In the 1660s, calico was quietly remaking English life. Long before it sparked fashion bans or industrial revolutions, this soft, plain-woven cotton — named after Calicut in India — was already flowing through London’s markets, ships, and homes.
Samuel Pepys, a naval administrator and inveterate diarist whose daily notes captured the texture of Restoration London, noticed. On October 6, 1664, he went “among the linen drapers to enquire about callicos.” A few days later, he paid £208 18s for 100 pieces — far more than any household could use. By December, he was still settling accounts with the same draper, suggesting an ongoing trade.
Samuel Pepys (1633-1703)
A couple of years later, calico surfaces again in his records, this time as naval flags — Pepys was then a senior official at the Navy Board. The same fabric that clothed Londoners was being stitched into symbols of empire, fluttering from English masts.
In Pepys’s brief mentions, calico shifts from a luxury import to a working fabric of the state. It’s both ordinary and global — a cotton that connected Indian looms, English merchants, and imperial ambitions. Through his tidy accounts, we glimpse the early threads of a textile that would soon transform wardrobes, industries, and empires alike.
References:
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1669/05/28/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/12/21/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/06/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/07/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/08/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/12/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1664/10/12/
https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1666/09/24/