17th century, Manuscript / Archival Research, Research, Seventeenth-century fashion, Stuart

Did Seventeenth-Century English Women Wear Drawers?

A question I see pop up often, and one that continues to spark much debate in online costuming communities and between historians of dress is: Did early modern women wear anything under their skirts? If so, did they wear drawers?

Susan North’s recently published book, Sweet and Clean?, is one recent scholarly text that has tackled this question. In the book she offers ample evidence for the use of drawers by men during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.[1] When it comes to women, she writes that ‘drawers for women, [is] a question that continues to baffle dress historians’.[2] She offers examples of women wearing drawers in the eighteenth century to argue that it was indeed possible for women to wear such an undergarment. However, she does not provide evidence for the seventeenth century.

Most surviving evidence of drawers being worn by women comes from sixteenth-century Italy, where sources described sex workers as wearing these garments in gender-bending displays of eroticism and the subversion of social norms.

Ferrando Bertelli (Publisher), Venetian Woman (likely a courtesan) with Moveable Skirt, 1563, Italian. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Early modern English ballads depict men and women fighting over what could be drawers or breeches, or, more literally, fighting over who wore the pants in the relationship. The wearing of drawers by women in the context of this type of moralising literature made their husband into a cuckhold, thus undermining his authority and threatening early modern ideas of masculinity.

The Jolly Widdower: / OR, / A Warning for BATCHELORS (Printed for I. Blare, at the Looking glass, on London Bridge, c. 1664-1703). The English Broadside Ballad Archive.

However, moralising literature often tells us more about anxieties early moderns held, rather than the reality of what was actually happening, especially when it comes to dress practices. In this blogpost then I want to set the record straight that, yes, women could and did wear drawers in the seventeenth century.

The earliest example from the seventeenth century is a pair of drawers on the effigy of Queen Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey. Funerary records show that these were specially constructed in 1603, as a warrant relating to funeral expenses noted,

‘And to John Colte for the Image representing her late Majestie with a paire of straight bodies a paire of drawers…’[3]

Janet Arnold examined these drawers and noted they were likely made of fustian and gathered into a waistband that had worked eyelet holes similar to those on breeches. Whether this is a garment that Elizabeth wore (Arnold does not mention if they appear in her accounts) or if they were made to pad out the hips and legs of the effigy (they are stuffed with what appears to be hemp) is unknown.[4]

Drawers on the effigy of Elizabeth I, 1603. Westminster Abbey, London.

By the 1630s, Queen Henrietta Maria’s accounts contain multiple references to drawers made from linen and wool.

In May 1631 her French tailor George Gelin billed the wardrobe for:

‘18 pare of Holland drawers for her majesty binded with ribbon for the making of them’.[5]

On 17th August 1639, Henrietta Maria’s other tailor James Bardon

‘delivered into the office of her Majesty’s wardrobe two pair of woolen drawers for the mend & bordering of them’.[6]

Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of Henrietta Maria de Bourbon, Queen of England, c. 1636-8. San Diego Museum of Art.

While it is possible that the queen’s drawers were the result of French influence on her wardrobe (she was after all a French princess), there is also evidence that non-royalty wore these undergarments around the same time too.

In 1642, the probate inventory of the widow Elizabeth Burges of St. Nicholas Parish in Bristol recorded

‘one payer of cotten drawers at                 s. j [1 shilling]’[7]

Here cotton likely referred to a woollen fabric rather than cotton-fibre textiles. Whether these drawers belonged to Elizabeth, or another family member such as her husband is unclear.

In the 1660s Samuel Pepys made ambiguous references to the morality of his wife Elisabeth’s drawers as he was frequently concerned about whether she wore them when visiting her male dance teacher (who Pepys often suspected she was having an affair with).[8]

He recorded in his diary on the 15 May 1663 that

‘But it is a deadly folly and plague that I bring upon myself to be so jealous and by giving myself such an occasion more than my wife desired of giving her another month’s dancing. Which however shall be ended as soon as I can possibly. But I am ashamed to think what a course I did take by lying to see whether my wife did wear drawers to-day as she used to do, — and other things to raise my suspicion of her, but I found no true cause of doing it’.

James Thomson (engraver), after John Hayls, Elisaebth Pepys, c. 1825 (copy of original seventeenth-century portrait, now destroyed).

