ENGLISH LADY OF QUALITY, 1588
ENGLISH NOBLEMAN, 1559
From Collection of Ancient and Modern Dresses, 1772.
Their stockings were made of the finest cloth, yarn, or worsted; silk stockings were presented to the Queen in her third year; knitted worsted stockings were introduced from Italy; the stockings of the fine ladies were “curiously indented in every point with quicks, clocks, and open seams.” They wore cork shoes made, like the petticoats and kirtle, of anything that was costly and rare and could be embroidered.
The fashions of wearing the hair were endless. It was curled in innumerable curls; it was crisped; it was built up over a cushion; it was laid out over the forehead; it was ornamented with jewels, gold, wreaths of silver and gold, and kept in place with hairpins; the women wore over their hair French hoods, hats, and caps; they wore cauls made of net-wire and cloth of gold and tinsel; they wore “lattice” caps with horns; and every merchant’s wife or mean gentlewoman indulged in these extravagant fashions.
“The cappe on hyre heade
Is lyke a sowes mawe;
Such another facion
I thynke never Jewe sawe.
Then fyne geare on the foreheade