Stuart life / Dressing to impress
82neighbours were quick to take notice and
asked her where she was going. Women
also dressed well if they had to appear in
court and were keen to create a good
impression. Christian Stappleton wore
a cloak and taffeta gown when she gave
evidence on behalf of her mistress, Jane
Hope – although it was alleged that Jane
had loaned the clothes to Christian.
One of the main reasons young single
women wanted to dress well was to attract
the attention of suitors and potential
husbands. When Rebecca Langford left
Norbury in Staffordshire, she was deemed
to be “somewhat bare in apparel”, but
when she returned from London, it was
noted that she was “very well apparelled
and brought with her a very proper man”.
In the 1670s, Hannah Woolley wrote an
advice book for young women wishing to
become the companions of gentlewomen,
in which she commented that there was
“a kind of privilege in youth for wearing
fashionable clothes” and that dressing well
would “add more beauty”.
Up to a point, Woolley was correct: in all
likelihood, young women were more
obsessed with keeping up with the latest
fashions. But dress mattered to older
women too as it reflected their status and
authority. Married women wore distinctive
scarves and hoods, and when Francis
Barnham became sheriff in 1570, his wife,
Alice, had her portrait painted in which she
wore a fur-trimmed velvet gown to show
off her ascent in London society.
Dressing well also helped women to
find paid employment. The women who
worked in the shops in the Exchange were
deemed to be well dressed; Elizabeth James
took on one young woman as a servant
because she was “a pretty young wench,
and handsomely apparelled”.
In 1659, Goody Marstone was given
12 shillings by the vestry of the parish of
St Benet Paul’s Wharf so that she could
provide clothes for the orphaned daughter
of her friend Goody Tessy to help the girl to
get a place as a domestic servant. Evidently
the vestrymen thought this would be a
worthwhile investment, ensuring that in
the long run there would be one less poor
woman for them to provide for.The fashion police
During the 17th century, particular decades
witnessed fashion crazes. In the 1610s,
women wore doublets and broad-brimmed
hats, both of which were considered to be
very masculine items of clothing. In the
1690s, complex top-knot hairstyles,
incorporating large quantities of ribbons,
were all the rage.Moralists were quick to condemn
these trends. On 22 February 1619, John
Williams preached a sermon before King
James VI and I on abuses of apparel and,
in the 1690s, many ballads, the pop songs
of the age, condemned the fashion for
top-knots, arguing that young women
would turn to prostitution in order to
afford the new hairstyle.
Legal records reveal that London
prostitutes at the upper end of the vice
trade, the early modern equivalent of
escorts, were well dressed. These women
were given specific outfits in order to
attract clients and many received clothes as
payment in kind for their services. One
Elizabethan bawd, Mistress Hibbens, had
“divers suits of apparels”, including “silk
gowns of several colours” which were worn
by the girls who worked for her.
Women in early modern London
therefore had a wide range of clothes to
choose from – and various means to
acquire them. This gave rise to both
opportunities and problems. The medieval
sumptuary laws had placed more limits
on the dress of men than women. When
this legislation was abolished in 1604,
women faced no legal restrictions on what
they could wear. However, going out in
costly apparel which was deemed to be
above one’s station or revealing too much
cleavage, risked the wearer being subject to
abuse from moralists, clergymen and
neighbours of both sexes.
Dress was important in the 16th and
17th centuries because it was supposed to
reveal at a glance the social rank, gender
and morality of the wearer. But, in practice,
the clothes of noblewomen and the wives of
wealthy citizens were not always
significantly different from those of
high-class prostitutes. Cross-dressing was
not unusual either. Before the Restoration,
male actors played the female roles, while
some women chose to wear men’s clothing,
either to be fashionable, as a reflection of
their sexuality, or because it enabled them
to walk the city streets in disguise without
being harassed by men.
In the 16th and 17th centuries – as in
the 21st – clothes offered opportunities for
women to empower themselves and create
individual identities. But choosing what
to wear was a difficult business, and
making a fashion faux pas could have
disastrous consequences.GETTY IMAGES/BRIDGEMAN, THE ART ARCHIVE/GALLERIA SABAUDA TURIN/COLLECTION DAGLI ORTI
Wenceslaus
Hollar’s 1643
etching, Winter,
shows one
of four female
figures
representing the
four seasonsDr Tim Reinke-Williams is a senior lecturer
in history at the University of Northampton,
specialising in early modern British history. He
is the author of Women, Work and Sociability in
Early Modern London (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014)