University of Manchester. Centre for Latin American Cultural Studies
Abstract
It may be said without exaggeration, that the finest stuffs made in countries,
where industry is always inventing something new, are more generally seen
in Lima than in any other place; vanity and ostentation not being restrained
by custom or law.
With this grand overstatement the Spanish travellers Jorge Juan and Antonio de
Ulloa summed up their account of fashion in 1740s Lima. Dress in the capital of
colonial Peru, according to these men, differed from that of Europe only in its
extravagance. European goods and clothing, they insisted, were widely available,
which allowed the ladies of Lima to indulge their immoderate taste for Flemish lace
and pearls, to the ruination of their husbands. Such was these women’s passion for
finery that they often succumbed to uterine cancer, brought on, the travellers were
certain, by ‘their excessive use of perfumes’