On 4 June of that same year, Pepys again wrote that

‘I whiled away the morning up and down while they got themselves ready, and I did so watch to see my wife put on drawers, which poor soul she did, and yet I could not get off my suspicions, she having a mind to go into Fenchurch Street before she went out for good and all with me, which I must needs construe to be to meet Pembleton, when she afterwards told me it was to buy a fan that she had not a mind that I should know of, and I believe it is so’.

Rather than wearing drawers indicating a lack of morals or a proclivity to promiscuity (as it did with Italian courtesans) it appears that Pepys was more concerned with whether his wife might allow her dance teacher easy access to her nether regions by not wearing this garment.

In 1688, the linen draper supplied Queen Catherine of Braganza’s wardrobe with

‘fine frieze holland for drawers for her majesty’.[9]

Although a bill does not survive, presumably it was Catherine’s seamstresses who made these linen drawers up, along with other goods from the linen supplied.

Peter Lely, Portrait of Queen Catherine of Braganza, c. 1663-5. Royal Collection.

Both men and women could wear drawers during the seventeenth century, and tailors and seamstresses made these garments for both genders. It appears that, like North has suggested for the eighteenth century, women likely wore them for warmth or riding. Or as Pepys’ diary entries suggest, even modesty. Or perhaps the comment by Pepys about his wife being a ‘pour soul’ for putting on drawers was because it was summer and the weight of all her skirts would already have been hot. Timing of the queens’ bills suggests that woolen drawers were more common in winter and linen in summer, although a much larger sample would need to be taken to determine this.

Much more research is needed the make firm statements about the history of women’s drawers in the early modern period. As Pat Poppy helpfully points out in her comment below, most of these references relate to Francophile women living in England: Henrietta Maria was a French princess and Elisabeth Pepys’ father was French (her mother was not). Catherine of Braganza’s wardrobe, as my forthcoming book will show, was also heavily influenced by French fashions. So was this a French thing?

I will continue to update this post as I come across references. But what is certain is that drawers were certainly owned and worn by some women in seventeenth century England. How widespread the practice was remains to be determined.

References


[1] Susan North, Sweet and Clean?: Bodies and Clothes in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020), 126-30.

[2] North, Sweet and Clean?, 131-2.

[3] The National Archives UK (TNA), E 351/3145, fol. 25, transcribed and cited in Janet Arnold, ‘The “pair of straight bodies” and “a pair of drawers” dating from 1603 which Clothe the Effigy of Queen Elizabeth I in Westminster Abbey’, Costume, 41 (2007), 9.

[4] Arnold, ‘The “pair of straight bodies”’, 8-9.

[5] TNA: LR 5/64.

[6] TNA: LR 5/67.

[7] Transcribed in Edwin George, Stella George and Peter Fleming, eds., Bristol Probate Inventories, Part 1: 1542-1650 (Bristol Record Society, 2002), 125.

[8] https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/05/15/#c47569 and https://www.pepysdiary.com/diary/1663/06/04/

[9] TNA: LR 5/83.

17th century, 18th century, Manuscript / Archival Research, Research, Seventeenth-century fashion, Stuart

Second Book Announcement: The Women Who Clothed the Stuart Queens

I’m excited to finally share that I’ve signed a contract with Bloomsbury Visual Arts (an imprint of Bloomsbury Academic) for my next book,

The Women Who Clothed the Stuart Queens: Gender and Work in the Royal Wardrobe and the Fashion Marketplace

The book examines the lives and changing work of the women who made, sold, managed and cared for the clothing of five Stuart queens between 1603–1714: Anna of Denmark, Henrietta Maria, Catherine of Braganza, Queen Mary II and Queen Anne.

Using a wide range of written, visual and material sources, including extensive royal household accounts, this book explores the clothing and fashion cultures of the Stuart period through the lens of the work performed by women (and men!) who worked in the shops of London and the private chambers of the royal household, sitting at the intersection of the fashion marketplace and the royal courts.

In doing so, it recovers the material knowledge and skills of women who clothed these queens. This includes makers and sellers such as seamstresses, silkwomen, tirewomen, mantua-makers and milliners, as well as elite women such as the mistress of the robes and mistress of the sweet coffers, and servants such as laundresses and wardrobe attendants, who worked to manage and care for clothing in Office of the Robes, a sub-department of the Queens’ household.

The book demonstrates that women of all sorts were closely involved in the creation of Stuart magnificence in the fashion marketplace and royal courts of seventeenth-century England and their work was often facilitated by private informal female networks that spanned elite and non-elite structures. This ‘upstairs-downstairs’ history also focuses on under represented periods of fashion history, particularly the period 1680-1715.

