8-3Fashion

Fashion Written by Claire Inda

Fashion and hairstyles of the seventeenth century were elegant and fancy. Queen Elizabeth always wore the best and most expensive things. According to the book Tudor Costume and Fashion, Queen Elizabeth had, “99 Robes, 269 Gowns, 125 Petticoats, 96 Cloakes, 31 Cloakes”. That was a lot of dresses, compared to her court or any of the other classes. Hair was worn high by the women of the early century, usually in tall rounded cylinders, with large head gear and hats. The Nobles of the 16th century often wore clothes in bright colors made of fine fabrics like silk and velvet. This showed their good taste, wealth, and status. Elizabethan dresses were elaborate, mirroring the prosperity and energy of the age. These dresses had huge skirts, which were supported by cylindrical or bell-shaped structures of wood, whalebone, or wire called farthings. In this time period, bodices were worn. These bodices usually had a high or low neck line. Under these bodices, women wore corsets. The corsets were shorter than the ones formally worn. They still did their job, which was to change the shape of a woman’s body to make her thinner. Women who wore these dresses used to wear pleated and starched ruffs. Those pieces of ruffled fabric would sit around their neck. In the late 15th and early 16th centuries, dress makers still made the clothes by hand, and every dress, corset, shoe, and bodice was unique.

Men had a different style from women. In the 1590s, young men had short hair or hair that came down to their neck. Men wore fitted hose that ended above the knee. There were many similarities between the men’s fashion and the women’s fashion. They both wore ruffs and had longer sleeves, although men wore shirts instead of bodices.

People of the middle class did not wear as nice clothes, since they didn’t have much money. They would wear clothes similar to the Nobles but not as nice. Lower class women were different from those of the middle class. They wore bodices with skirts and petticoats. They usually had only a few dresses, since even the simplest dresses were expensive to them. Their hair was worn up with a small hat or bonnet over their hair. Men, on the other hand, simply wore smart clothes. If you wore smart clothes you were practical. For instance, a farmer might wear a linen shirt with turned down collar and cuffs, his fanciest clothing, but he didn’t. Instead, he dressed smartly. He would wear a jerkin of soft leather with a turned-down collar, and fastened by pewter buttons. Common people didn’t have the money to spend on many clothes.

In the Elizabethan period, different words were used for things we wear and use today. According to the webpage, A Fashionable Vocabulary: Clothing and Fabrics, “A necklace was commonly called a carcanet (KAR-ka-net) before about 1575, when the word necklace comes into use. Lace was a general term for all kinds of trims and braids, as well as cords or points to fasten a garment. When a fabric was described as printed, the design had been stamped with hot irons. The light weight silk you lined your slashes with was probably sarcenet (sar-sa-nett); so called because it was understood to have originated with the Saracens. You might tell an interested party that your very fine, sheer cotton chemise is made of lawn very fine linen). Those of China silk (habotai) are probably of cypress.” There were so many interesting names for pieces of clothing.

Even in the world of Fashion, life was unfair. You either had rich clothes, or you had poor clothes. That was how life was. It touched every part of society, especially Fashion.


 * = Yes, the word, “Cloakes” appears twice. If there were two different types, I am not sure. The fact that there are two different numbers for each of them must mean that they have a difference between each other.

Adult Fashion:



Children’s Fashion:



Works Cited

Hinds, Kathryn. Life in Elizabethan England: The City. Tarrytown, NY: Marshall Cavendish Corporation, 2008.

Folger Shakespeare Library, "Fashion, then and now." Folger Shakespeare Library, Advancing Knowledge & the Arts. 8 Mar 2009 .

Norris, Herbert. Tudor Costumes and Fashion. London: Dover Publications, 1997.

Pendergast, Sara, and Pendergast, Tom. Fashion, Costume, and Culture: Clothing, Headwear, Body Decorations, and Footwear through the Ages. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Learning: The Gale Group, 2004.

Secara, Maggie Pierce. "A Fashionable Vocabulary: Clothing and Fabrics." Life in Elizabethan England:a Compendium of Common Knowledge: 1558-1603: Elizabethan Commonplaces for Writers, Actors, and Re-enactors. 8 Mar 2009 .

Pictures: Wikipedia, "1550-1600 in fashion." Wikipedia. Wikipedia. 8 Mar 2009 . Wikipedia, "1600-1650 in fashion." Wikipedia. Wikipedia. 8 Mar 2009 .