Fashion4

In the Elizabethan Era, there were laws known as the Sumptuary Laws told people what clothes and colors they could and couldn’t wear. According to Linda Alchin, the author of the website, Elizabethan Era, if you violated the Sumptuary laws, there would be harsh penalties. Clothing was a good way to identify a person’s social class or information about them. If you were royalty, you could wear silk and the color purple. Wives of Knights of the Garter could wear velvets and furs, in the colors crimson and black. Wives of a barons’ son could wear velvet, pearls, buttons and satin in the color grey. The lower class women and men could only wear wool, linen, and sheepskin in the colors brown, beige, yellow, orange, russet, green, grey, and blue. A knight could wear scabbards, swords, a gilt, and satin in the color deep blue. Fashion was such a huge status symbol because it showed everyone how wealthy or what social status someone is.
 * WHAT WERE POPULAR FORMS OF HAIRSTYLES, clothing, MEN’s and women’s FASHION, and children’s fashion IN shakespeare’s ENGLAND? HOW WERE THESE DIFFERENT IN URBAN/RURAL LIFE? HOW WERE THESE DIFFERENT IN NOBLE/MERCHANT/COMMON LIFE? **
 * Answer prepared by: Kimberly Roos **

Clothing and fashion in the Elizabethan Era was very strict and many people within the same social class wore very similar things. Linda Alchin says that all of the clothes that people had were very expensive, especially if you were a higher classman. If you were a woman, your underclothes would be a smock or a shift, stockings or hose, a corset or a bodice, a farthingale (a hooped skirt), a roll, a stomacher, a petticoat, a kirtle, a forepart, and a partlet. The over clothes that women wore were gowns, separate sleeves, ruffs, cloaks, shoes, and hats. If you were a man, the underclothes that you would wear were a shirt, stockings or hose, a codpiece, and a corset. The over clothes that a man would wear were a doublet, separate sleeves, breeches, a belt, a ruff, a cloak, shoes, and hats. There were also different clothes that only some people could wear, depending on their status or position. Only royalty could wear clothes trimmed with ermine and silk. If you were a lesser noble, you could wear clothing trimmed with fox and odder. Lower class women and men could only wear wool, linen, and sheepskin. Fashion and clothing in the Elizabethan Era are very different from the clothes we have now, and there were many laws restricting what someone could and couldn’t wear.

Hairstyles of men and women were very important to the fashion of all people in the Elizabethan Era. The Era is referred to as the peacock age because of the elaborate fashion. The Elizabethan view of ideal beauty was a woman with light hair. Many people followed the fashion of Queen Elizabeth and how she had red hair, especially the upper class women. Jeffery Singman, the author of __Daily Life in Elizabethan England__, at the beginning of the Era, women were required to have their hair swept up, like in a bun and they were also required to have frizzy hair. Many upper class women had wigs and hairpieces that would cover much of their hair on their head. Long hair was a fashion style that many women liked to have. There were many different hair coverings, which were adorned with feathers, pearls, glass jewels, spangles, gold thread, embroidery, and lace. Some of the hair coverings were the coif, which was a plain white linen fighting cap tied under the chin, the French hood, which was a hat in the shape of a crescent moon that covered the back of a head, the caul, which was a hairnet made of fabric that covered the back of the head, and the Pillbox style of hat, which was a hat with a veil attached to the back of it. The length of men’s hair increased throughout the Era. At first, men had very short hairstyles. If you were a man with long hair, you had to make it curly by using hot irons. Wax or gum was put in the hair of men to keep it in place. In the Elizabethan Era, beards were very fashionable and worn in various styles. Certain hairstyles in the Elizabethan Era were strictly enforced and showed whether or not you were wealthy.

Works Cited Alchin, Linda. "Elizabethan Clothing." //Elizabethan Era//. N.p., 7/16/05. Web. 29 Mar 2010. .

Lace, William W. //Elizabethan England//. Farmington Hills, MI: Lucent Books, 2006. 28-29. Print.

Singman, Jeffrey. //Daily Life in Elizabethan England//. Wesport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1995. 96-103, 114-115, 122-123. Print.  