I’m really looking forward to getting stuck into writing the rest of the book and looking forward to taking you all on this journey and talking more about my research in both blog and Instagram posts.

17th century, Bodies and Stays, reconstruction, Research, Seventeenth-century fashion, Stuart

Sittingbourne Bodies Pattern, c. 1630-50

To celebrate the upcoming release of Shaping Femininity I’ve decided the post the pattern that I made of the garment when I examined it in 2017.

A pattern for this garment has since been published by the School of Historical Dress in 2018’s Patterns of Fashion 5. The School’s pattern is much more detailed than mine. So I highly suggest that anyone who wants to make this garment check out their instructions too.

Still, I figured that since I drew this pattern as part of my study notes after examining the garment myself (first in 2015 and again in 2017), and there are no patterns in own book, I might as well share it with you all!

Although I have written c. 1620-50 on the pattern, these bodies are more suitable for the 1630s, 40s and 50s. So ideal for any English civil war re-enactors out there.

I hope some of you find it useful!

Sittingbourne Bodies pattern civil war stays pattern corset stuart corset

Click here to download a Sittingbourne Bodies doc.

Make sure to keep an eye out for my book which will contain detail photographs of the bodies too – and a discussion of their possible owner.

15th century, 16th century, 17th century, Bodies and Stays, Busk, Elizabethan, Farthingales, French Farthingale Roll Reconstruction, French Wheel Farthingale Reconstruction, Jacobean, Mantua gown, Manuscript / Archival Research, Research, Research Publications, Seventeenth-century fashion, Stuart, Tailoring

Shaping Femininity Book Cover and Pre-order!

Very excited to announce that my book Shaping Femininity has a cover image and pre-order links! See below for details!

About Shaping Femininity

In sixteenth and seventeenth-century England, the female silhouette underwent a dramatic change. This very structured form, created using garments called bodies and farthingales, existed in various extremes in Western Europe and beyond, in the form of stays, corsets, hoop petticoats and crinolines, right up until the twentieth century. With a nuanced approach that incorporates a stunning array of visual and written sources and drawing on transdisciplinary methodologies, Shaping Femininity explores the relationship between material culture and femininity by examining the lives of a wide range of women, from queens to courtiers, farmer’s wives and servants, uncovering their lost voices and experiences. It reorients discussions about female foundation garments in English and wider European history, arguing that these objects of material culture began to shape and define changing notions of the feminine bodily ideal, social status, sexuality and modesty in the early modern period, influencing enduring Western notions of femininity.

Beautifully illustrated in full colour throughout, Shaping Femininity is the first large-scale exploration of the materiality, production, consumption and meanings of women’s foundation garments in sixteenth and seventeenth-century England. It offers a fascinating insight into dress and fashion in the early modern period, and offers much of value to all those interested in the history of early modern women and gender, material culture and consumption, and the history of the body, as well as curators and reconstructors.

 

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements
Notes to the Reader
Abbreviations

Introduction: Investigating the structured female body
1. The foundations of the body: foundation garments and the early modern female silhouette
2. The artificial body: courtiers, gentlewomen and disputed visions of femininity, 1560-1650
3. The socially mobile body: consumption of foundation garments by middling and common women, 1560 – 1650
4. The body makers: making and buying foundation garments in early modern England
5. The everyday body: assumptions, tropes and the lived experience
6. The sexual body: eroticism, reproduction and control
7. The respectable body: rising consumption and the changing sensibilities of late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century England
Conclusion: legacies and misconceptions

Glossary
Notes
Selected Bibliography
List of Illustrations
Index

 

Pre-Order:

USA/CAN: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/shaping-femininity-9781350164109/

UK: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/shaping-femininity-9781350164109/

AUS/NZ: https://www.bloomsbury.com/au/shaping-femininity-9781350164109/

EUROPE: It should be available via Amazon and all good online book retailers.

EVERYWHERE ELSE: Also available soon for pre-order from all good online book retailers.

 

17th century, Bodies and Stays, Busk, Mantua gown, Seventeenth-century fashion, Stuart, Tailoring

Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory (1688) and late Seventeenth-century Women’s Dress Terminology

The 1680s was a decade of change in women’s fashion. The new loose-fitting mantua gown vied for popularity with traditional gowns that contained structured bodices (a battle that the new style would win in later decades) and bodies slowly began to be called stays during this decade. One of the best written sources we have for women’s dress during this period is Randle Holme’s The Academy of Armory, published in 1688, which has a section on “terms used by tailors” for men and women’s dress.

