In many ways the early Stuarts continued patterns set by their Tudor predecessors: using clothing to demonstrate power and wealth, and even continuing some of the Tudor styles into the 17th century.
But the early Stuarts also used fashion in a slightly different way; one that was perhaps more understated when compared with the Tudors, but arguably just as confident. After 11 years in exile Charles II (1660-85) was restored to the throne of England in 1660. Two important sources of information about this era come from the diaries of John Evelyn, a member of the gentry, and the even more famous diaries of Samuel Pepys, a naval official.
Both men wrote in great detail about their daily lives and their (often critical) observations of others, including the fashions at court. Charles II’s restoration court was full of billowing shirts and a riot of coloured silks and ribbons. Evelyn described one fashionable gentlemen he saw at Westminster as a ‘silken fop’ with ‘as much ribbon about him as would have plundered six shops, and set up twenty country pedlars: all his body dressed up like a maypole’.
You can get a sense of what this might have looked like from a painting of Charles dancing at a ball when he was in exile above. He wears red high-heeled shoes, a fashion made popular by Louis XIV in France, and has decorative bows on his feet and ribbons at his knees. His expansive white shirt is worn under a dark blue doublet and trunk hose, which are held together with multiple yellow ribbons at the waist. The doublet is slashed at the sleeves to show the white shirt underneath. This was an age when you washed your linen rather than your body. Shirts were the first layer next to the skin and could get dirty, so you either needed to have a lot of them so you could change, or you needed servants to wash them regularly for you. Either option signified wealth and conspicuous consumption.
Evelyn was obviously not impressed with this extravagant style and within a few years of the Restoration Charles II himself decreed that he was going to promote a new mode of dressing. Samuel Pepys wrote in October 1666:
‘The King hath yesterday in Council declared his resolution of setting a fashion for clothes, which he will never alter. It will be a vest, I know not well how; but it is to teach the nobility thrift.’
This vest was not what we would think of as a vest today; it was a knee-length garment that looks very similar to what we would consider a coat. Compared to the doublet, it was longer and more streamlined.
Pepys liked it so much that he started to wear it too. The painting above is possibly the first depiction of Charles wearing this new style. It shows the King with his gardener and they are both wearing knee-length coats and breeches in the new style. While the basic silhouette of their outfits is the same, Charles’s royal status is still clear from the embroidered Garter Star on his left breast, the lace cuffs at his shirt sleeves, which show he was not a man who did manual labour, the fine lace cravat at his neck, and his ‘petticoat breeches’, which were a court fashion.
There are a number of theories as to why Charles decided to adopt this style. One, as Pepys suggests, is that he was trying to curb the extravagant spending of the nobility by creating a mode of dress that was less susceptible to the whims of fashion. As the mid-1660s had seen the Great Plague and the Great Fire of London, a reduction of spending and flaunting of an elaborate lifestyle would have been a prudent move. Another theory is that after years in exile in foreign courts Charles wanted to create a style that was distinct from that of the other monarchs and their fashions. Whatever the reason, the vest, coat and breeches became the basis of what we would consider the three-piece suit today and so is arguably one of the best examples of royal impacts on wider fashion.
