It was the time of an immaculate carelessness; the hair was free, or seemed free, to droop in languid tresses on men’s shoulders, curl at pretty will on men’s foreheads. Shirts were left open at the neck, breeches were loosed at the knee. Do I revile the time if I say that the men had an air, a certain supercilious air, of being dukes disguised as art students?
We know, all of us, the Vandyck beard, the Carolean moustache brushed away from the lips; we know Lord Pembroke’s tousled—carefully tousled—hair; Kiligrew’s elegant locks.
From the head to the neck is but a step—a sad step in this reign—and here we find our friend the ruff utterly tamed; ‘pickadillies, now out of request,’ writes one, tamed into the falling band, the Vandyck collar, which form of neck-dress has never left the necks and shoulders of our modern youthful prodigies; indeed, at one time, no youthful genius dare be without one. The variations of this collar are too well known; of such lace as edged them and of the manner of their tying, it would waste time to tell, except that in some instances the strings are secured by a ring.
Such a change has come over the doublet as to make it hardly the same garment; the little slashes have become two or three wide cuts, the sleeves are wide and loose with, as a rule, one big opening on the inside of the arm, with this opening embroidered round. The cuffs are like little collars, turned back with point-lace edges. The actual cut of the doublet has not altered a great deal, the ordinary run of doublet has the pointed front, it is tied round the waist with a little narrow sash; but there has arrived a new jacket, cut round, left open from the middle of the breast, sometimes cut so short as to show the shirt below bulged out over the breeches. Sometimes you will see one of these new short jackets with a slit in the back, and under this the man will be wearing the round trunks of his father’s time.
The breeches are mostly in two classes—the long breeches the shape of bellows, tied at the knee with a number of points or a bunch of coloured ribbons; or the breeches cut the same width all the way down, loose at the knee and there ornamented with a row of points (ribbons tied in bows with tags on them).
A new method of ornamentation was this notion of coloured ribbons in bunches, on the breeches, in front, at the sides, at the knees—almost anywhere—and also upon the coats.
For some time the older fashioned short round cape or cloak prevailed, but later, large silk cloaks used as wraps thrown across the shoulders were used as well. The other cloaks had straps, like the modern golf cape, by which the cloak might be allowed to fall from the shoulders.