Underwear
As far as can he determined, women in this period, at least in England, wore neither panties nor underdrawers. In the Middle Ages it had been argued that the wearing of braies (men’s pants) by women could provoke, by friction, undesirable “heat” in the female genitals, and the practice was thus discouraged. In Italy and France, women started wearing long, trouserlike drawers in the 1530s, but the fact that this practice still struck English travelers as odd as late as 1617 seems to indicate that Englishwomen did not adopt the fashion. Cloth pads were used during menstruation, but how they were held in place is unclear.
Englishwomen wore a chemise, shift, or smock as their undermost garment. Usually of linen and ankle-length, this garment might be gathered at the neck to form a soft ruff, which would then show, instead of a partlet, above the garments worn on top.
Body-stitchets (stays) were an early form of corset. These were made of heavy canvas, boiled leather (called a basquine and worn over a quilted underbodice), and even iron. More than one might be worn at the same time. Trim sometimes showed above the garments worn on top. The husks used for stiffening were made of wood, steel, or cane until about 1600, after which whalebone came into fashion.
The farthingale was worn by women of fashion from 1545 through the 1620s. This structure of hoops of rushes, wood, wire, or whalebone was used to extend the skirt under which it was worn. It converted the columnar skirt of the fifteenth century into the cone shape of the sixteenth. There were three distinct versions. The Spanish farthingale was bell-shaped. Originally vertugado, it was in fashion in Spain in the 1470s and was introduced in England by way of France (where it was called the vertugale from about 1530). The French farthingale was a padded roll worn around the hips to create a cylindrical effect. It was in fashion from about 1570. The wheel, cartwheel, or drum farthingale was in fashion in the late sixteenth century. The flat top of the cartwheel above the hoops was made of canvas. It had a hole for the waist and attached with tapes. The skirt fell directly over the drum shape and the material was gathered into a narrow waist.
For home wear, women wore plainer fabrics. An open gown might be worn like a housecoat over a bodice and petticoat of embroidered linen. The word petticoat could be used for any skirt or underskirt and usually several were worn.
OUTERWEAR
In cold weather people simply added more clothing: a long gown, a jacket of lambskins, a fur-lined cloak, padded garments, boot hose with long boots, and extra petticoats and shirts. Both sexes wore scarves, mufflers, and mittens.
There were no special riding habits but some women hunted and hawked in men’s clothing, wearing breeches and high boots.
CHILDREN’S DRESS
Infants were swaddled (wrapped in cloth bands), a practice that was encouraged by doctors who subscribed to the theory of humours (see Chapter Six for more details). Swaddling was believed to prevent the baby from losing too much moisture. Swaddling bands almost completely immobilized children during the first four months of life. At four months the arms were freed but not the legs.
Young children of both sexes were clothed alike, in gowns that fell to the feet, aprons, bibs, and caps, until they were four or five years old. Older children were dressed as miniature versions of adults.
COUNTRY DRESS
Crude clothing identified the ordinary countryman: coarse homespun woolen garments of reddish brown for the best garment, worn with kersey or knitted hose and heavy hobnail shoes. Field clothes were fustian tunics with loose breeches and canvas leggings buskined (tied in place) with strips of cloth. Samuel Rowlands (1609) describes a typical countryman’s headgear as a “greasy hat that had a hole ate through by some rat.” After about 1560, the “thrummed” (fringed or shaggy) hat became associated with the poor. There seems to be no distinctive dress for the poorest class of women, but a country maidservant might wear the bodice of her petticoat “laced before” and a blue or black kirtle.
HAIR, BEARDS AND COSMETICS
Women’s Hairstyles
Women dyed their hair, bleached it in the sun, and washed it with alkalized water. Golden hair was highly esteemed but all shades of red and auburn found favor at court even though very little hair showed beneath some headgear. From about 1560, hair was curled and pulled back from the forehead, dressed over a pad and interwoven with pearls and jeweled ornaments. In the 1620s, hair was styled “tete de mouton”—frizzled at the sides with a high bun at the back and ornamented with ribbon, pearls, or flowers. Maids were hairdressers for their mistresses. Women might also wear wigs.
