The fashions, and art forms generally, of the Gothic North had never been fully accepted in Italy, and by the middle of the fifteenth century Italian modes had already diverged considerably from those of the rest of medieval Europe. In their style of headdress, for example, the fine ladies painted by Van der Weyden in the Netherlands and those painted in Italy by Ghirlandaio were very different.[72, 71] Elaborate bourrelets (stuffed and padded hairstyles) were draped with veils in the north, whereas hairstyles were much more natural and less formal in Italy; yet the fashion for plucking the hairline to give a high forehead was universal.[70] Different too was the cut of the sleeves, close-fitting in the north, swelling out in Italy, with slashes through which the white chemise could be seen. Often the sleeves were made detachable, and were heavily decorated – a reflection of the enormous increase in luxury brought about by the mercantile prosperity of the Italian cities.
70 Nuremberg housewife and Venetian lady. Drawing by Dürer, 1495. These show the variation in hairdressing and clothes between northern Europe and Italy. Italian influence is evident in the very fine veil and black necklace of Rogier van der Weyden’s northern lady.
71 Giovanna Tornabuoni, Domenico Ghirlandaio, 1488.
72 Portrait of a lady, Rogier van der Weyden, c. 1455.
The invasion of Italy by the French King Charles VIII doubtless introduced the Italians to French fashions, but in general the influence was the other way. The Renaissance was, so to speak, transplanted over the Alps, and if Charles VIII was still a medieval king, Francis I was a Renaissance monarch.
So, in England, was Henry VIII. It is true that the reign of his father, Henry VII, had already seen many modifications in medieval costume. The line, instead of being vertical, was now horizontal; the shoes, instead of being excessively pointed, became broad-toed, as if to echo the new style of architecture with its flattened arch. Ladies’ headdresses ceased to be replicas of Gothic pinnacles and began to resemble Tudor windows. And with the advent of the new century a curious Germanism began to influence the dress of the fashionable in both France and England.
73 German Landsknecht. Monogrammist IW (graveur), after Hans Rudolf Manuel Deutsch, 1547. An example in their extreme form of the slashings worn by the German mercenaries but influencing male costume all over Europe.
Much has been written about this strange development, but contemporary chroniclers are almost unanimous in ascribing it to the victory of the Swiss over Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, at the Battle of Grandson (1476). Much plunder of silk and other costly materials fell to the victors, who slashed the booty to pieces and used it to patch their own ragged clothes. The Swiss troops were copied by the German mercenaries, and from them the fashion spread to the French Court, probably introduced by the Guise family, itself half German. The marriage of Henry VII’s sister Mary to Louis XII of France caused the English to adopt the Landsknecht fashion also.
Slashing (i.e. the practice of cutting slits in the material of garments and pulling the lining through) indeed became almost universal in the early 1500s; but it was in Germany that it reached its most extravagant extreme.[75] For not only the doublet but the breeches were slashed; indeed, quite literally, ‘cut to ribbons’. Nether garments consisted of broad bands of material falling to the knees and sometimes to the ankles. Care was taken that the bands on each leg should form different patterns, and they could even be of different colours. We hear in the chronicles of ‘hose made in the German manner, the one [leg] yellow, the other black, slashed with sixteen ells of taffeta’.
74 The Swiss Guards. Detail from the Mass of Bolsena, Raphael, 1511–14.
75, 76 Duke Henry of Saxony and his wife, Lucas Cranach, 1514. The slashing in men’s clothes was matched by the rich decoration of women’s garments.
77, 78 Two stages in the development of the ruff: TOP Katherina Knoblauch, Conrad Faber, 1532; BOTTOM Portrait of Gentleman, Bartolomeo Veneto, before 1540.
79 Francis I of France, attributed to François Clouet, early sixteenth century.
80, 81 Portrait of Anna Jacoba Lösch Nothafft, Hans Schöpfer, 1568 (LEFT) and Jane Seymour, c. 1536–7, Holbein (RIGHT). These two illustrations show the square décolletage and the contrast between the German and English modes of headgear.
