Spanish Dress

By Lesley Ellis Miller

A reliable overview of the history of Spanish dress from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century, including its borrowings from and impact on the dress of other cultures, remains to be written. The subject is complex because of the internal make-up of the country, the multicultural society that spawned and epitomized the great Spanish empire of the early modern period, and constant shifts in Spain's political and economic relationship with the rest of the world. A large if sparsely inhabited country, located on the most southwestern periphery of Europe, Spain embraces a variety of regional identities that owe much to differences in climate, geography, and language, and to a rich historical legacy. Spain has been a country of contrasts: partially occupied by the Moors for more than 700 years, it experienced the co-habitation (convivencia) of different faiths (Jewish, Muslim, and Christian) until 1492; from that date it became the consistent, vociferous and sometimes intolerant champion of Catholicism, a nation state that experienced its Golden Age in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Its massive empire, acquired through inheritance of lands in the southern Netherlands and Italy and the forceful occupation of colonies in the Americas, Asia, and Africa, brought great wealth and power in world affairs until the early seventeenth century. As both gradually dwindled, Spain turned into "marginal Europe," modernizing only from the 1960s onward during the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco (1939-1975), and selling its cultural products, notably film and fashion, beyond its own frontiers and former colonies on an unprecedented scale since the 1980s.

The Spanish climate has lent itself to the cultivation of a wide range of raw materials for textile production, and skills in craft production have long been nurtured. Industrialization, having begun early, lagged behind that of northern Europe, and mass-production of clothing only took off gradually during the twentieth century. In the Middle Ages wool from the plains of Castile was much prized domestically and exported widely; flax (for fine and not-so-fine linens) grew plenteously in the damp climate of Galicia, and the Moors enriched Andalusia and Valencia by introducing sericulture and silk weaving. First of the peninsula, from the sixteenth century onward, the Spanish colonies supplied exotic dyestuffs, which delivered brilliant reds and the deepest blacks, colors that still inform the Spanish palette in ecclesiastical, regional, and fashionable dress. Weaving was well established by the Middle Ages, while knitting arrived by the thirteenth century, possibly introduced to Europe by the Moors via Andalusia. Spain became mechanized during the nineteenth century, while skills such as embroidery and leatherwork survived as prized handicrafts up to the present day.

Dress with a Difference

In the Middle Ages, Spain divided into Christian and Muslim zones, and hosted a variety of dress styles whose terminology and cut from the tenth century onward reveal a debt to Arab materials and garb-even in the Christian kingdoms. The contents of the tombs of the thirteenth-and early fourteenth-century kings of Castile in Burgos, for example, include mantles, surcoats, and tunics made of silks brocaded in northern taste with heraldic devices, such as the lions and castles of Léon and Castile, while the coffins are lined with silks with Islamic patterns-stylized vegetation, geometric motifs, stars, zigzags, and inscriptions in Arabic script. By the eleventh century the pilgrimage route across the north of Spain to Santiago de Compostela connected Spain with neighboring Europeans consistently and by the middle of the fourteenth century, the Spanish aristocracy and urban elite were wealthy enough to change styles in clothing regularly, enriching their wardrobes with fashions from Burgundy and Italy. The accession of Charles I (son of Philip of Burgundy) to the Spanish throne in 1516 sealed Spain's intimate relationship with both states and introduced the austere black and white dress so familiar from portraits of Spain's Golden Age: this formal dress (gala negra) was accessorized with lavish gold chains, buttons, and jewelry wrought from the precious metals from the Spanish-American colonies. The Spanish monopoly on logwood, a black dyestuff also imported from the new colonies, may well have had some bearing on this urban predilection for the color, as well as the devout Catholicism of subsequent monarchs (especially Philip II, III, and IV and Charles II) who, to some extent, eschewed overbearing ostentation. Nonetheless, descriptions of festivities throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries show that on holidays, those who could afford to do so often wore brightly colored garments of silk that were embroidered, brocaded, or trimmed in silver or gold. Spanish sumptuary laws made serious attempts to limit excess in the consumption of luxuries and to codify the distinctions between noble and bourgeois in the interests of protecting the Spanish economy and Spanish morals. References to the appropriate dress for Christian and non-Christian, promulgated in the first laws from 1252 onward, ceased after the expulsion of Jews at the end of the fifteenth century and Moors at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Throughout this period, such laws were of little relevance to the poor and marginalized who wore inexpensive undyed cloth in tones of brown, gray, or off-white. They thus earned the epithet "people of brown clothes" (gente de ropa parda), which instantly differentiated them from their social superiors (gente de ropa negra).

