[Illustration: Figure 5.--LEAF FROM A BOOK of court costumes showing back and front view of a gentleman’s dress. German, second half of the 16th century. (_Courtesy of Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam._)] Foreign fashions were being imitated by English ladies. Inventories[13] in the Public Record Office in London show that the English queens had robes cut in Spanish, Milanese, or French styles. As for men, it was said that they could not make up their minds what to wear, and a popular caricature shows an Englishman standing naked with a roll of cloth under his arm and a pair of tailor’s shears in his hand, saying:[14] I am an English man, and naked I stand here, Musyng in my mynde what raiment I shal were, For now I wyll were thys, and now I wyll were that; Now I wyll were I cannot tel what. London, however, was not a fashion center, and the first book on the fashions of nations was printed in Paris in 1562.[15] In his introduction to the book François Deserpz moralized:[16] . . . noz vieux predecesseurs . . . ont esté plus curieux de sumptueuse vesture que de rare vertu . . . car tout ainsi qu’on cognoist le Moyne au froc, le Fol au chaperon, & le Soldat aux armes, ainsi se cognoist l’homme sage à l’habit non excessif. [Footnote 16: Translated, this reads: “. . . our predecessors of old . . . were more careful about sumptuous dress than rare virtue . . . for as the monk was recognized by his frock, the jester by his cap, and the soldier by his arms, so the wise man was known by his moderate habit.”] [Illustration: Figure 6.--PORTRAIT of an English lady. From _Recueil de la diversité des habits_, 1567 ed. (_Courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum, London._) {caption at end}] Acknowledgments were made to the late Captain Roberval and to an unnamed Portuguese, but it is not known which of them contributed the portrait of the English lady (fig. 6). Although she is said to be distinguishable by her square bonnet, it is hard to find the style paralleled in any other picture. The huge slashes on the bodice of her gown surely are exaggerated, as is the smallness of the muff which hangs by a cord from her waist. On the other hand, Joris Hoefnagel copied and used the portrait as one of a group of citizens standing in the foreground of Hogenberg’s 1574 plan of London,[17] so the figure must have been regarded as approximately accurate. [Illustration: Figure 7.--DRESS OF A FRENCH WOMAN (front view) with a tight-sleeved bodice through the cuts of which the lining is drawn out in puffs. From _Omnium gentium habitus_ . . . , 1563 ed. (_Courtesy of Victoria & Albert Museum, London._)]