Starting point of the presentation are prints of the 17th century showing seemingly exaggerated pictures of highly fashionable dress. The pictures can clearly be labelled as satire prints, but their message is ambiguous. Do these prints aim to generally condemning fashion as sinful or do they only want to highlight specific characteristics of fashion novelties? Do they intend to amplify national fashion differences in order to harshly ridicule or gently smile at them? How can we interpret the possibilities and limits of such pictorial evidence as a source for the research in fashion history? Based on selected examples with an emphasis on etchings of the Netherlands it is investigated, which questions of fashion history might be answered by interpreting such sources.

Structure
1.) Seventeenth century pictures ridiculing or deriding fashion
2.) Moral appeal or entertainment? Sources background and aims
3.) Mocking pictures as sources of fashion-history research
4.) Conclusions