Chats on CostumeRhead, G. Woolliscroft (George Woolliscroft)
History
Chats on Costume
Rhead, G. Woolliscroft (George Woolliscroft)
Clothing and dress
[Illustration: SON OF THE PAINTER DIRCK DE VRIES.
_Engraved by Goltzius._]
There appears to be considerable contradiction of terms, as applied
to the different collars, both with the writers of the time and with
subsequent writers. Barnabe Rich, in his "Honesty of the Age," says:
"The body is still pampered up in the very dropsy of excess.... He
that some forty years sithence should have asked after a pickadilly,
I wonder who should have understood him or could have told what a
pickadilly had been, either fish or flesh."
There was, however, the small ruff, such as is seen in the portraits of
Sir Thomas Gresham and Philip II. of Spain (pp. 121-123). There was the
large formal ruff which appears in the portrait of Lord Burleigh (p.
93), and the still larger ruff of the Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia
(p. 187). There was the less formal ruff which fell upon the shoulders,
which is seen in many portraits by Franz Hals. There was the high
standing pointed collar, such as appears in William Rogers's print of
Queen Elizabeth. There was a plain high-standing collar without lace,
which went round the back of the head. There was the plain collar of
the Cromwellians, which covered the shoulders, and there was also the
rich lace collar of the latter part of the reign of Charles I. The
plaits of the ruff were occasionally pinned, the rows being sometimes
two and three deep. In the "Antiquary," a comedy by Shakerley Marmion,
1641, quoted by Strutt, a lover says to his mistress: "Do you not
remember what taskes you were wont to put upon me when I bestowed
you gowns and petticoats: and you in return gave me bracelets and
shoe-ties? How you fool'd me, and set me sometimes to pin pleats in
your ruff two hours together?"
[Illustration: CHARLES I. (IN THREE VIEWS).
_After Vandyck. Engraved by W. Sharp._]
In an old play called "Lingua; or, the Combat of the Tongue and the
Five Senses for Superiority," 1607, one of the characters remarks:--
"It is five hours ago since I set a dozen maids to attire a boy like a
nice gentlewoman; but there is such doing with their looking-glasses;
pinning, unpinning, setting, unsetting, formings and conformings;
painting of blue veins, and rosy cheeks; such a stir with combs,
cascanets, purls, falls, squares, busks, bodices, scarfs, necklaces,
carkonels, rabatoes, borders, tires, fans, palisadoes, puffs, ruffs,
cuffs, muffs, pustles, fusles, partlets, frislets, bandlets, fillets,
corslets, pendulets, amulets, annulets, bracelets, and so many lets
that the poor lady of the toilet is scarce dressed to the girdle.
And now there is such calling for fardingales, kirtles, busk-points,
shoe-ties and the like, that seven pedlars' shops, nay, all Stourbridge
fair, will scarcely furnish. A ship is sooner rigged by far than a nice
gentlewoman made ready."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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