Commentary by Foreigners Visiting Spain

Mid-Sixteenth Century

"The women generally wear black, as do the men, and around the face they wear a veil like nuns, using the whole shawl (manto) over the head. And when they do not wear the veil over the face, they wear high collars with huge ruffs; and they use [excessive] makeup. … " Camilo Borghese in 1594 on a visit to Madrid, (cited in Garcia Mercadal, p. 112)

Mid-Eighteenth Century

"Women of all ranks wear their rosaries in their hands whenever they go to church, and always in such manner that every body may see them. They are a part of their church-dress. I am told that it is customary, amongst the lower ranks, for the young men to present fine rosaries to their sweethearts. Women of whatever condition never go to church but with the basquiña and the mantilla on. The basquiña is a black petticoat, commonly of silk, which covers their gowns from the waist down, and the mantilla is a muslin or cambrick veil that hides their heads and the upper part of their bodies. If they do not turn up their veils, as some of them will do both at church and in the streets, it is difficult, if not impossible, even for husbands to know their wives" (Bareti, p. 421).

Mid-Twentieth Century

" … striking … are the differences in regional costumes. Except for the familiar Andalusian costume of high comb, mantilla, sleeveless bodice, and wide flounced skirts with large white spots, it is safe to say that nearly all Spanish regional costumes clearly reveal Moorish influence" (Bush, p. 69).

The Golden Age

Significantly, during this Golden Age, when Spain was wealthy and powerful, and the literary and plastic arts flourished, the king's censors approved the publication of the first Spanish manuals devoted to disseminating superior skills in tailoring. The first book, published in 1580 and reprinted in 1589, came from the plume of a Basque tailor, the second in 1617 from a Frenchman turned Valencian, the third in 1640 from a father and son from Madrid-in other words, representatives of all major regions. These books convey the shifts in Spanish fashions and allegiances over the period, and the requirements of the upper and educated echelons of society. Consisting of patterns for men's and women's fashionable garments, mourning dress, clerical garb, robes for the military orders of Santiago and Calatrava, horses' caparisons and military banners, they reveal that most garments were Spanish in origin. The late sixteenth-century examples of Moorish and Italian gowns encountered Hungarian and French suits in the later work of Anduxar (1640)-a sign of royal alliance through marriage to Hungary and of the rise of French fashions, slimmer in silhouette than their Spanish counterparts. Change in cut demonstrated the gradual isolation of Spanish noblemen from their European peers as their highly influential dress composed of doublets, jerkins, trunk hose, and cloaks of various lengths gave way to the rather singular padded breeches (calzones) that made Spaniards look broad and solid in comparison with their northern peers. At around the same time, Spaniards' crinkly white ruffs (lechuguillas) ceded pride of place at men's necks to the golilla, a plain white semicircular collar built on a base of cardboard. Both forms of neckwear performed much the same function, as did their matching cuffs, preventing hard manual labor and in the case of the former keeping heads high and haughty. Women of the upper classes were similarly constricted: decked out in impressive jewelry, they wore richly patterned gowns with bell-shaped skirts over the Spanish farthingale (verdugado), a cage-like underskirt constructed of bands of willow. This item of clothing appeared in the 1470s and underwent several changes in shape thereafter, reaching enormous proportions between the late 1630s and 1670s. In its early manifestation it found its way into the fashions of neighboring states, while later it merely demonstrated Spanish distance from the mainstream.

Other aspects of Spanish dress that were constants in the urban landscape were the robes of clergy and members of religious orders, the voluminous mantles worn by women in the streets to cover themselves up (a sign of modesty evidently inherited from Moorish dress), and the addiction to all-enveloping mourning garments. Not only was black the color of formal court dress, but many of these items also had religious and moral connotations even into the third quarter of the twentieth century: the clergy and the bereaved were a particularly potent provincial and urban presence, especially among the white, sunlit villages of the south.