Men’s Hairstyles
Early in the sixteenth century, hair was worn shoulder length or bobbed to the bottom of the ears. By 1520, chin level was fashionable and by 1530 styles went even shorter, especially at the back. Hair might be combed forward at the front to form a short fringe over the forehead. In the mid-sixteenth century men added a trimmed beard and mustache to short hair. Later in the century, hair was longer at the sides. From 1625, men of the court party wore ringlets cascading down their backs. When a single ringlet was tied with a ribbon bow and pulled over the shoulder it was called a love-lock. Men did not wear wigs.
Beards
Most men were clean shaven before King Henry VIII set the style for beards and mustaches in the 1520s. Under Mary and Elizabeth there was no one predominant fashion but the trims included the bodkin beard (long, pointed, in the center of the chin only), the Cadiz beard (a large, disordered growth), the pencil beard (a slight tuft of hair on the point of the chin), the spade beard (cut in the shape of an ace of spades and popular with soldiers from 1570 to 1605), and the swallow’s tail beard (forked but with the ends long and spread wide). From 1550 to 1600, it was never in fashion to wear a mustache without a beard. After 1600 the clean-shaven look came back into style. The Vandyke beard (a carefully trimmed mustache and pointed chin heard) was popular during the reign of Charles I.
Cosmetics
Puritans disapproved of cosmetics and the poor could not afford them, but women who could used them in an effort to achieve what was considered the “standard” for beauty: very white skin, red lips, and lamplike eyes.
A powder made of ground alabaster was used to whiten the skin. Or one could apply a lotion made of beeswax, asses’ milk, and the ground jawbone of a hog. White fucus, another popular whitener, was made by grinding up the burned jawbone of a hog, sieving it, and laying it on with oil of white poppy. Many of these homemade mixtures were benign but some caused scarring and other skin problems. Ceruse was white lead (a poison) mixed with vinegar. Other whiteners were a mixture of borax and sulphur, a lotion made of white of egg, alum, borax, poppy seeds, and powdered eggshell, and a glaze of egg white.
Fucus was a generic term for red dye used to redden the lips. It may have been made of madder or of red ochre or of red crystalline mercuric sulfide (which ate the flesh). To redden their cheeks, women used a mixture of cochineal, white of hard-boiled egg, milk of green figs, alum, and gum arabic.
A freckle was any kind of spot and was anathema to the Elizabethan woman. To get rid of spots she applied birch-tree sap or ground brimstone or oil of turpentine or sublimate of mercury (a poison).
Kohl was used to emphasize the eyes, and another poison, belladonna, was put into them (a custom imported from Venice) to produce huge, velvety pupils.
Dental Care
Dental care was primitive, but people did attempt it, usually by vigorously rubbing or washing their teeth with mixtures such as white wine and vinegar boiled with honey. Toothpicks and tooth-cloths were popular gift items. The toothbrush was known by 1649 but was not yet in use in England.
Perfumes
Almost everyone, male and female, wore scent of some kind. Henry VIII's favorite perfume combined musk, rose water, ambergris, and civet. Sweet marjoram was the major ingredient in Queen Elizabeth’s favorite scent. Other perfumes used aloe, nutmeg, and storax. Scents like rose water and lavender water were distilled at home. More exotic scents were imported.
To cover unpleasant odors, the result of infrequent washing, fabrics were also heavily perfumed. The custom extended to accessories, and one seventeenth-century recipe for perfuming gloves advises steeping two spoonfuls of gum-dragon all night in rosewater mixed with four grains of ground musk and eight grains of ground civet before adding half a spoonful of a mixture of oil of cloves, cinnamon, and jasmine. This blend was then beaten into a thin jelly and rubbed all over the gloves, after which they were left in a dry, clean place for forty-eight hours. The final step was to rub the gloves with the hands until the gloves became limber.
