Cape Town's first fashion influencers were material girls | 18th-century Dutch Cape Colony

Imagine if Gossip Girl was set in 18th-century Cape Town? My quest to uncover South African fashion history has brought me to the colony's first socialites, elite women of the VOC (Dutch East India Company) engaging in battles for status with free burgher elites. The women at the Cape Colony were at the top of Georgian/Rococo fashion trends, and their rivalry became so intense that in 1755, Governor Ryk Tulbaugh had to institute sumptuary laws. 00:00 Cape Town has always been Little Paris 03:00 1755 Sumptuary Laws 07:47 French Fashions, Dutch Colony 11:07 The Social Ladder 17:00 Enslaved dressmaking 19:55 Pomp, parties and circumstance Let's stay in touch! Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/okbaddiek/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@okbaddiek Email: khenzonatalia@gmail.com Sign up for my newsletter: https://khensani.substack.com Sources/References Fashion and the World of the Women of the VOC Official Elite by Liza-Mari Coetzee (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/54196858.pdf) Free burgher women in the eighteenth century and the quest for status by Liza-Mari Oberholzer, 2017 (https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/54196858.pdf) Pearls worth Rds4000 or less: Reinterpreting eighteenth century sumptuary laws at the Cape by Stan Du Plessis, 2013 (https://www.econrsa.org/system/files/publications/working_papers/working_paper_336_0.pdf) Legacy of Slavery Art Exhibition, Cape Town Museum (https://www.capetownmuseum.org.za/leeuwenhof/art-exhibition) Households of the Cape, 1750 to 1850 b