Excerpts from Pepys’ diary:
1661
‘This day I put on my half cloth black stockings and my new coat of the fashion, which pleases me well, and with my beaver [hat] I was (after office was done) ready to go to my Lord Mayor’s feast, as we are all invited.’ 29 October 1661
1662
‘In the afternoon to White Hall; and there walked an hour or two in the Park, where I saw the King now out of mourning, in a suit laced with gold and silver, which it was said was out of fashion.’ 11 May 1662
‘Again at the office in the afternoon to despatch letters and so home, and with my wife, by coach, to the New Exchange, to buy her some things; where we saw some new-fashion pettycoats of sarcenett, with a black broad lace printed round the bottom and before, very handsome, and my wife had a mind to one of them, but we did not then buy one.’ 15 April 1662
1663
‘Up betimes, and put on a black cloth suit, with white lynings [linings] under all, as the fashion is to wear, to appear under the breeches. So being ready walked to St. James’s.’ 10 May 1663
1665
‘Up; and put on my coloured silk suit very fine, and my new periwigg, bought a good while since, but durst [dare not] not wear, because the plague was in Westminster when I bought it; and it is a wonder what will be the fashion after the plague is done, as to periwiggs, for nobody will dare to buy any haire, for fear of the infection, that it had been cut off of the heads of people dead of the plague.’ 3 September 1665
1666
‘She tells me the ladies are to go into a new fashion shortly, and that is, to wear short coats, above their ancles [ankles]; which she and I do not like, but conclude this long trayne [train] to be mighty graceful.’ 15 October 1666
‘The King hath yesterday in Council declared his resolution of setting a fashion for clothes, which he will never alter. It will be a vest.’ 8 October 1666
‘At noon home to dinner, where my wife and I fell out, I being displeased with her cutting away a lace handkercher [handkerchief] sewed about the neck down to her breasts almost, out of a belief, but without reason, that it is the fashion.’ 22 November 1666
1667
‘Mrs. Steward [Frances Stuart], very fine, with her locks done up with puffes, as my wife calls them: and several other great ladies had their hair so, though I do not like it; but my wife do mightily ‒ but it is only because she sees it is the fashion.’ 4 February 1667
1668
‘Up, and put on my new stuff-suit, with a shoulder-belt, according to the new fashion, and the bands of my vest and tunique [tunic] laced with silk lace, of the colour of my suit: and so, very handsome, to Church, where a dull sermon and of a stranger, and so home;’ 17 May 1668
The levée
In the late 1600s, nearly every moment in the King’s life was an excuse for a public ceremony. Charles II (1660-85) copied the levée from the French court, a public dressing ceremony which happened in the morning and gave his courtiers the chance to curry favour with him.
Successive monarchs kept the levée but did not always appreciate the highlighted public life of a king. William III (1689-1702) was known to have expressed his dislike of the levée. In this video Toby Lord dresses Mark Knightley in an outfit from the late 1600s and they discuss the styles of long and elegant jackets, expensive silk waistcoats, and the introduction of the wig.
By the end of the 17th century, it wasn't just what the monarch was wearing that was important. The act of getting dressed itself had become a form of ritualised ceremony. The levée, as it was known, was essentially a piece of theatre. Privileged courtiers were given the honour of helping the king to put on certain items of clothing, like his shirt or his stockings. Others were simply just allowed to watch the process from behind a rail. Either way, such access to the king was a great privilege. And courtiers would also use it to their own advantage, by talking to the king about business, asking for favours, or even asking for a new job.he fashion of having a levée at all has come over from France, from the courts of Louis the XIV.It shows status as much as anything, as to what items you allowed to touch. You have to be quite high status to even be allowed to hold the linen shirts that the king would wear, because that's going to touch his body directly Red heels, of course, as is the fashion from France come over from, again, the court of Louis the XIV. So shoes, supposedly, used to show that you were in favour with the king, if you had red heels. But in practicality, it didn't last very long, because people started copying it. But you should be able to judge somebody from a distance and you see them come into the room and you can tell exactly what status they are. So you know when you get to them, do you bow for them? Do they bow for you? So your clothing should say everything.buckles are separate to the shoes. So you could change your buckles, depending on which shoe you're wearing. You can have fancier buckles each day. then there's the collars, The Tudors have a square and then, Elizabeth has this ruff, which makes people think about the head and enlightenment. And then, the Stuarts have kind of more triangle. So you stand like a triangle. You're shaped like a triangle. there's also the cravat, stockings and the waistcoat. Next is your justacorps, or coat. A wool coat embroidered with extra silver thread, like your waistcoat, or your vest. But you also have, added to your sleeves, a section of the same material as your waistcoat, which is a trick. don't forget the wig! you could either have human hair or horse hair, depending on what you could afford. Human hair, of course, much more expensive. Horse hair-- now, I can see a bit of your hair poking out from underneath. and you can't forget the handkerchief, maybe a cane and gloves too!
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