ASSORTED ACCESSORIES
aprons: Worn by working classes and country housewives throughout the period. From 1600 to 1640, fashionable ladies wore elegant and elaborately decorated versions.
boot hose: From 1560 to 1680, large, loose boot hose were worn inside boots to protect the hose. They were turned down just below the knee.
boots: Boots were well-fitted, sometimes with outside lacing. By the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century, they reached above the knee. They might be of leather or of russet cloth. Those hanging loose about the leg and turned down and fringed were called “lugged boots.” Cockers were knee-high boots of rough make worn by laborers and countrymen. From about 1585, brogues were worn by poor people and some soldiers. Buskins were riding hoots and reached the calf or the knee.
fans: The hand fan appeared in England by 1572, having previously been in use in both France and Italy, and quickly gained wide popularity. Large feather fans were round or semicircular and often had a small mirror at the center. Others were made of embroidered silk or velvet. Sir Francis Drake presented Queen Elizabeth with one of red and white feathers with a gold handle inlaid with half moons of mother-of-pearl and diamonds.
girdles or waistbands (belts): Women’s girdles might be made of silk, ribbon, velvet covered with small plaquettes, embossed metal, or metal links. The fashion of wearing a girdle from which trinkets were suspended continued until about 1600. Wealthy men wore girdles of gold, silver, embroidered fabrics, velvet, or silk. The poor made do with caddis, a woven tape.
gloves: Worn by everyone and popular as gifts, they were usually gauntleted and embroidered on the backs and cuffs.
handkerchiefs: In use from the sixteenth century on, they were also called muckinders (a slang term which could also mean a baby’s bib) and napkins.
hats: Men remained uncovered only in the presence of royalty. Otherwise, if a man removed his hat to greet a lady, he put it right hack on, indoors or out. The size of hats increased under James I and large feathers and other objects, such as gloves, handkerchiefs, and ribbons might he stuck onto the hat and into the hatband. Hats for both sexes were made of velvet, silk, felt, taffeta, beaver, and ermine. Beaver hats were rare until around 1580. During the second quarter of the seventeenth century most men wore either hats with moderate crowns and wide brims turned up at one side or a sugar-loaf-shaped hat called the copotain. Among women, close-fitting linen caps (coifs) were worn indoors and hoods or hats were added on top to go outdoors.
jewelry: Often made from melted-down coins, the most popular types of jewelry were bracelets (made of ornamental gold links, enameled and jeweled; of rows of pearls or beads of amber, coral, or agate; of long, black, tubular heads called bugles; or of hair), brooches (worn by men and women to hold feathers to hats and by women to ornament the bodice), carcanets (hanging collars of linked ornamental design set with jewels from which hung little pendants; rarely seen except at court), chains (gentlemen’s were frequently enameled; ladies wore long chains of stones or pearls), earrings (not worn until the late Elizabethan period, they were then seen on both men and women), pendants (worn suspended from chains or ribbons to hang just below the chest), and rings. Rings were worn by all classes and ranged from signets to cameos, intaglios, rings set with precious stones, and memorial rings.
masks: Worn to shield the wearer from the sun when riding and to hide identity, some had glass-filled eyeholes.
muffs, snufkins, or snoskyns: Made of cloth or fur, the smaller models hung suspended from a woman’s girdle.
pomander: A hollow perforated sphere containing a waxed perfume ball impregnated with scent. Men wore pomanders suspended from a chain. Women attached them to their girdles. Often constructed of gold or silver and set with jewels or engraved or enameled, a pomander might be any size and could contain ambergris, musk, cloves, or hartshorn. An alternative style was constructed to look like an orange, with quarters secured at the base by hinges that opened outward when the top was unscrewed.
shoes: Men’s shoes were generally flat-heeled and might be made of leather, silk, brocade, or velvet and decorated with silver or copper gilt buckles or large ornamental rosettes of silk. Under Henry VIII most shoes were duck-bill shaped. Shoes that more closely fitted the shape of the foot came into fashion in 1554 but they continued to have broad toes. Some had ankle straps. Styles of men and women’s shoes went by the same names: mule (a slipper with no heel piece), pinson (a light indoor shoe), pump (a single-sole shoe, close-fitting to the ankle, of cloth or thin leather with flat heels), and slipper (a low-cut indoor shoe). Women’s overshoes, which raised the wearer out of the mud, included chopines, clogs or pattens (with wooden soles), and pantofles (cork-soled skuffs which became common after about 1570).
