Material Culture, Dress and Fashion History
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… Continue reading Did Seventeenth-Century English Women Wear Drawers?
Quilted petticoats in England and America are usually attributed to and discussed in the context of the eighteenth century. This is likely due to the fact that all the earliest surviving quilted petticoats (to my knowledge) date from this period. Quilted Petticoat, c. 1740-60 (made), 1870-1910 (altered), British. Victoria and Albert Museum, T.430-1967. I am… Continue reading Quilted Petticoats in the Seventeenth Century
I was recently asked to be an allied researcher on the ACIS project Textiles, Trade and Meaning in Italy: 1400-2018, particularly in relation to the clothing and textiles at the court of Mantua under Isabella d’Este. As part of this project I was asked to write a short piece on Isabella's underwear, as part of a… Continue reading Isabella d’Este’s Chemises – Translations from the 1539 Inventory
What should we call the torso-shaping female foundation garments of the seventeenth century? Were they pairs of bodies? Bodices? Stays? Moreover, how were they worn? Were they underwear or were the outer wear? This post clears the air about terminology!
As many of you know, during my PhD I decided to reconstruct four items of female structural dress from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. However, in order for the reconstructions to be worn during photoshoots the most basic female undergarment of the the early modern period was needed: the smock. The Smock – A Brief… Continue reading Back to Basics: The Smock in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries