk, and lace. Paintings of royals and nobles illustrate the evolution from extravagant ruffs to more subdued collars, reflecting shifts in imperial fortunes and social hierarchies.
This exhibition matters because it reveals how Spanish court fashion shaped Catholic vestments and modern business attire, while also highlighting the economic and colonial underpinnings of style—logwood from Central America, silver from Potosí, and silk from Naples. It underscores fashion as a tool of political and social control, where status was rigidly encoded in fabric and ornament, and where even newly wealthy elites could not easily buy their way into nobility.