Tudor

Clothes

This fine Elizabethan nobleman and his lady are dressed almost solely for fashion and not for comfort. The ruffs around their necks are stiff with the newly discovered starch.

The clothes display the practice of cutting slits in garments and pulling the lining through. This is thought to have been started by Swiss troops patching up their clothes with silks, they had plundered, after defeating the Duke of Burgundy's men in battle.

The lady's dress is held out with hoops or padded rolls and petticoats. She wears a stiffened stomacher fastened to her dress with long straight pins. The man's doublet (jacket) is padded and stiffened with bone and wire into a point or 'peascod'.

This rigid costume reflected the aristocratic distance the wearers were putting between themselves and other classes of person.

How did this gentleman hope his legs would look in padded trunkhose and stockings?

Click the picture for an answer.