Slashing spread to women’s clothes, but was never as prevalent. This extravagant fashion was more suitable for breeches than for large areas of fabric such as skirts. Indeed, female dress at this period is much more modest than male costume. Skirts, however, were ampler and more richly embroidered than in earlier reigns. Over the kirtle, which consisted of a skirt and bodice sewn together, was worn the gown, falling in ample folds to the ground from a tight-fitting waist. The sleeves ceased to be tight and became very large indeed, with a deep turn-back of fur, as can be seen in Holbein’s portraits. There was much use of fur both by men and by women: lynx, wolf and sable being the favourites. The neck was cut square and low, and above it could be seen the top of the chemise. Men also, in the early years of the century, were décolleté, with the top of the shirt showing. Through this was threaded a string, and when this was drawn tight we can already see the beginnings of what was to be the ruff of the second half of the century.
The main male garment was the doublet, sometimes long enough to fall to the knee. It had an opening in the front through which could be seen the codpiece. The sleeves grew gradually wider and were often paned or slashed. Sometimes double sleeves were worn, one pair hanging loose and of a different colour. The materials most in favour were velvet, satin and cloth-of-gold. We know from his Wardrobe Account that Henry VIII possessed a doublet of purple satin, embroidered with gold and silver thread and sewn all over with pearls.[82] Over the doublet was worn the jacket or jerkin, either double breasted or closed down the front with laces or buttons; over this was the gown, fitting loosely over the shoulders, falling in ample folds to the feet and usually edged with fur.
82 Henry VIII. School of Holbein. The acme of masculinity in dress with wide shoulders and a codpiece.
The nether garments consisted of breeches and stockings sewn together. The top edge was secured to the doublet by means of points, i.e. laces threaded through eyelet holes in both garments and tied in small bows. These points were made of linen or silk thread lipped with metal tags, known as ‘aiglets’. The shoes were at first extremely broad, in the shape called ‘duck-bill’. The heels were flat, the soles of leather or cork, the uppers of leather, velvet or silk. Shoes were often slashed and adorned with jewels.
Hats were worn indoors as well as out, and for the most part took the form of a soft, low bonnet. Sometimes this had a brim which could be turned up in front and kept in place by a jewel; or the brim could be cut away in the front, but with side pieces which could be turned down over the ears. The brim was sometimes slashed in various patterns. A wide-brimmed hat was worn by travellers and country folk. A curious survival from the medieval period was the linen coif tied under the chin. In the sixteenth century its use was confined to the elderly or to lawyers and other professional men. Men wore their hair long, and under Henry VII and in the early years of Henry VIII’s reign had clean-shaven faces. But in 1535, according to Stow’s Annals, ‘The King commanded all about his Court to poll their heads, and to give them example, he caused his own head to be polled, and from henceforth his beard to be…no more shaven.’ It is thought that, in this, he was following the fashion inaugurated by the French King Francis I.
83 Costume plate by Jost Amman showing German bourgeois dress, c. 1560.
Some of the greatest portraits of all time were painted in the sixteenth century: one has only to mention the names of Holbein, Bronzino, Titian. But for the most part these artists painted very grand people in their very grandest clothes. For the physical appearance of the less exalted we must turn to German Kleinmeister such as Aldegrever, the Beham brothers, Jost Amman and Virgil Solis. The Behams show us the peasants, Aldegrever the patricians, while Jost Amman plunges us right into the everyday life of the middle classes.
84 The Ambassadors, Holbein, 1533.
85 A tailor, Giovanni Battista Moroni, c. 1571, an example of middle-class costume.
86 Thomas Cranmer, Gerhardt Flicke, 1546.
Naturally, these peasant and middle-class garments exhibited none of the extravagance of those worn in Court circles. But every prosperous citizen possessed what the Germans called a Schaube, an overcoat shaped like a cassock but generally without sleeves. If it had sleeves, they hung empty behind the visible sleeves of the garment worn underneath. The Schaube, often lined with fur, became the typical garment of the scholar. Luther wore one and thereby dictated the costume of the Lutheran clergy to the present day. In England Thomas Cranmer wore a similar garment, and this, with the chain round the neck, became the ancestor of the accepted costume of mayors. The vestigial sleeves of the sleeved variety can still be seen in academic dress.
The clothes of the upper classes during the first half of the sixteenth century were extremely brightly coloured. We learn from the wardrobe inventories of Henry VIII that he possessed, among many others, doublets of blue and red velvet lined with cloth-of-gold. In 1535 Thomas Cromwell made his royal master a present of a purple velvet doublet embroidered in gold; and some of the King’s garments were so heavily encrusted with diamonds, rubies and pearls that the underlying material was invisible.
