It is an amazing thing to see in our city, the wife of a shoemaker, or a butcher, or a porter, dressed in silk with chains of gold a the throat, with pearls and rings of good value … and then, in contrast, to see her husband cutting the meat, all smeared with cow’s blood, poorly dressed … but whoever considers this carefully, will find it reasonable, because it is necessary that the lady even if low born and humble, be draped with such clothes for her natural excellence and dignity, and the man be less adorned as if a slave, or a little ass, born to her service.
— Lucrezia Marinella, Venice, Italy, 1600.