Dominance of Foreign Fashions

From about 1700 until the mid-twentieth century, the Spanish cognoscenti depended on Parisian (and sometimes British) modes. In the eighteenth century, under the ruling Bourbon dynasty, Spain received fashion news consistently from Paris via Spanish and French intermediaries-the powerful shopkeepers of the Cinco Gremios Mayores, ambassadors and well-traveled aristocrats, manufacturers' agents, the burgeoning French fashion press, and French emigrant dressmakers who set up businesses in the Spanish capital (as in other European cities). From the second half of the nineteenth century, wealthy female consumers and the most prestigious Spanish dressmakers made the annual or biannual pilgrimage to Paris to attend the haute couture shows, from which they acquired models for themselves or to adapt for their middle-class Spanish clients. In the major fashionable shopping centers of Madrid (center of government), Barcelona (heart of cotton and woolen production), and San Sebastián/Donostia (summer retreat of the court), by the beginning of the twentieth century there was a host of major dressmaking establishments whose reputation did not transcend national boundaries (such as Carolina Montagne, María Molist, El Dique Flotante, Santa Eulalia, Pedro Rodriguez, and Carmen Mir). In men's dress, reliance on Spanish tailors continued although the wave of Anglomania that hit France in the late eighteenth century extended to Spain. This legacy may even have carried over into the twentieth century: the first Spanish dictator, José Primo de Rivera, ordered clothes from Savile Row prior to his espousal of a politically sensitized form of dress; Cristóbal Balenciaga, a skilled tailor, chose England in 1935 as his first destination before moving to Paris; and Spain's only department store, founded in 1935 as a tailoring outlet with a line in ready-made children's clothes, still carries the name El Corte Inglés (English cut).

The fashion press played its part in disseminating fashionable styles. While those who could afford high-class fashions probably read French publications, printed matter in Spanish was available from the early nineteenth century. It owed much to its French or northern European models: fashion plates remained the same while captions were translated into Spanish (in the early nineteenth century Rudolph Ackerman's Repository for the Arts received this treatment; in the 1830s and from the 1880s respectively, the Semanario Pintoresco Español and El Salón de la Moda followed a similar procedure). In the twentieth century, El Hoga y Moda from 1909, the Boletín de la Moda from 1952, and Telva from 1963 represented national production. These journals dispersed styles to local, small-scale professional dressmakers and their amateur counterparts (home-dressmakers). Indeed, sewing and knitting skills probably thrived longer in Spain than in wealthier, industrialized European states where ready-made clothing was widespread and traditional roles for women were called into question earlier. The continued presence of the church as patron and educator of needlework skills and morals probably contributed to keeping these traditions alive until the end of the twentieth century.

Regional Dress

Queen María Luisa, in a Mantilla — Queen María Luisa by Fransisco Goya

Despite the dominance of mainstream European fashions in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and a noticeable rejection of traditional mores from the 1960s as large numbers of young Spaniards moved from rural areas into the cities, regional dress survived, often preserved carefully for use at national or local fiestas (religious holidays) and rites of passage such as marriage. It is still commissioned and made in the early 2000s for special occasions. Such dress has always varied by region, its materials and form relating to local textile supplies, agricultural activities, and calendar. Anthropologists have identified three main types by zone-north and Cantabrian, central, and Andalusian-Mediterranean-but they are still far from completing a comprehensive study. In the north and center, woolens and linens dominate festive dress; sometimes decorated with bands of silk or embroidery, the colors are often deep (brown, black, and red or green), and heavy jewelry is common. In the south and east, gloriously colored silks, cottons, and linens flourish in the sun, accessorized with lace or transparent veiling often with a flash of metallic thread, a heady reminder of the legacy of the Moors. Such dress, although not immune to change over the centuries, is a fossilized version of earlier fashionable, festive, or working dress. While many of its features have their roots in the eighteenth century, some go much further back, and others date to more recent times. In Valencia, silks with eighteenth-century designs are still woven to satisfy the demand for festive dress comprising full, ankle-length skirts, worn with a tight-fitting bodice over a chemise and below a neckerchief and lace mantilla. Bullfighters' suits of lights (trajes de luces) fall into this category, their most obvious roots in popular Andalusian majo attire of the eighteenth century, worn at the time that the sport commercialized. The short jacket with braiding covering its seams harks back to seventeenth-century practices in tailoring, while the knitted net hairpiece (redecilla) so familiar from Francisco Goya's paintings located its wearers among the popular classes. The tight-fitting breeches or pantaloons belong to late eighteenth-or early nineteenth-century fashionable men's dress.