Red was a favourite colour. In the well-known portrait of the Earl of Surrey, formerly attributed to Holbein, the young nobleman is shown completely clad in various shades of scarlet. In Cranach’s portraits of German princes nearly all of them are wearing red, and, in spite of sumptuary laws, the middle classes imitated them as far as they dared. It is a curious comment on human aspiration that during the Peasants’ Revolt in Germany, one of the demands of the insurgents was that they should be allowed to wear red clothes like their betters.
And then, about the middle of the century, everything changed. The German domination of European fashion, with its bright colours and fantastic forms, gave way to Spanish modes, tight-fitting and sombre, preferably black.[88, 89] This was partly due to the personal taste of the Emperor Charles V, who was famous for the sobriety of his dress, and partly to the growing power of Spain. When in 1556 Philip II succeeded Charles V as King of Spain, the Spanish Court became the admired exemplar for all Europe. Even the French King Henry II followed the Spanish fashion and almost always wore black.
In England the tendency to wear more sombre colours can already be seen in the closing years of the reign of Henry VIII. The boy King Edward VI, who succeeded him, was unlikely to have much influence on fashion, and when he died and Mary Tudor ascended the throne, the trend was emphasized.[90] Her marriage in 1554 to the Spanish King completed the revolution, for although the clothes of the Spanish courtiers who came to England in his train at first seemed strange to English eyes, the English soon adopted similar garments themselves. Even when Mary was succeeded by Elizabeth, even when England and Spain were at war, the Spanish influence persisted, and can be noted, with little modification, until the end of the century.[91]
It was not only in colour, or the lack of it, that the new fashions differed from those of the preceding generation. There was a real difference in cut. Cunnington sums up the special features of the new mode as ‘bombast, small waists and the introduction of knitting’ (Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century). Bombast was the stuffing used in doublets and hose in order to swell them out, eliminating all folds and creases. It consisted of rags, flock, horsehair, cotton or even bran, although this last sometimes led to disaster, since all the bran ran out if the clothes got torn. The bombasting of the doublet over the chest and the stuffing out of breeches naturally made the waist seem smaller, and the effect was increased by the use of tight-lacing. The short, bombasted breeches, especially in the form of trunk hose, exposed a considerable expanse of leg, and the introduction of knitting made it possible for leg coverings to fit the limbs more neatly than they had done before.
87 Emperor Charles V with his dog, Titian, 1532.
88 Portrait of a young man, Angelo Bronzino, c. 1540. The clothes of the upper classes show strong Spanish influence.
89 Pierre Quthe, François Clouet, 1562.
The effect of all this was a new rigidity and hauteur, reflecting the stiff and proud etiquette of the Spanish Court. Gone were the easy flowing lines of the costume of the earlier part of the century, when clothes seemed to express a man’s own personality, even his own fantasy. Instead men now seemed to be indicating their membership of an aristocratic caste. They hold themselves upright in padded and stiffened garments which form a veritable cuirasse. Art historians have noticed that Court portrait painting all over Europe represents its subjects standing, with one foot advanced, in an attitude of proud withdrawal, hieratic and stiff. And this effect was enhanced by the growth of the ruff.
We have already noted the draw-string through the upper edge of the shirt from which the ruff derived. It was only necessary to draw the string tight round the neck and an incipient ruff was already in being. When, as in the 1570s, it appeared above the high-standing collar of the doublet, it held the head high in an attitude of disdain. It goes without saying that the ruff was a mark of aristocratic privilege. It is an extreme example of the tendency of men’s clothes to show that their wearers do not need to work, or indeed to engage in any strenuous pursuit; and, as the century progressed, ruffs grew larger and larger until it is difficult to see how their wearers could have conveyed food to their mouths.
90 Mary I, Queen of England, Antonis Mor, 1554.
91 Queen Elizabeth I ‘Rainbow Portrait’ (detail), Isaac Oliver, c. 1600.
92 Anne of Austria, Queen of Spain, Sanchez Coello, 1571. A further step in the development of the ruff.
The ruff is an example of the ‘hierarchical’ element in dress. Women wore it too, but in female dress there is always another element to be noted. This – the ‘Seduction Principle’ as it has been called – is an attempt to exploit the wearer’s charms as a woman, as, for example, by the use of décolletage. Women wished to wear a ruff in order to show their status in society: they also wished to be attractive as women. The ‘Elizabethan compromise’ was to open the ruff in front so as to expose the bosom, and to allow it to rise in gauze wings at the back of the head. This can be seen quite clearly in contemporary portraits of Queen Elizabeth.[91]
The effect of the vertical line now dominant in costume was accentuated by the abandonment of flat caps (although apprentices were still compelled by law to wear them by an Act of Parliament of 1571) in favour of hats of various kinds. Some of the hats were in fact bonnets with a tall crown, which was sometimes stiffened with buckram; others were true hats made of stiff or stiffened materials. One of these was the so-called copotain which had a high conical crown; another variety resembled a modern bowler. They could be made of beaver, felt or leather, and could, if wished, be furnished with a plume and a jewel attached to the hat-band. There were also hats with broad brims and flat crowns, affected by magistrates and professional men. These were worn flat on the head: the Elizabethan gallant nearly always wore his hat at an angle or on the back of the head.