Holme was a steward to the Stationers Company of Chester and then an alderman. Along with three other members of his family he was a keen genealogist and heraldist. While his book the Academy of Armory was primarily a book of heraldry, it also contained “Etymologies, Definitions and Historical Observations” of his time, including descriptions of various different trades such as tailoring. Many of his observations correspond with other surviving evidence, indicating that, for the most part, Holme was a reliable source when it came to the terminology used for dress in late seventeenth-century England – at least for his area of England.

In this post I’ve placed Holme’s description of the various components of women’s dress during the 1680s alongside various images from the decade in order to demonstrate what he was referring to and what fashionable 1680s dress actually looked like. Holme’s commentary relates to English dress but many of the images I use below are from France. French styles dominated English tastes throughout the seventeenth century, particularly in the 1680s when French fashion prints began to gain popularity and English audiences were exposed almost weekly to new styles from Paris.

In addition to these images, I have provided my own commentary in dark blue in both the text and the image captions.

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The following is taken from:

Randle Holme, The academy of armory, or, A storehouse of armory and blazon containing the several variety of created beings, and how born in coats of arms, both foreign and domestick : with the instruments used in all trades and sciences, together with their their terms of art : also the etymologies, definitions, and historical observations on the same, explicated and explained according to our modern language : very usefel [sic] for all gentlemen, scholars, divines, and all such as desire any knowledge in arts and sciences (London: 1688), pp. 94-5.

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Terms used by Taylors.

The type of gown that Holme refers to in the following definitions DOES NOT refer to a mantua. Rather, it is a description of the type of gown with a stiffened bodice worn by the Eleonore this image. 
Artist unknown, Eleonore Magdalena (1655-1720) of Palatinate, ca. 1680. Oil on canvas. Vienna: Kunsthistorisches Museum, Gemäldegalerie, 5617.

In a Womens Gown there are these several parts, as
  • The Stayes, which is the body of the Gown before the Sleeves are put too, or covered with the outward stuff: which have these peeces in it, and terms used about it. [Stayes here refers to the bodice of the gown, not a separate garment, although the process and terminology was likely the same when making this undergarment].
  • The fore Part, or fore Body: which is the Breast part, which hath two peeces in it; as,
    • The Right side of the Fore-body.
    • The Left side of the Fore-body.
  • The two side parts, which are peeces under both Arms on the sides.
  • The Back.
  • The Shoulder heads, or Shoulder straps; are two peeces that come over the Sholders and are fastned to the Forebody: through which the Arms are put.

Norah Waugh’s pattern for a court bodice (sleeves have been removed) in the V&A c. 1670-90. I have named the parts of the bodice (in blue) according to Holme’s description.

  • Scoreing, or Strick iines on the Canvice to sow straight.
  • Stitching, is sowing all along the lines with close stitches to keep the Whale-Bone each peece from other.
  • — is the cleaving of the Whale-Bone to what substance or thickness the workman pleaseth.
  • Boning the Stays, is to put the slit Bone into every one of the places made for it between each stitched line which makes Stayes or Bodies stiff and strong.

Boning the bodies or stays: Inserting boning into the stitched boning channels of a pair of reconstructed bodies.

  • Cordy Robe skirts to the Staies, are such Stayes as are cut into Labells at the bottom, like long slender skirts.
  • Lining the Bodies, or Stayes; is covering the inside of the Stayes with Fustian, Linnen, and such like.
  • Binding the Neck, is sowing Galloon, at the edge of the Neck.
  • Eylet holes, or Eiglet holes, little round holes whipt-stitched about, through which laces are drawn to hold one side close to the other.

Making eyelet holes on a reconstructed pair of bodies.

  • The Waist, is the depth of the Stayes from the Shoulders to the setting on of the skirts: now it is distinguished by the Back Waist, and the fore-body Waist, which is each side of the Stomacher.
  • Side Waisted, is long or deep in the Body.
  • Short Waisted, is short in the Body.
  • The Stomacher, is that peece as lieth under the lacing or binding on of the Body of the Gown, which said body is somtimes in fashion to be.

Stomacher of pink watered silk, c. 1650-1680, Victorian and Albert Museum London, T.14andA-1951. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

  • Open before, that is to be laced on the Breast.
  • Open behind, laced on the Back, which fashion hath always a Maid or Woman to dress the wearer.
  • The Peake, is the bottom or point of the Stomacher, whether before or behind.
  • A Busk, it is a strong peece of Wood, or Whale-bone thrust down the middle of the Stomacher, to keep it streight and in compass, that the Breast nor Belly shall not swell too much out. These Buskes are usually made in length according to the necessity of the persons wearing it: if to keep in the fullness of the Breasts, then it extends to the Navel: if to keep the Belly down, then it reacheth to the Honor.

