In the 16th century Italy and Belgium became centers of lace production as their artisans developed a refined form of needlework that would become popular adornment to the wardrobes of the growing bourgeoisie and aristocracy of Western Europe. Lacework developed from the open decorative technique of embroidery and was in its early manifestations called cut-work. As embroidery was used to finish the hems of garments and would add slight flourishes of thread patterning along edges of cloth it allowed needlework to separate itself more and more from the greater garment and evolve into a coveted item in its own right.
Set into the frame, beneath the network of threads, was the quintain (the background fabric) that would be sewn to the network where necessary in accordance with the patterning while any excess quintain would be cut away. These networks of thread would be laid out according to a geometric pattern radiating from a center and would combine open-work with heavily embroidered sections. The other form of lacework that came out of this period was referred to as lacis, patterns coming from a French tradition of working along a gridded network ground and establishing shapes according to compilations of squares on the grid. 
In England at the end of the 18th century a movement in fashion was finding its voice through young British aristocrats set on defining themselves apart from the average gentleman. A generation of young and world-wise aristocrats, young men whose custom it was to take the ‘Grand Tour’ of the great European cities of antiquity, returned to England wearing ostentatious clothing that remarked on their cultured travels. They had tasted the fashions in Italy and France at the end of the 1700’s and had returned celebrating and perhaps exaggerating these. It is thought that they themselves applied the name ‘Macaroni’ to their set or maybe the label was given to them but it is sure that a distinct style of dress and presentation came to be associated with the term.
The unofficial ‘Macaroni Club’ of young fashion-setters were the opposite of the staid, traditional, and older ‘Beefsteak Club’ of 18th century England. Whereas the prior generation was content with conventional formality and prided itself on its patriotism, the Macaroni’s were devoted to excesses in fashion and the general consumption of things and conferred great importance on their European experience. They wore their trousers tight and their waistcoats short and sported wigs of exaggerated pomp with curls dangling at their ears. They were also known to adorn their jacket lapels with flowers such as nosegay and to wear the narrowest of shoes that almost impaired their manner of gait. The Macaronis would carry canes embellished with tassels and have as accessories pocket watches and spy glasses and they chose to wear wigs of extreme proportions to further set themselves apart.
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They came to be associated with excess frivolity, effeminacy, and were plausibly the last vestiges of a court culture that was invariably giving way to a mercantile and bourgeois class. The social and fashion elite of the aristocratic class were emblemized by the Macaronis and, so too, caricatured by them. The Macaroni fashion as a cultural indicator of elitist aspirations has seen itself revived in fashion history in the styles of the foppish dandy, the more literary flaneur, and, more recently, the ultra urban metrosexual male. | |||||||||||
image: Print of Macaroni fashion, 1774.
image: Print of Dandies, 1830.
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