Women, too, began to wear hats in place of the hoods or bonnets with which they had been content for so long. At first they were used chiefly for riding or travelling. They were similar to men’s hats but smaller and were often worn over a linen cap. But, as hairdressing became more elaborate, this coif was gradually discarded. The headdress usually hid the back hair, which was plaited behind the head, but the front hair was visible, and considerable variation in arrangement can be seen in contemporary portraits. Until the 1570s it was often fluffed out at the temples with a central parting. Then it was turned back over a pad, and finally raised over a wire support known as a ‘palisadoe’. Queen Elizabeth set the fashion for dyeing the hair red, and many women, like herself, must have found it necessary to make use of false hair. In her old age the Queen wore a wig.
93 Magdalena, Duchess of Neuburg, portrait formerly attributed to Peter Candid (de Witte), c. 1613. The elaborate triple ruff of the early seventeenth century.
94 Four Englishwomen in dress of the Elizabethan era: a wife of a citizen of London, a wife of a wealthy citizen of London, a daughter of the London citizen’s wife, and a country-woman, from Description of England, Scotland and Ireland, Lucas de Heere, late sixteenth century.
The rigidity which marked men’s clothes in the second half of the sixteenth century was even more pronounced in those of women. The stomacher which formed the front of the bodice was stiffened with buckram or pasteboard and held in place by busks, often of wood and therefore unbending.[97] The skirt was swelled out by means of the farthingale. Its origin was universally acknowledged. It was the ‘spanish farthingale’ or ‘vertingale’, and in its original form it consisted of an underskirt distended by hoops of wire, wood or whalebone, growing larger towards the bottom of the skirt. It therefore very closely resembled the nineteenth-century crinoline in its construction. It first appeared in England about the year 1545 and was soon worn by all women but those of the labouring classes.
95, 96 Three granddaughters (LEFT) and the son (RIGHT) of Mildred, Lady Burghley, from her tomb in Westminster Abbey, 1589. The little girls’ hair is enclosed in a kind of chignon. The advantage of sculpture is that it enables us to see the ruff from the back.
97 Rubens and his wife Isabella Brant, Rubens, 1610. The painter wears the new falling collar, his wife the ruff. Her corsage is kept in place by a rigid busk.
98 Sigmund Feyerabend of Frankfurt, J. Sadeler, 1587. Costume of the middle-class scholar.
The ‘French farthingale’, which came in about 1580, was more of a court garment. It was called the ‘wheel farthingale’, which is a sufficient description of its general effect. It was as if the wearer were standing inside a wheel, with the skirt attached to the outer rim and falling vertically to the ground. In the well-known painting Queen Elizabeth at Blackfriars, the Queen and all her ladies are seen wearing this singularly unbecoming garment, which made women look as if they were hobby-horses. Rather similar was the ‘Italian farthingale’, made of wire or whalebone and worn slightly tilted at the back by means of a cushion, like a primitive bustle. The width could be as much as forty-eight inches.
99 Ball at the Court of King Henry III of France, anon., late sixteenth century.
A more popular fashion, outside court circles, was the ‘roll farthingale’, vulgarly known as the ‘bum roll’. This consisted of a padded roll of cloth in the shape of a polony, or boiling sausage, the two ends being joined together at the front of the body with tapes. By the end of the century it had become unfashionable, as is indicated by a character in Ben Jonson’s The Poetaster who remarks that she has ‘debased’ herself from the farthingale to ‘those bum rolls’.
In addition to the boned bodice and farthingale-extended skirt, women’s principal garment at this period was the gown, which fell in folds from fitted shoulders, leaving a gap in the front through which the dress underneath could be seen. The sleeves were puffed, and ended above the elbow to reveal the undersleeve. Sometimes long, vestigial, hanging sleeves were worn, attached to the upper sleeve. Other garments mentioned in contemporary inventories were the coat, a kind of loose jacket worn for warmth; the frock, which seems to have been a loose gown; and the cassock, which was of a similar form but with loose, open sleeves. For travelling, cloaks were worn and also a garment known as a ‘safeguard’, which seems to have been an over-skirt of plain material used both for warmth and to protect the rich stuff of the gown.