English wooden Stay Busk, c. 1675, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

 

  • A Point.
  • Covering the Bodies or Stayes, is the laying the outside stuff upon it, which is sowed on the same after diverse fashions: as,
    • Smooth Covered. [Ie. outer fashion fabric hides the stitching of the boning channels].
    • Pleated or Wrinkled in the covering.
  • The Wings, are Welts or peeces set over the place on the top of the Shoulders, where the Body and Sleeves are set together: now Wings are of diverse fashions, some narrow, others broad; some cut in slits, cordy Robe like, others Scalloped.

The “wing” of an embroidered Waistcoat, c. 1620-25, English. Victoria and Albert Museum, London. T.4-1935. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

  • The Sleeves, are those parts of the Gown, as covers the Arms: and in these there is as much variety of fashion, as days in the Year: I shall only give the terms of the most remarkable.
  • The close, or narrow Sleeve; which reacheth from the Shoulder to the Wrist of the Arm, and is not much wider then for the Arm: which were of old turned up at the Hand, and faced or lined with some other sort of stuff.
  • The Wide, or full Sleeve; is such as are full and long, and stand swelling out: such are tied about the Elbow close to the Arm with a Ribbon.
  • The open Sleeve, such are open the fore part of the Arm, that their bravery under may be seen whether it be a mock or cheat Waist-coat with Imbrauthery or the like; else their fine Linens and Laces.
  • The slasht Sleeve, is when the Sleeve from Shoulder to the Sleeve hands are cut in long slices, or fillets: and are tied together at the Elbow with Ribbons, or such like.
  • The Sleeve and half Sleeve.
  • The Sleeves with hanging Sleeves, is a full Sleeve in any of the fashions aforesaid, with a long hanging Sleeve of a good breadth hanging from under the back part of the Wing down behind, even to the ground; in the greater sorts of Gallants trailing a good length on the ground.
  • The half Sleeves with Hounds Ears, are such as extend to the Elbow and there turn up, and being slit or open hang at the Elbow like Dogs Ears.

This image may depict what Holme refers to as “half sleeves with hound ears”. Claude Auguste Berey, Madame Lucie de Tourville de Cotantin, Marquise de Gouville, c. 1690-95, etching. Rijksmuseum, RP-P-2016-8-5.

  • The Rim of the Sleeve, is that part which is at the Sleeve hand either lined or Edged or Welted: but of these sorts of Sleeves see their figures and shapes, chap. 5. numb. 130.131. &c.
  • The Faceing.
  • The Skirt, or Gown Skirt; is the lower part of the Gown, which extends from the body to the ground: these are made several fashions, as Open Skirts, is open before, that thereby rich and costly Peti-coat may be fully seen.
  • Turned up Skirts, are such as have a draught on the Ground a yard and more long; these is great Personages are called Trains, whose Honor it is to have them born up by Pages.

The maid is holding up her “gown skirt”, underneath is her petticoat. Sébastien Leclerc, Figures a la mode, ‘Dienstmeisje haar overrok ophoudend’, c. 1685, etching. Rijksmuseum, RP-P-2009-1081.

 

This fashion plate shows a woman with a brown (mantua?) gown with an “open skirt” that is possibly “turned up” or trained. The blue skirt is a petticoat. Nicholas Bonnart, Recueil des modes de la cour de France, ‘La Belle Plaideuse’, c. 1682-86, Hand-coloured engraving on paper. LACMA: M.2002.57.86.

  • Bearers, Rowls, Fardingales; are things made purposely to put under the skirts of Gowns at their setting on at the Bodies; which raise up the skirt at that place to what breadth the wearer pleaseth, and as the fashion is.
  • Skirts about the Waist, are either whole in one entire peece with Goares, or else cut into little laps or cordy robe skirts: Gowns with these skirts are called Waistcoat-Gowns.
  • Wastcoat, or Waistcoast; is the outside of a Gown without either stayes or bodies fastned to it; It is an Habit or Garment generally worn by the middle and lower sort of Women, having Goared skirts, and some wear them with Stomachers.

A street seller in Paris wearing a red waistcoat and purple petticoat, with a green apron and white kerchief. Nicholas Bonnart, Recueil des modes de la cour de France, ‘Crieuse de Raues’, afer 1685, Hand-coloured engraving on paper. LACMA: M.2002.57.186.

