Sir Thomas Orchard, Knight
We have in old-time letters and accounts occasional proof that the coat of the Puritan fathers was not at all like the shapely coat of our day. We have also many words to prove that the coat was a doublet which, as old Stubbes said, could be “pleated, or crested behind and curiously gathered.”
The tailor of the Winthrop family was one John Smith; he made garments for them all, father, mother, children, and children’s wives, and husband’s sisters, nieces, cousins, and aunts. He was a good Puritan, and seems to have been much esteemed by Winthrop. One letter accompanying a coat runs: “Good Mr. Winthrop, I have, by Mr. Downing’s direction sent you a coat, a sad foulding colour without lace. For the fittness I am a little vncerteyne, but if it be too bigg or too little it is esie to amend, vnder the arme to take in or let out the lyning; the outside may be let out in the gathering or taken in also without any prejudice.” This instruction would appear to prove not only that the coat was a doublet, “curiously gathered” but that the “fittness” was more than “uncerteyne” of the coats of the Fathers. Since even such wildly broad directions could not “prejudice” the coat, we may assume that Governor Winthrop was more easily suited as to the cut of his apparel, than would have been Sir Walter Raleigh or Sir Philip Sidney.
Though Puritan influence on dress simplified much of the flippery and finery of the days of Elizabeth and James, and the refining elegance of Van Dyck gave additional simplicity as well as beauty to women’s attire, which it retained for many years, still there lingered throughout the seventeenth century, ready to spring into fresh life at a breath of encouragement, many grotesqueries of fashion in men’s dress which, in the picturesque sneer of the day, were deemed meet only for “a changeable-silk-gallant.” At the restoration of the crown, courtiers seemed to love to flaunt frivolity in the faces of the Puritans.
One of these trumperies came through the excessive use of ribbons, a use which gave much charm to women’s dress, but which ever gave to men’s garments a finicky look. Beribboned doublets came in the butterfly period, between worm and chrysalis, between doublet and coat; beribboned breeches were eagerly adopted.
Shown [here] is the copy of an old print, which shows the dress of an estimable and sensible gentleman, Sir Thomas Orchard, with ribbon-edged garments and much galloon or laces. It is far too much trimmed to be rich or elegant. See also The English Antick on this page, from a rare broadside. His tall hat is beribboned and befeathered; his face is patched, ribbons knot his love-locks, his breeches are edged with agletted ribbons, and “on either side are two great bunches of ribbons of several colors.” Similar knots are at wrists and belt. His boots are fringed with lace, and so wide that he “straddled as he went along singing.”
The English Antick.
Ribboned sleeves like those of Colonel Legge, [here], were a pretty fashion, but more suited to women’s wear than to men’s.