100 Queen Elizabeth I, Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c. 1592.
101 Sir Christopher Hatton, anon., 1589.
Men, too, began to employ a greater variety of garments. The doublet was still the main item in a gentleman’s wardrobe, but over this could be worn the jerkin or jacket, often sleeveless. The cloak had now become indispensable, but it was no longer the long cloak of the preceding generation but a short cloak, sometimes hung from one shoulder. Although it had originally been a riding cloak, it was worn, during the second half of the sixteenth century, indoors as well as out. It was made of rich materials, and the really fashionable man required three cloaks, one for morning, one for afternoon and one for evening. Cloaks sometimes had standing collars, and were sometimes provided with a tippet, usually of velvet.
Men also wore the garment known as a ‘cassock’, which was a loose jacket reaching to the hips, and a gabardine which was a long, loose overcoat with wide sleeves. But the most curious item in the Elizabethan gentleman’s wardrobe was the mandilion or mandeville.[102] We cannot do better than quote Cunnington’s description: ‘Originally a military habit, it was a loose hip-length jacket with standing collar and hanging “coat” sleeves (later sham) and wings. The side seams were open, producing a front and back panel. It was buttoned from collar to chest only, and put on over the head. It was frequently worn “Collie-Westonward”, or awry, “Collie Weston” being a Cheshire saying for anything that goes wrong. The garment was thus worn sideways, with the front and back panels draping the shoulders, while one sleeve hung down in front and the other behind’ (Handbook of English Costume in the Sixteenth Century).
102 Sir Walter Raleigh, anon., c. 1588.
Male nether garments showed some peculiar variations in the second half of the century. Ordinary trunk hose could now be worn with ‘canions’. These were breeches worn underneath the trunk hose (and often of a different material) and reaching to the knee. The stockings could be drawn over them, so that we might say that the ‘hose’ of the medieval period has now divided into three separate garments.
True breeches, if we may call them such, dispensed with trunk hose altogether. They could take various forms. ‘Venetians’ were rather baggy breeches fastening below the knee with buttons or points. They came in about 1570, but were most popular in the last twenty years of the century. When very baggy they were called ‘galligaskins’, ‘gascoynes’ or ‘slops’.
With such garments stockings acquired a new importance. They were cut on the cross from cloth until about 1590, after which they were increasingly replaced by knitted stockings, sometimes of silk. They were sometimes of bright colours, yellow being a favourite, and were often adorned with clocks of coloured silk or even with gold thread, and were gartered in various ways: by a simple ribbon (which could, however, be adorned with gold thread or even with jewels) tied below the knee, the bow being at the side; or by cross-gartering, which did not in the least resemble what many Shakespearean producers imagine it to have been, i.e. a kind of trellis-work covering the entire leg. Cross-gartering, which was fashionable from 1560 onwards, was formed by a piece of ribbon encircling the leg below the knee, crossed at the back, brought forward above the knee and tied in a bow.
Footwear consisted of shoes or boots. The shoes were moderately rounded and were just beginning, as the century closed, to have heels. They could be made of leather, silk, velvet or plain cloth. The soles could be of leather or cork. Pumps and slippers were worn indoors. Boots, which until the last quarter of the century were used only for riding, became general wear, even indoors. The fashionable variety was close-fitting and reached to the thigh, the top being sometimes turned down in different ways. Such boots were only made possible by the improvements in leather-dressing originating in Cordoba. Our English word ‘cordwainer’ means a man who has derived his craft from this Spanish city.
Spain was also responsible for the fine leather gloves so much prized by the Elizabethans and which only began to be manufactured in England from about 1580. The most usual form was provided with gauntlets, which were often decorated with gold thread and fringed. They could also be perfumed, and were in general carried in the hand or tucked into the belt. The elegant gentleman also required a handkerchief, which was made of fine linen, embroidered or edged with lace. The clothes and accessories of the upper classes in Europe had indeed reached an astonishing degree of elaboration and refinement by the end of the sixteenth century.
103 Richard Sackville, Earl of Dorset, Isaac Oliver, 1616. He wears the transitional form between the ruff and the falling collar.