Sophie Pitman is a postdoctoral researcher for the project: Refashioning the Renaissance: Popular Groups and the Material and Cultural Significance of Clothing in Europe 1550–1650.

This five year, ERC-funded project combines theoretical perspectives and practical hands-on work to investigate how fashion emerged and developed among new social groups in sixteenth and seventeenth century Western and Nordic Europe. Drawing on documentary, visual and material evidence, it sheds light on popular taste, dissemination, transformation and adaptation of fashion, as well as on meaning and changing cultural attitudes to dress. The central goal is to develop a new material-based methodology and approach to Renaissance fashion by combining empirical research and theoretical models with the tradition of textile analysis and costume conservation. This involves experimenting with a range of techniques, including technical analysis of textiles, dye- and fibre analysis, and the reconstruction and visualization of historical dress using both 16th-century recipes as well as modern digital tools such as 3D printing and digital modelling.

Her own research focuses on clothing in early modern London and the material culture of early modern Europe, urban history, and artisanal culture. She is interested in reconstruction as a methodology, tailoring during and immediately after the English Civil War (1640s-1660s), and colors and dyes in the early modern period.