Emergence of a cyclical economy

Economic historians rarely discuss the nature of fashion, but some have had recourse to the term to describe certain changes in the european economy in the high Middle ages. it is generally agreed that a period of urban growth began in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries, following agricultural expansion and increased production that permitted the nourishment of a larger population. over the course of the “long thirteenth century” (for Peter spufford this would comprehend the years 1160-1330, for Gerard Sivery 1180-1315, corresponding roughly to Quicherat’s “periode brilliante du Moyen Age,” 1190-1340) the cloth trade was the key factor leading to urban growth, increased long-distance commerce, and craft specialization, producing a new economic system.138 David Abulafia dates the birth of the European fashion industry to the late twelfth century, when not only do Western merchants begin importing more Eastern products such as dyes, alum, luxury cloth and spices, but they manage to create demand at Muslim princely courts for Western products such as woolens, silver, arms, and timber.139 Sivery observes that in certain areas of Europe - certainly not everywhere - there was a movement from a traditional economy, where price and crisis cycles depend on catastrophic factors such as weather and war, to a cyclical economy, in which prices fluctuate according to supply and demand.140 Jacques Heers observes that to make a profit, the Genoese merchants working in the French markets (whose records are among the earliest such extant) had to become adept at judging tastes and anticipating desires: they calculatingly limited novel types of fabric or risked a drop in prices when a flooded market rendered a color or texture artificially ordinary.141 Sivery similarly asks whether records indicating price fluctuations according to city of origin and color should be attributed to improvements in dye technology. That was surely true to some degree, but cannot be the only explanation: both authors observe that fashion and demand for novelty must have had a role in the equation.142 From an economic point of view, inexplicable fluctuations in prices and periods of non-catastrophic cyclical booms and depression signal fashion’s presence in a culture. It is the only system that can explain such otherwise irrational phenomena.