The change of fashion to short full sleeves gave rise to the turned back cuff of the same material as the sleeve, and some costumes show this short jacket with its short sleeves with cuffs, while under it shows the dress with tight sleeves reaching to the wrists where were linen or lace cuffs, a combination of two fashions.
Part of the lady’s equipment now was a big feather fan, and a big fur muff for winter; also the fashion of wearing long gloves to reach to the elbow came in with the advent of short sleeves.
Naturally enough there was every variety of evolution from the old fashion to the new, as the tight sleeves did not, of course, become immediately wide and loose, but by some common movement, so curious in the history of such revolutions, the sleeve grew and grew from puffs at the elbow to wide cuffs, to wide shoulders, until the entire sleeve became swollen out of all proportion, and the last little pieces of tightness were removed.
The form of dress with cuffs to the jackets, lacing, sashes, bunches of ribbon, and looped up skirts, lasted for a great number of years. It was started by the death of the fardingale, and it lived into the age of hoops.
These ladies wore shoe-roses upon their shoes, and these bunches of ribbon, very artificially made up, cost sometimes as much as from three to thirty pounds a pair, these very expensive roses being ornamented with jewels. From these we derive the saying, ‘Roses worth a family.’
In the country the women wore red, gray, and black cloth homespun, and for riding they put on safeguards or outer petticoats. The wide-brimmed beaver hat was in general wear, and a lady riding in the country would wear such a hat or a hood and a cloak and soft top boots.
Women’s petticoats were called plackets as well as petticoats.
With the careless air that was then adopted by everybody, which was to grow yet more carefully careless in the reign of Charles II., the hair was a matter which must have undivided attention, and centuries of tight dressing had not improved many heads, so that when the loose love-locks and the dainty tendrils became the fashion, many good ladies and gentlemen had recourse to the wigmaker. From this time until but an hundred years ago, from the periwig bought for Sexton, the fool of Henry VIII., down to the scratches and bobs of one’s grandfather’s youth, the wigmaker lived and prospered. To-day, more secretly yet more surely, does the maker of transformations live and prosper, but in the days when to be wigless was to be undressed the perruquier was a very great person.
