The Renaissance.—In the sixteenth century a distinct separation between ancient and modern dress took place, and our present fashions took their origin from about that time. It was during this century that men adopted clothes closely fitting about the body, overcoats with tight sleeves, felt hats with more or less rigid brims, and closed boots or shoes. The women also wore their dresses tightly fitting to the figure, with tight sleeves, low-crowned hats, and richly trimmed petticoats. These garments, which differ wholly from antiquity, constitute, as it were, the common type, from which has risen the endless variety of modern male and female dress.
At this time the general resemblance between the clothing of the two sexes, which may be traced to the earliest times, became decided. After the accession of Queen Elizabeth in 1558, the well-known costume, associated with herself from about the middle to the close of her reign, gradually became established. The long-peaked and tight stomachers of the ladies, and the padded quilted doublets of the men—it might truthfully be said that each garment was a parody of the other.
Ruffs of an exaggerated amplitude and of a painfully severe stiffness were worn by both sexes.
At the beginning of the seventeenth century the dresses were tight at the waist, but begun to be made very full around the hips, by means of large padded rolls, which were still more enlarged by a monstrous arrangement of padded whalebone and steel. To both boots and shoes high heels were added, in place of the flat heels previously worn.
About 1710 the hooped petticoat was introduced, and about 1740 they obtained enormous dimensions.
When traced to their original sources, we find that all of the extremes of fashion were made to conceal some deformity of the figure, or to give to a part of it undue prominence, as in the case of the corset, which was first introduced when clothes were not wanted for the concealment of the person, but to make more prominent the curves and undulations of the figure. The ruff grew out of a scrofulous complaint on a royal neck; the hoop-skirt, to conceal the enceinte condition of a French queen.
The Corset in History.—Dr. Bouvier divided into five epochs the transformations undergone by the corset, or by that part of the clothing which took its place from earliest antiquity to 1853.
The first epoch is that of antiquity; in this, as we have seen, the band or girdle, which was worn by the Greek and Roman ladies, was the forerunner of the corset.
The second epoch comprises a great part of the Middle Ages. This was a period of transition which partook of the styles which preceded and followed it. At first there was an abandonment of the narrow Roman band, and later the introduction of the corsage fitting tightly about the body.
The third epoch embraces the end of the Middle Ages and the first part of the Renaissance, which was marked by the general adoption of robes with a very tightly laced corsage.