  • Goare, is a Cant or three cornered peece of cloath put into a skirt, to make the bottom wider then the top: so are Goared Peti-coats.
  • Peti-coat, is the skirt of a Gown without its body; but that is generally termed a Peti-coat, which is worn either under a Gown, or without it: in which Garment there are [this marks a slight change in the meaning of the word “petticoat” during the late seventeenth century. Earlier in the century a petticoat often referred to a skirt with an attached bodice called “petticoat bodies” that was worn under a gown or with a waistcoat.]
    • Peating, that is gathering the top part in into Pleats or folding to make it of the same wideness as the Waist of middle of the wearer.
    • Laceing, is setting a Lace of Silk, Silver or Gold about the bottom of it; which in a Peti-coat is called the Skirt.
    • Bodering, is the lineing of the Peti-coat skirt or bottom in the inner side.
    • Binding, is the sowing of some things (as Ribbon, Galloon or such like) on both sides the Edge of the skirt to keep it from ravelling; sometime it is done by a Hem: the top part of the Peti-coat hath its Binding also; that is, it hath either Incle, Filleting, or Galloon, sowed about the Edges of it, when pleated: which keeps the Pleats in their Pleats, the ends helping to make it fast about the wearers Waist.

     

    A woman wearing a red “petticoat” under her green gown with “full sleeves” (the gown may be a mantua – see below). Nicholas Bonnart, Recueil des modes de la cour de France, ‘Philis se joüant d’un Oyseau’, c. 1682-86, Hand-coloured engraving on paper. LACMA: M.2002.57.84.

     

  • Hem, is the turning of the Edge of the cloath in; two fould or more, then sowing it up, keeps it from ravelling.
  • Tucking, is to draw up the depth of a Peti-coat be|ing too side or long, and that is by foulding a part over another
  • Pocket, or Pocket holes; are little Bags set on the inside, with a hole, or slit on the outside; by which any small thing may be carried about, or kept therein.

Pair of embroidered pockets, c. 1700-25, Victoria and Albert Museum London, T.697:B, C-1913. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London.

  • A Mantua, is a kind of loose Coat without any stayes [ie. stiffening] in it, the Body part and Sleeves are of as many fashions as I have mentioned in the Gown Body; but the skirt is sometime no longer then the Knees, others have them down to the Heels. The short skirt is open before, and behind to the middle…

The woman wears a mantua gown that is open at the front and pinned to a pair of bodies/stays underneath. The open skirt is turned back revealing the green petticoat underneath. Robert Bonnart, Lady with fontange hairstyle and fan, c. 1685-90, etching, engraving, lacquering, Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum, RP-P-2016-8-4

  • A Semmer, or Samare; have a lose body, and four side laps, or skirs; which entend to the knee, the sleeves short not to the Elbow turned up and faced.
  • The Riding Suite for Women.
  • The Hood.
  • The Cap.
  • The Mantle, it is cut round, which is cast over the Shoulders to preserve from rain or cold.
  • The Safegard, is put about the middle, and so doth secure the Feet from cold, and dirt.
  • The Riding Coat, it is a long Coat buttoned down before like a Mans Jaket, with Pocket holes; and the sleeves turned up and buttons.

This woman wears a “riding suit” with a “riding coat”. Nicholas Bonnart, Recueil des modes de la cour de France, ‘Dame en habit de chasse’, c. 1670, Hand-coloured engraving on paper. LACMA: M.2002.57.14.

 

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More resources on 1680s fashion:

Arnold, Janet, Jenny Tiramani, Luca Costigliolo, Sébastien Passot, Armelle Lucas and Johanne Pietsch. Patterns of Fashion 5: The content, cut, construction and context of bodies, stays, hoops and rumps c. 1595-1795. London: School of Historical Dress, 2018.

Crowston, Clare Haru. Fabricating Women: the seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675-1791. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

Hart, Avril. ‘The Mantua: its Evolution and Fashionable Significance in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries’. In Defining Dress: Dress as Object, Meaning, and Identity, edited by Amy Le Haye, 93-103. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1999.

Norberg, Kathryn, and Sandra Rosenbaum, eds.  Fashion Prints in the Age of Louis XIV: Interpreting the Art of Elegance. Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 2014.

Waugh, Norah. Corsets and Crinolines. 1954; reprinted., Abingdon: Routledge, 1991.

My upcoming book Shaping Femininity will also discuss late seventeenth-century fashions, including those of the 1680s.