The exchange between fashionable and regional dress works both ways: at the end of the eighteenth century, certain aristocrats and Queen María Luisa herself adopted a version of Andalusian maja dress, the black lace mantilla and overdress, secured by bold red or pink sash; in the work of twentieth century and contemporary Hispanic fashion designers regional variations are often a leitmotiv. Cristóbal Balenciaga (1895-1972) and Antonio Canovas del Castillo (1913-1984), who made their reputations outside Spain through austere modernist designs, provided bursts of Spanish drama in their many flamenco-inspired dresses, even once they were resident in Paris. The picturesque qualities of such gowns were no doubt familiar (and possibly desirable) by then to the many foreign tourists who visited the Costa Brava, Costa Blanca, and Costa del Sol in growing numbers from the 1950s onward. Regional dress, sentimentalized as a symbol of a lost golden age with superior values since the nineteenth century, has also served an overtly political function: following the Civil War (1936-1939), the rightwing Falangist party encouraged the celebration of regional festivities and the wearing of regional dress in the interests of promoting national cohesion and identity (much as the Nazis did in Germany and the Vichy government in France).

A New Golden Age?

Spanish dress may inadvertently have reached beyond Spanish frontiers before the 1980s via the acquisitions of tourists at the establishments advertised in tourist guides to Spain, via the creations of those Spanish couturiers who sought a propitious environment for their creativity in Paris, and via limited coverage in high-class fashion magazines such as Vogue. It is only since the mid-1980s or so, however, that Spanish designers and clothing companies have marketed their wares abroad on a significant scale. Spanish government initiatives probably played some role in this drive although the industry is still relatively undercapitalized and undeveloped. In the early 1980s the socialists began with the revitalization of the textile industries, and by the middle of the decade turned their attention to the clothing sector. In 1985 they established the Center for the Promotion of Design and Fashion (CPDM) under the auspices of the Ministry of Labor and Energy, and in 1987, the Cristóbal Balenciaga prize that recognizes annually the achievement of the best Spanish designer, the best international designer, the best textile design company, and the best new designer. Subsequently, exhibitions of Spanish fashion brought design into the public eye: in 1988, Spain: Fifty Years of Fashion held in Barcelona; in 1990 Spanish Designers held in Murcia; and the projected opening of a fashion museum and research center in Guetaria received government backing of $3.2 million in 2000. An elite group of fashion designers has emerged: they are known on the international catwalk as well as at the equivalent national events (Gaudí in Barcelona and Cibeles in Madrid), and they have outlets worldwide (such as Sibylla, Adolfo Domínguez, Pedro del Hierro, Antonio Miró, Purifiación García, and Roberto Verino, to name a few). Even more impressive is the forceful, expanding ready-to-wear sector, notably the retailers Cortefiel and Loewe (both established in the late nineteenth century), Pronovias (the first company to provide ready-to-wear wedding dresses in Spain from the 1960s), and Mango and Zara, notorious internationally for its rapid reproduction of catwalk fashions. The expansion of their shops worldwide demonstrates the growth of these young empires: between 1964 and 2003, Pronovias opened 100 shops under its own name in Spain, one in Paris, with one in New York in the pipeline. It also distributes its goods through 1,000 multibrand shops in more than 40 countries, having diversified into cocktail wear and accessories. Zara, the original firm from which the Galician Inditex group grew, opened its first store in A Coruña in 1975, its first stores outside Spain (in Portugal, United States, and France) in the late 1980s, by 2000 had 375 stores worldwide, and only one year later more than 600. Barcelona-based Mango entered the arena in 1984 in Spain, expanded gradually in the following decade, and exponentially from the 1990s onward, boasting a total of 630 shops in 70 countries by 2002. The manufacturing base of these firms is located in the traditional textile manufacturing areas of Galicia and Catalonia.

