Course:History 344 Nasty Families/Titles and Statuses/Clothing
Beginning in earnest during the Stuart Age was the idea that fashionable clothes “were valuable assets that set elite families apart from the working poor.”[1] People were beginning to pay more for high-quality designs and fabrics that would set them apart socially and economically from those who were unable to afford such luxurious clothing. Clothing was the second largest household expenditure after food. It accounted for up to sixteen per cent of domestic expenditures.[2] Not only did families spend money on buying clothes, but many of the wealthier families employed tailors to create new clothes or redo older garments in the latest fashion.[3] Thus it can be seen that people in Stuart England were willing to spend money to acquire fashionable clothing in order to increase their social notoriety.
Clothing in Stuart England was also a way for people to pay debts and acquire cash.[4] Because one complete outfit consisted of many smaller individual parts, it was easy for people to disassemble the garments and sell or gift the pieces they wished to.[5] Preferred employers provided their servants and rewarded loyal servants with new sets of clothes. (Williams 76) Clothing was also used a form of bribery in a household. Maidservants were bribed with gifts of clothes from suspicious husbands to spy on their mistresses, and also from adulterous wives to keep the servant quiet.[6] Thus clothing was an integral part of the Stuart England household.
The idea of clothing as a valuable asset and indicator of social prominence was facilitated by the fact that returning ships, especially from the New World and India, were bringing back new designs and fabrics to incorporate into new designs. This meant that people began combining new textiles and ideas with traditional ones, copying favoured cuts from foreign places, and embellishing finished products with rich threads, trims, and jewels.[7] Influx of new materials also meant that traditional hardwearing cloths were being replaced by more flowing draperies which were available in a wide variety of colours and textures.[8] New materials included linens from Italy and the Low Countries, Spanish knotted stockings, Flemish lack, Irish mantles, yellow starch, and East Indian floral chintz and calicoes.[9] These new materials and fabrics were the new must-have objects. Because they were imported goods their cost was higher than domestic goods, making these items good indicators of high social status.
The quality of the fabric as well as the cut were the characteristics that people used to judge what social class others belonged to.[10] Expensive and elaborate clothes and plainer clothes were public declarations of wealth or poverty, respectively.[11] The clothing you wore could also be an indicator of one’s profession, wealth, social status, and geographic origins.[12]
One’s social status also restricted the kinds of clothes people were allowed to wear. For instance, from 1337 until 1604 there were regularly issued statutes and proclamations that ordered women to dress in a manner that reflected the rank of their father (or husband if they were married).[13] From the mid-1650s until the 1690s women could be arrested if they were thought to be wearing clothes not befitting their social status (meaning they were wearing clothes that were deemed above them).[14] This shows that one’s clothing was an important factor in determining the social rank and file of Stuart England because the breach of rules concerning clothing carried such immediate and sometimes harsh punishments. Marital status was also a determining factor for women’s clothes. Young unmarried women were permitted to go bareheaded. Brides were required to have veils covering their heads during wedding ceremonies. Wives were obliged to wear scarves or hoods to cover their heads when they were in public.[15]
People in Stuart England believed that excessive female attire would ease the woman’s decline into whoredom. They were extremely wary of women who were dressed in lavish finery because it was believed that these decadent clothes “concealed bodies that were frail, disfigured or diseased, or beautiful and enticing.”[16] The depth of necklines communicated a woman’s fertility and youthfulness, but could also be misconstrued as sinfulness and immorality if the neckline was too low.[17]
[BN: Some way to combine this with the section on fashion would be good.]
- ↑ Margaret F. Rosenthal, "Cultures of Clothing in Later Medieval and Early Modern Europe," Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 39, no. 2 (2009): 459, http://jmems.dukejournals.org/ (accessed February 24, 2012).
- ↑ Tim Reinke-Williams, "Women's Clothing and Female Honour in Early Modern London," Continuity and Change 26, no. 1 (2011): 74, http://journals.cambridge.org/ (accessed February 24, 2012).
- ↑ Rosenthal, "Cultures," 464.
- ↑ Rosenthal, "Cultures," 461.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Reinke-Williams, "Women's Clothing," 77.
- ↑ Rosenthal, "Cultures," 461.
- ↑ Catherine Richardson, Graeme Murdock, and Mary Merry, "Clothing, Culture and Identity in Early Modern England: Creating a New Tool for Research," Textile History 34, no. 2 (2003): 229-230, http://www.ingentaconnect.com/ (accessed February 24, 2012).
- ↑ Reinke-Williams, "Women's Clothing," 70.
- ↑ Rosenthal, "Cultures," 467.
- ↑ Ibid.
- ↑ Rosenthal, "Cultures," 473.
- ↑ Reinke-Williams, "Women's Culture," 69.
- ↑ Reinke-Williams, "Women's Culture," 70.
- ↑ Reinke-Williams, "Women's Culture," 79.
- ↑ Reinke-Williams, "Women's Culture," 70.
- ↑ Reinke-Williams, "Women's Culture," 81.