Starch was of various colors. We read of “blue-starch-women,” and of what must have been especially ugly, “goose-green starch.” Yellow starch was most worn. It was introduced from France by the notorious Mrs. Turner. (See here.) Wither wrote thus of the varying modes of dressing the neck:— “Some are graced by their Tyres As their Quoyfs, their Hats, their Wyres, One a Ruff cloth best become; Falling bands allureth some; And their favours oft we see Changèd as their dressings be.” The transformation of ruff to band can be seen in the painting of King Charles I. The first Van Dyck portrait of him shows him in a moderate ruff turned over to lie down like a collar; the lace edge formed itself by the pleats into points which developed into the lace points characteristic of Van Dyck’s later pictures and called by his name. Evelyn, describing a medal of King Charles I struck in 1633, says, “The King wears a falling band, a new mode which has succeeded the cumbersome ruff; but neither do the bishops nor the Judges give it up so soon.” Few of the early colonial portraits show ruffs, though the name appears in many inventories, but “playne bands” are more frequently named than ruffs. Thus in an Inventory of William Swift, Plymouth, 1642, he had “2 Ruff Bands and 4 Playne Bands.” The “playne band” of the Puritans is shown in this portrait of William Pyncheon, which is dated 1657. William Pyncheon. William Pyncheon. The first change from the full pleated ruff of the sixteenth century came in the adoption of a richly laced collar, unpleated, which still stood up behind the ears at the back of the head. Often it was wired in place with a supportasse. This was worn by both men and women. You may see one here, on the neck of Pocahontas, her portrait painted in 1616. This collar, called a standing-band, when turned down was known as a falling-band or a rebato. The rich lace falling-band continued to be worn until the great flowing wig, with long, heavy curls, covered the entire shoulders and hid any band; the floating ends in front were the only part visible. In time they too vanished. Pepys wrote in 1662, “Put on my new lace band and so neat; am resolved my great expense shall be lace bands, and it will set off anything else the more.” I scarcely need to point out the falling-band in its various shapes as worn in America; they can be found readily in the early pages of this book. It was a fashion much discussed and at first much disliked; but the ruff had seen its last day—for men’s wear, when the old fellows who had worn it in the early years of the seventeenth century dropped off as the century waned. The old Bowdoin gentleman must have been one of the last to wear this cumbersome though stately adjunct of dress—save as it was displaced on some formal state occasion or as part of a uniform or livery.