This rare drawing is one of a group of fifteen studies recording costumes from Northern German cities and regions around Hamburg, where the peripatetic Melchior Lorch resided from 1567 to 1574. Each of the illustrations is characterized by a geometrical conception and a slightly coarse execution in pen and ink, contributing to their sophisticated appeal. In the foreground of this image, a group of seven young men exhibit fashionable garments. The studies also contain explanatory inscriptions and were likely intended as preparatory models for a woodcut publication. With its emphatic pen strokes, the present sheet is considered the finest of the group. At a later date, it belonged to Sir John Evelyn, the renowned seventeenth-century English diarist, who likely acquired the entire suite of studies on a trip to the Netherlands in 1641.