Chats on Costume

by G. Woolliscroft Rhead

The Knight of La Tour Landry, writing towards the close of the fourteenth century, in order to deter his daughters from extravagance and superfluity of dress, recounts a story of a knight who, having lost his wife, applied to "an heremyte hys uncle" to know whether she was saved or not and how it "stode with her." The hermit, after many prayers, dreamed that he saw "Seint Michelle & the develle that had her in a balaunce, & alle her good dedes in the same balaunce, & a develle & alle her evelle dedes in that other balaunce. & the most that grevid her was her good & gay clothing, & furres of gray menivere & letuse; & the develle cried & sayde, Seint Michel, this woman had tenne diverse gownes & as mani cotes; & thou wost welle lesse myghte have suffised her after the lawe of God; ... & he toke all her juellys and rynges, ... & also the false langage that she had saide ... & caste hem in the balaunce with her evelle dedes." The "evelle dedes passed the good, & weyed downe & overcame her good dedes. & there the develle toke her, & bare her away, & putte her clothes & aray brennyng in the flawme on her with the fire of helle, & kist her doune into the pitte of helle; ... & the pore soul cried, & made moche sorughe & pite ... but it boted not."

Lydgate, the famous monk of Bury, and one of the foremost poets of his time, was unwearying in his condemnation of the extravagances of dress, his pet aversion being the horned head-dresses which obtained during the York and Lancastrian period. In a "Ditty of Women's Horns," he unbosoms himself as follows:—

"Clerkys recorde, by gret auctoryté,
Hornes wer yove to bestys for dyffence;
A thing contrarye to femynté,
To be maad sturdy of resystence.
But arche wives, egre in ther vyolence,
Fers as tygres for to make affray
They have despit, and ageyn concyence
Lyst nat of pryde, then hornes cast away."

But the most insistent of all the satirists was Philip Stubbes, who wrote his "Anatomy of Abuses" in the reign of Elizabeth. In lampooning the feminine habit of aping masculine dress, he says: "The women have doublets and jerkins as the men have, buttoned up to the breast, and made with wings, welts, and pinions on the shoulder-points, as man's apparel in all respects; and although this be a kind of attire proper only to a man, yet they blush not to wear it."

Artists also, as well as writers, joined in the general chorus of condemnation of the extravagances of fashion. Strutt gives a cut from the MS. copy of Froissart in the Harleian Library, of a pig walking upon stilts playing the harp, and crowned with the high steeple head-dress which prevailed during the reign of Edward IV.

In the Cotton MS. (Nero, C4) there is an illustration of a winged devil arrayed in a costume with elongated sleeves tied in knots, the prevailing fashion of the period.

It must be confessed that the satirists were occasionally a little too severe in their strictures, for while doubtless extravagance prevailed at most periods—indeed, must always prevail—the dress of such a period as that of the Plantagenets, as well as that of Elizabeth, was sumptuous to a degree. In fact, it is difficult for us moderns, so surrounded as we are by commonness, cheapness, and vulgarity, to realise the extreme splendour of the Middle Ages, either as regards their dress or their surroundings. Plenty of extravagance there is at the present time, but no real magnificence, either as to invention or material.

With respect to material, by far the most sumptuous fabric employed for purposes of adornment in past times is undoubtedly cloth of gold. This truly regal fabric has been in use from the earliest periods. "And they shall make the ephod of gold, of blue, and of purple, of scarlet, and fine twined linen, with cunning work. And the curious girdle of the ephod, which is upon it, shall be of the same, according to the work thereof; even of gold, of blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine twined linen."[5]