Chats on CostumeRhead, G. Woolliscroft (George Woolliscroft)
History
Chats on Costume
Rhead, G. Woolliscroft (George Woolliscroft)
Clothing and dress
This parti-colouring presented many variations. The legs were either
plain, dark and light alternately, of various colours, black and red,
black and yellow; or a variation of one colour, red, yellow, or grey,
as the case may be; or one leg was striped in various ways; or the
parti-colouring would assume various forms, as a zig-zag on the thigh,
or calf, or both; in fact, the leg was regarded as a field for the
dress designer to exercise his ingenuity in the matter of contrast,
upon the principle of what is known in ornament as counterchange.
In Field's play of "A Woman is a Weathercock," 1612, one of the
characters exclaims, "Indeed, there's reason there should be some
difference in my legs, for one cost me twenty pounds more than the
other."
At the beginning of the sixteenth century a new development appears,
which began as an upper garment reaching only to the knees, also at
this period called hose, upper stocks, and "trawses," which were
puffed, slashed, and embroidered in various ways; this was the
precursor of the _breeches_, or trunk-hose, which by the end of the
century had developed to such enormous proportions.
Numerous examples of the "slashed" period will be found in the drawings
by Holbein and Durer, and the engravings by Hans Burgkmair. The
"slashings," which may be regarded as ornament _in relief_, presented
as many variations as did the flat ornament of the earlier period on
the plain surface of the leg. The garment was either slashed downwards,
horizontally, or diagonally, and occasionally slashed to such an extent
that it appeared merely as a system of ribbons. Variety of colour was
arrived at either by the under-garment, stocking, or hose being of a
different hue to the upper; or by a system of puffing, in which another
or third colour was introduced. The puffing was also of a different
material, either of silk or other light material, while the upper or
slashing was of cloth or velvet.
It was an exceedingly rich, ornate, and fantastic period; the _jerkin_,
or body garment, together with the sleeves, were also cut and slashed
on the same principle as the lower garment, or _vice versâ_, the
slashings on the body usually appearing diagonally on either side.
In two female portraits, however, by Holbein at Basle, the slashings
appear perpendicularly underneath the breast, the sleeve being slashed
on the same principle.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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