Costume: Fanciful, Historical and TheatricalAria, Mrs. (Eliza Davis)
History
Costume: Fanciful, Historical and Theatrical
Aria, Mrs. (Eliza Davis)
Costume -- History
The Tudor period brought an extraordinary revolution in dress, the first
important change taking place in the sleeves, which were now of different
material and different colour from the gown. Several pairs of sleeves
would be allotted to each gown, and were necessarily made detachable,
while in shape they were full and puffed, padded and quilted and slashed
and fitting tightly; and the square-necked, short-waisted style of dress
was punctilious in a display of a stomacher and a full train.
Cloth of gold was the favourite fabric, being used alike for decoration
as for garments, and indeed gold asserted itself on every rich material,
and there was a silver taffeta embroidered in gold; and a damask of
crimson or yellow wrought with gold offered itself persuasively for fur
trimming, lynx and sable and marten accepting the responsibility with
zeal.
The fair footed it bravely in low shoes adorned with large ribbon
Tudor roses, which were also allotted the delicate duty of ornamenting
elaborate garters. The plainer variety of shoe was of wood covered with
velvet or leather, stitched with silk and fastened with buckles or
rosettes; and a wooden shoe in vogue was known as the pantoffle, and
not unlike that chopine worn in Italy at this time and later, when it
attained the pinnacle of the preposterous. This shoe was, however, known
in England only in a modified form.
None of the fashions of the day could truthfully be called comfortable.
Comfort obviously was banished from consideration, and each innovation
during the sixteenth century shows its demands more and more disregarded.
The hoop appeared, and held the best affections in its grasp of iron,
wood, or whalebone, the indispensable edicts against it following quickly
upon its popularity. Rich and poor alike fell victims to its aggressive
charms, and alike insisted upon its wear, and, on the occasion of her
marriage with Prince Arthur of Wales, Catherine of Medici wore the dress
of Spain and a mantilla bordered with gold and precious stones, and her
skirt was distended by several hoops.
The wives of that merry polygamist Henry VIII. were sympathetically
attached to beautiful clothes, and Anne Boleyn is credited with wearing
a cap of blue velvet trimmed with golden bells, and a vest of velvet
starred with silver, and over it a surcoat of watered silk lined with
miniver, with large pendent sleeves; blue velvet brodequins were on her
feet, with a diamond star on each instep, and above her long curls was
placed an aureole of plaited gold. It is a well-known fact that Anne,
because of some slight deformity of the hand, held affectionately to the
charms of the hanging sleeve after it had been discarded in favour of the
full puffed and slashed sleeve. There is an attractive picture of her
by Holbein, with the hair drawn from her forehead in small curls, and a
plait hanging from the top of the head over one ear, the crown being worn
rather far back and kept in place by a jewelled caul.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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