Although these empires have grown quickly and, significantly, have flourished since the late 1980s, it is difficult to measure their impact on Spanish consumers who have access to all the top international brands in their major city centers and probably mix and match such brands with the Spanish newcomers, as fashion magazines recommend (indigenous Dunia between 1978 and 1998, and Telva since 1963 and Spanish language editions of Cosmopolitan, Elle, Vogue, GQ since 1976, 1986, 1988, and 1993 respectively). It is not always possible to detect overtly Spanish features in products intended to sell in the global market and Spanish consumers are anxious to espouse a broadly fashionable appearance, like their counterparts in neighboring France and Italy. The kind of personal expression typified by the sub-cultural styles of northern Europe seems absent from Spanish streets. Increasing wealth and new professional opportunities and lifestyles for women may have boosted demand for fashion. In 1989, the CPDM published a survey on the changing habits of Spanish consumers since the mid 1980s. The findings suggested that there was an acute awareness of and pride in Spanish fashion, whose variety of styles and different price ranges competed with other European goods-even young consumers who aspired to American styles could create them through buying Spanish. Designer clothes were no longer reserved for special occasions but were now worn for everyday wear. Eleven years later, a Galician sociologist noted the correlation between lifestyle, social class, and choice of dress: the professional and educated classes in Spain aspired to follow seasonal fashion and conform to a recognizable "correct" appearance; they shopped in city center designer stores. The classic suit remained the main preference for both sexes. The epitome of this awareness of and national pride in domestic designer products must surely be the addition to the credits at the end of the Spanish national news on television of the name of the designer of the presenter's clothes-all too often, it is Adolfo Domínguez, the doyen of classic, unstructured tailoring and a color palette of black, gray, and aubergine. This second Golden Age of Spanish fashion has surely inherited features from its august forebear.

See also Ethnic Style and Fashion; Europe and America: History of Dress in (400-1900 C.E.).

Bibliography

Alçega, Juan de. Tailor's Pattern Book 1589. Facsimile, with translation by J. Pain and C. Bainton. Introduction and notes by J. L. Nevinson. Bedford, U.K.: Ruth Bean, 1979. A translation accompanies this facsimile edition of the second edition of the first Spanish publication on tailoring, as does an excellent introduction on the context for tailoring in sixteenth-century Spain.

Anderson, Ruth Matilda. Spanish Costume: Extremadura. New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1951. Fieldwork undertaken in this region of Spain allowed Anderson to document the state of regional dress in this area in the late 1940s.

--. Hispanic costume, 1480-1530. New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1979. The most comprehensive and well-illustrated account of Spanish dress of this period, it follows the format of Bernis's writing, identifying particular garments in paintings, and providing a useful explanation of terminology.

Baretti, J. A Journey from London to Genoa through England, Portugal, Spain, and, France. Vol. 1, Letter 56. Madrid, 9 Oct. 1760.

Berges, Manuel, et al. Moda en Sombras. Madrid: Museo Nacional del Pueblo Español, 1991. This catalogue accompanied an exhibition of the museum's collection of regional and fashionable dress dating from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Seven excellent introductory essays are devoted to different aspects of regional and fashionable dress and its production and consumption in Spain over that period.

Bernis Madrazo, Carmen. Indumentaria medieval española. Serie Artes y Artistas. Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1955.

--. Indumentaria española en tiempos de Carlos V. Madrid: Instituto Diego Velázquez del Consejo Superior de Investigacioness Científicas, 1962.

--. Trajes y Modas en las España de los Reyes Católicos. Serie Artes y Artistas. Madrid:Instituto Diego Velázquez del Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, 1978.

--. Trajes y tipos en el Quijote. Madrid: El Viso, 2001. These seminal accounts of the characteristics of dress in Spain from the Middle Ages to the early seventeenth century, offer a brief historical background to changing styles, identify the terminology in use, and the garments to which it applies through details from different works of art, from manuscripts to paintings and sculpture, and in the most recent volume concentrates on a single literary source.

Bush, Jocelyn. Spain and Portugal. Fodor's Modern Guides. London: Newman Neame Limited, London, 1955.

Carbonel, Danièle, after text by Pedro Soler. Oro Plata: Embroidered Costumes of the Bullfight. Paris: Assouline, 1997. A visually stunning insight into the production of suits of lights today, via the workshops of Fermín, a Spanish specialist. Superlative black-and-white and color illustrations show a variety of suits on and off their owners, as well as some interesting shots of bullfighters off duty.

Carretero Pérez, Andrés. José Ortiz Echagüe en las colecciones del Museo Nacional de Antropología. Madrid: Museo de Antropología, 2002. Catalog of exhibition held on the work of the photographer José Ortiz Echagüe who actively recorded traditional costume and custom across Spain from the 1920s to the 1960s. The introductory text is a useful evaluation of the visual recording and attitudes to isolated communities.

