Making Clothes in Early Colonial Lima examines the production of silk and linen in Europe and Asia and using rarely used business accounts follows the journeys of these textiles to Lima through merchant and private networks, especially of Portuguese New Christians. In the process it reveals the shifting nature of transoceanic trade in the early seventeenth century. It then shows how luxury textiles were transformed into clothing through commissions from individuals and institutions and explores the styles and fabrics that were fashioned by tailors in Lima. It shows how the manufacture of clothing involved artisans from a variety of social and ethnic backgrounds, including Indigenous people and enslaved Africans. It also shows how laws against the wearing of luxury clothing were seldom imposed but nevertheless provided a framework that guided social action and supported the maintenance of a hierarchical social order that was increasingly threatened by social mobility.