Clothing and the people who made it were essential to early modern society. Sartorial demonstrations have increasingly been recognized as a central facet in political, social, and cultural activities. Clothing, textiles, and material culture can assist in building a firmer understanding of human interactions (Catherine Richardson, “‘A Very Fit Hat’: Personal Objects and Early Modern Affection,” in Everyday Objects: Medieval and Early Modern Material Culture and its Meanings, ed. Tara Hamling and Catherine Richardson [2010], 289–98), social status (Cristian Berco, “Textiles as Social Text: Syphilis, Material Culture and Gender in the Golden Age of Spain,” Journal of Social History 44, no. 3 [2011]: 785–810), and gender dialogues (Elizabeth Currie, Fashion and Masculinity in Renaissance Florence [2016]). Work exploring clothing in a more practical sense—how it was constructed and worn—and what this can illustrate about daily life is also on the increase (Jenny Tiramani, “Pins and Aglets,” in Hamling and Richardson, Everyday Objects, 85–94). Melanie Schussler Bond adds to this rich and growing area of research, bringing Scottish sixteenth-century evidence into the spotlight.

Dressing the Scottish Court, 1543–1553 is a beautifully illustrated volume that highlights the value of the Scottish royal treasurer's accounts for scholars interested in the history of dress. These accounts have been published (Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, ed. Thomas Dickson et al., 13 vols. [1877–1978]), but only the first volume is a verbatim record of the original manuscripts held in the National Records of Scotland. The omissions from subsequent volumes, such as the repetition of similar items and details of clothing components, are highly problematic for a researcher of historical clothing. To respond to this issue, Bond meticulously reproduces and translates a ten-year period of the accounts that relate to clothing purchased during the regency of the earl of Arran. Her primary aims beyond making this resource available include offering information on Scottish fashion in the sixteenth century, exploring the typicality and popularity of garment types and materials, providing observations about clothing construction, and to analyze how clothing can be used as evidence of personal and political relationships. These aims lead to a two-part structure: part one focusing on garments and part two on recipients of clothing.

Part one contains three chapters. The first two chapters focus on the garments of men and women respectively, cataloguing everything from gowns and doublets to socks and accessories. Each garment type is treated individually under subheadings with definitions of unusual terms, practical information about use and wear, and details of common fabrics and colors. Fascinating details emerge from these, including that the use of red fabric for lining clothing items because of perceived health benefits is specifically evidenced in the Scottish records (96). Bond also comments on the construction of clothing items, where the evidence is detailed enough. For this aspect of her analysis, the original manuscripts are essential for gathering crucial information about lining cloth, sewing threads, and laborers’ time as these are the types of details not found in the published editions. All in all, these two chapters provide an excellent reference resource for researching sixteenth-century clothing. The third chapter of this section also includes valuable information, albeit less coherently devised as it draws together specialty garments and information about the care and cleaning of clothing. Consequently, this chapter becomes a bit of odd catch-all considering military garb, wedding and mourning clothing, liveries, and then cleaning, care, and transport.

Part two has five chapters with reproductions of the accounts arranged into “wardrobe biographies” of key recipients of clothing: the regent himself, men and boys of the court, women and girls of the court, servants of the court, and others. These “wardrobe biographies” include a general introduction followed by chronological listing of clothing item by item; in the chapters that cover multiple individuals, these are subdivided person-by-person with a mini introduction for each. These chapters provide a great wealth of raw data but sometimes lack the analysis necessary to achieve the aim of exploring the political relations created through the giving and receiving of clothing. The lack of conclusions for the chapters incorporating numerous individual recipients (chapters 5 to 8), plus the absence of an overall conclusion to the book, leave the reader without a clear summation of the overarching comparative potential from the “wardrobe biographies” when taken as a whole, either within their chapters or as part of the book. The chapter considering Arran has the fullest introduction and makes interesting observations about image construction and the use of clothing as gifts in diplomacy and as rewards for service (147–55). Nonetheless, there is relatively limited engagement with Amy Blakeway (Regency in Sixteenth-Century Scotland [2015]) here or elsewhere, despite debates on finances, court culture, and the office of the regent that Bond could definitely have commented upon using this evidence.

Throughout, Bond augments the garment evidence from the financial records with references to portraiture and other images (such as the carved Stirling heads from James V's 1530s palace building), poetry and other literature, and sumptuary legislation (with illustrations throughout and helpful appendices of select additional sources). Bond also makes consistent effort to place Scotland into the wider European context, with pertinent comparisons drawing on relevant contemporary material from elsewhere. English comparisons tend to dominate, but there is frequent recognition of a variety of mainland European influences at play. On occasion, Bond's sweeping statements seem a little unfounded, such as the comment about both funeral dress and processions being less formal than England when there is no real discussion of processions (136), as well as occasional hints at the unfair assertion that Scotland was somewhat of a backwater. Overall, however, Bond's work emphasizes Scotland's place in a wider European theater of fashion and a people keenly engaged in contemporary sartorial dialogue.

Bond's Dressing the Scottish Court, 1543–1553 is a thoroughly researched addition to a rather limited Scottish historiography on the history of early modern fashion, and is a hugely welcome reference work for students and scholars alike. It is a shame, however, that it does not make more waves in the historiography of the regency of Arran and political relations more broadly as there was definite potential for it to do so.