Clapés, Mercedes, and Rosa María Martín i Ros. España: 50 años de moda. Barcelona: Ajuntament de Barcelona & Centro de Promoción de Diseño y Moda, 1987. This catalog accompanied an exhibition of fifty years of Spanish fashion held at the Palau de la Virreina in Barcelona in 1987. Beginning with Balenciaga and haute couture, it offers succinct biographies of major Spanish dressmakers and fashion designers, illustrated by a photograph of each designer and several of their creations via the fashion press. A few examples of surviving dress in museum collections are included. There are also brief sections on fashion photographers, fashion as art, and a catalog of the exhibited garments.

Datatèxtil. Semi-annual magazine published by the Centre de Documentació i Museu Tèxtil de Terrassa. This popular magazine often contains useful articles on Spanish dress and textiles, deriving from exhibitions, collections, and from academic theses. Early issues were in Castilian and Catalan, but since 2001, Castilian and English are the two languages in use. In addition, the Centre consistently publishes excellent catalogs that accompany its exhibitions that often delve into local or national aspects of a particular theme.

Dent Coad, Emma. Spanish Design and Architecture. London: Studio Vista, 1990. Beginning with a rapid overview of Spanish fashion since 1492, this chapter introduces regional dress, but concentrates on the fashion industry of the 1980s as represented by official government sources.

Diaz-Plaja, Fernando. La vida cotidiana en La España de la Ilustración. Madrid: EDAF, 1997. An overview of fashion and its use in eighteenth century Spain, drawing attention to the difference between the distinctiveness of Spanish dress of the seventeenth century and the fashionable Spanish assimilation of French styles in the eighteenth century under the ruling Bourbon dynasty.

Franco Rubio, Gloria A. La vida cotidiana en tiempos de Carlos III. Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 2001. An overview of clothing and its uses in eighteenth-century Spain which draws attention to the tension between the adoption of an overtly French form of fashionable dress and the retention or reinvention of a native Spanish style.

Garcia Mercadal, José. Viajes por España. Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1972.

Herrero Carretero, Concha. Museo de Telas Medievales. Monasterio de Santa María de Huelgas. Madrid: Patrimonio Nacional, 1988. Catalog of the museum of medieval textiles in Burgos in which a detailed description of each of the garments found in the thirteenth-and early fourteenth-century tombs of the kings of Castile and Léon are described, as well as the jewelry and textiles found therein. Fine color illustrations show the textiles before and after conservation.

Morral i Romeu, Eulalia, and Anton Segura i Mas. La seda en España: Llegenda, poder i realitat. Barcelona: Lunweg Editores, 1991. Catalog of an exhibition on silk in Spain, this is a useful introduction to the silk route, sericulture, and silk weaving in Spain, with excellent illustrations of surviving artifacts.

Morral i Romeu, Eulalia, et al. Mil anys de disseny en punt. Tarasa: Centre de Documentació i Museu Tèxtil, 1997. Catalog in Castilian and Catalan from a pioneering exhibition on knitting over the last one thousand years with introductory essays by historians, curators, and designers, this book demonstrates the amount of research that needs to be dedicated to this important area as well as the current state of scholarship. The color illustrations of important knitted objects and graphic material are a useful starting point for any number of projects. They are not limited to Spain.

Reade, Brian. The Dominance of Spain, 1550-1660. London: Harrap, 1951. An overview of the fashions of Spain in this period, with a good range of supporting visual evidence mainly drawn from portraits of the period.

Ribeiro, Aileen. "Fashioning the Feminine: Dress in Goya's Portraits of Women." In Goya: Images of Women. Edited by Janis A. Tomlinson. Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2002. This article reveals the eighteenth-century Spanish predilection for French fashions and the adoption of Andalusian models, drawing on an unpublished doctoral thesis by S. Worth, "Andalusian Dress and the Image of Spain 1759-1936." Ph.D. diss. Ohio State University, 1990.

Rocamora, Manuel. Museo de Indumentaria: Colección Rocamora. Barcelona: Gráficas Europeas, 1970. A catalog of the major private collection that forms the basis of the national museum of dress in Barcelona with brief descriptions for each inventoried garment, and a few black-and-white and color illustrations that reveal the strengths of the collection.

Paul Smith Julian. "Analysis of Contemporary Spanish Fashion, Written from the Perspective of Cultural Studies." In Contemporary Spanish Culture: TV, Fashion, Art, and Film. Malden, Mass.: Polity Press, 2003. Covering contemporary Spanish fashion and written from the perspective of cultural studies, chapter 2 offers an analysis of the factors that typify the consumption and production of fashionable dress in Spain, with particular reference to the work and brand of the designer Adolfo Domínguez.