Submitted 1 May 2004
A Partlet and A Pair of Bodies: The Replication of a Late Tudor Gown
This thesis will demonstrate that replicated garments are invaluable tools for education and research (please see discussion of Significance, item VI below), although not necessarily appropriate as exhibition objects. A replicated garment allows one to gain a sense of movement and three-dimensionality. The dress selected for examination and replication dates from c. 1530, and is largely based upon the one worn by Margaret More Roper in Hans Holbein's portrait of the More family. Much of what we understand about Tudor costume is communicated through visual sources, such as paintings and prints, and textual references.
The thesis will briefly explore the history of dress in the late Tudor era (1485-1603). Both pictorial and textual documentation will inform the construction of the dress. The process of construction will be discussed, as will the place of replica costume within a museum.
Photographic documentation of the construction process and finished garment will accompany the thesis.
This thesis poses the questions:
This is neither a costume history of the Tudor period, nor an art-historical study of sixteenth-century portraiture.
Only the outer gown (kirtle), shift (chemise), support garments (corset/bodies, farthingale) and head covering will be considered part of the thesis. Hose, shoes, jewelry or other related accessories may accompany the final presentation to help create the appropriate historical appearance, but will not be considered part of the completed project.
Authentic construction methods will be used to as great an extent as possible. All visible sewing will be by hand (e.g. hems), but in the interest of time, non-exposed seams will be machine stitched. The exception to this will be portions of the garments in which machine sewing is made difficult or inadvisable due to the different effect of machine and hand stitching (e.g. seating the points of gores).
An examination of visual sources (painting, specifically portraiture, etc.), literary sources (inventories, wardrobe accounts, sumptuary laws, personal communications, etc.) and extant garments will determine the appearance, materials and construction of the garment.
Selected art, manuscript and costume collections from the following museums and libraries will be examined:
June 2004 - September 2004: Background research into history, styles, construction methods, etc.
October 2004: Trip to England to view collections in V&A, Costume Museum of Bath, &c. (may occur at another time)
October 2004 - February/March 2005: Construction of garment; additional research as necessary. Writing of thesis text, especially documentation and construction section
February/March 2005: Completion of garment.
March 2005: Final assemblage of written portion of thesis, revision.
Thesis to be completed by April 2005.
Sixteenth century Europe was a time of overwhelming change. Although Italy was the center of the artistic revival that flowered during this period, and Germany the source of the religious changes that swept the continent, England experienced a great renaissance of its own; this is the era in which the small island nation went from being a minor player in the European theater to becoming a power in its own right.
The late 1520s through early 1530s in England were characterized by great political and social upheaval. Henry VIII of the House of Tudor was king. He had been married to Catherine of Aragon, his brother's widow, for nearly twenty years. Although they had a daughter, Mary, she was both female and sickly - two conditions that made her a questionable heir. By the late 1520s, Henry had formed an obvious attachment to his wife's lady-in-waiting, Ann Boleyn, and was making a determined effort to convince the Pope to grant him an annulment. By 1532, Henry would make a formal break with the Catholic church, essentially converting all of England (willing or not) to his own particular branch of Protestantism. He subsequently divorced Catherine, who was loved by the English people. In addition to the political and religious turmoil, England was beset by other difficulties; a mysterious illness known as "sweating sickness" ravaged the cities, causing high fatalities: the harvests in 1533 and 1534 were sparse. All of these factors combined to create a very high level of societal tension and unrest.
For a member of the English nobility, life was lived in a manner that today seems very similar to that of an extended military campaign. Just as a knight in an encampment would move through the large public spaces of parade ground and battlefield and the small, confined intimate spaces of tents, the same knight and his lady wife would move through the large public spaces of reception rooms and Great Halls and the small, confined intimate spaces of audience chambers, bedrooms aptly known as 'closets,' and formal gardens. The modern concept of rooms designed and built for specific purposes did not yet exist. Chairs and tables folded or disassembled easily, so the same large space could easily be rearranged for use as a modern dining room, ballroom, or auditorium.
One of the hallmarks of the shift from the medieval Late Gothic period to the Renaissance is the emergence of plate armor. Unlike its predecessor, mail, plate armor had to be individually fitted to the wearer. This was a complicated and involved process that had to be performed by highly skilled craftsmen, and as a result was exceedingly expensive.Also unlike mail, plate armor could only be refitted to a new wearer with great difficulty. As a result, this form of armor became the status symbol of the age. Men's fashions were basically elaborated and ornamented versions of the padding garments worn under the armor of the period. By wearing garments that looked as if they belonged under armor, a man indicated that he had the means and rank to afford the armor itself, even when he wasn't wearing it.
The emergence of the rigid, corseted silhouette for women, which replaced the supple S-curved posture of the Late Gothic era, is as definitive a mark of the changing times as the shift in men’s accoutrement. Women, although they did not actively participate in warfare, wore their own version of armor. The stiffened 'pairs of bodies,' or corsets, have a formal if not functional relationship to the rigid torsos of the plate armor worn by the men. Other aspects of status-related male dress were translated into female fashion; for example, the voluminous sleeves that visually widened the wearer's shoulders and displayed the quantities of material the wearer could afford appeared on women's garments as well as men's.
Replicated costumes are valuable as an educational tool for researchers and visitors alike. Researchers can learn lessons about fit, posture, and movement that are only observable in a garment when it is worn. Museum visitors, on the other hand, can learn about the overall appearance of a costume and its relationship to the human body, in contrast to the disembodied look of a small surviving piece of an authentic garment (frequently badly discolored or distorted) on a partial mannequin or other mount.
Students of fashion history usually can only examine costume in a very passive way: looking at extant garments, reading period accounts, or studying artistic representations of people wearing the garments. By constructing a replica, one can examine costume in an active, involved way, thereby gaining an understanding of the process of construction as well as the sensations a woman of the period would have felt wearing this style of clothing.
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