spectacles: Eyeglasses were known as early as the thirteenth century and generally available after about 1520. Demand increased after the invention of the printing press. The Guild of Spectacle Makers was chartered in 1629.
stockings: Women’s stockings were held up by garters below the knee. Silk, worsted, and fine yarn were all in general use for stockings by 1580.
watches: The “Nuremberg Egg,” a portable timepiece invented by Peter Henlien in 1502, may be a myth, but “pocket sundials” were in general use by 1545 and “traveling clocks” are frequently mentioned after 1575. Early watches were large and might be octagonal, oval, or round in shape. Their outer covers were pierced with elaborate openwork to enable the strike to be heard. After about 1580 the size decreased and watches were used as personal ornaments.
ITEMS OF CLOTHING
arched hood (1580-1620): This hood made an arch over the head and was associated with widows.
beguin or Flemish hood: A rectangle of linen carefully folded into a symmetrical headdress and caught together at the nape of the neck.
biggin: A cap men wore to bed. It tied under the chin with laces or ribbon.
bone grace or bongrace (1530-1615): A flat, square cap with a short flap of velvet on each side.
bonnet: A generic term for the French hood. Low, flat men’s hats were also called bonnets.
braies: Leg coverings worn under long robes and tunics, these were the forerunners of hose worn as outerwear.
bum-barrel, bum-roll, or waist bolster: A padded roll tied around the waist under the skirt to hold it out.
canions (1570-1620): Tubular, thigh-hugging extensions worn over the area from breeches to knee. Separate netherstocks could be gartered either over or under the canions.
cap: In men’s wear, a cap was a hat worn by an inferior person. Women’s caps were worn indoors or under hats.
cassock (1530-1660): Worn by men and women, this was a loose, hip-length coat with a small collar or hood.
caul: A skull cap of silk, often worn by maidens. Caul was also used as a term for a bag-shaped hair net (of gold mesh lined with silk or made entirely of silk thread or human hair), which held the hair hack in a coil. This could be worn alone or under a hat.
cloak: Long cloaks were worn by both sexes. From about 1545, men also wore, indoors and out, a short, full cloak, richly lined, with a high upstanding collar. The Spanish cloak (1535-1620) was hooded. The Dutch cloak (1545-1620) had wide, hanging sleeves. The French cloak (1570-1670) reached the knees and was worn over one shoulder and gathered up over the arm.
coat: A short-sleeved or sleeveless jacket or jerkin which was worn over the d
oublet.
court bonnet (1575-1585): A pillbox of velvet trimmed with jewels and feathers and worn over a caul.
drawers: This male undergarment is mentioned as early as 1150 but was not universally worn.
falling band or falling collar (1540-1670): Any turned-down collar, often lace-edged, worn instead of a ruff.
forepart: Any underskirt, usually highly decorated, revealed through the inverted-V opening in the front of a skirt.
French hood (1530-1630): A small bonnet made on a stiff frame and worn far back on the head. Folds of material fell below the shoulders from a short flat panel at the back. Usually dark in color but decorated with biliments (borders of silk, satin, or velvet trimmed with gold or jewels), it was worn over a fine linen cap called a crespin or creppin.
gabardine: A long, loose overcoat with hanging sleeves, worn by both sexes and all classes.
gable headdress (1500-1540): Square, it had two long back panels and front lappets.
gown: For men this was either a sleeveless mock-coat or a cloak with ornamental sleeves. In Tudor times gowns were worn primarily by older men and professionals and on ceremonial occasions. For women the gown was an overdress worn for added warmth or greater dignity. It could be close-bodied or loose and have long or short sleeves or sleeves hanging loosely from the shoulder. Ceremonial gowns might have a train.
head-rail (after 1630): A large square of material pinned around the back of the head. Less fashionably, a kerchief might be draped over the head for covering.
The Writer's Guide to Everyday Life in Renaissance England Page 2