> > I know that there's a portrait of Lady Burghley in a > > very pregnant state > > wearing a kirtle and surcoat.
I have a picture of "Mildred Coke, Lady Burghley, 1562-3, oil on panel." She is wearing a surcoat, what look to be black/red worked sleeves and partlet (it's a black and white image but this seems a reasonable assumption) and an unusual garment underneath. There is a girdle around her expanding middle and above that are diagonal lines of scalloped trim. Below the girdle is a plain skirt. There is also a very narrow horizontal line just below her breasts. Her sleeves reflect the scallop shape, but they are upside down and rather more ornate. > then again too, Elizabethan corsetry wasn't designed > to be tightened severely. That's a Victorian > convention. With high fashion (of England France and Spain) there was a very definite tendancy to much waist reduction. The ideal was as extreme (in it's way) as the ideal in the late Victorian era! http://www.tudor-portraits.com/ http://www.tudor-portraits.com/UnknownLady35.jpg Though to be honest I wouldn't be surprised if this hadn't been retouched. Dpes anyone know? http://www.tudor-portraits.com/HelenaSnakeborg.jpg http://www.tudor-portraits.com/LetticeKnollys.jpg http://www.tudor-portraits.com/UnknownLady10.jpg http://www.marileecody.com http://www.marileecody.com/maryqos/maryring.jpg http://www.wga.hu/html/c/corneill/rochecho.html Of course most of these are stylised, but that's the point. The ideal was this extreme shape (for various reasons of art and fashion.) I'm pretty sure there are as many sermons against the evils of tightlacing in the 16thC as there were in the 19th;) Just as there was against tight clothes earlier than this. >From Corsets and Crinolines. "1550 Hyr mydle braced in, as smal as a wande; And some by wastes of wyre at the paste wyfes hand" "1577 French women have inconceivably narrow waists; they swell out their gowns from the waist downwards by whalebones stuffs and vertugardins, which increases the elegance of their figures. Over the chemise they were a corset or bodice, that they call a "corps pique" which makes their shape more delicate and slender... " Jerome Lippomano, ambassador of venice to France. "1588 To become slender in wast, and to have a straight spagnolised body, what pinching what girding, what cingling, will they not endure; yea sometimes with yron-plates, with whale-bones and other such trash..." then it gets more silly;) Sounds very much the same as the criticism fo the 19thC. A mix of fact and fiction to make it sound worse than it was. "1589 ... That she be so bombe-thin, yet she crosse like seems four squaire" William Warner, Albion's England "1597 I shall have a petitcoat of silk,...; it shall have a French bodys not of whalebone for that is not stiff enough, but of horn for that will hold it out; it shall come in low before to in my belly..... I will have a busk of whale bone, it shall be tied with two silk points, and I will have a wrought stomacher embossed with gold." quoted by G. B. Harrison, Elizabethan Journal (does anyone have further info on this?) Now if I could just find a nice pic of the effigy stays... Sigh... the site is down, they were here: http://www.elizabethi.org/us/wardrobe/corset.htm It's hard to compare, but the method of optical illusion (broader shoulders and skirts) with fitted stays is very similar in many periods. I'm not saying that all women had or even tried to achieve this tininess, just that it seems to be as popular then as many other times in history. That there was an ideal that was not always matched in reality, but that it was still desireable by at least some of the human population. michaela http://glittersweet.com -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.1.375 / Virus Database: 267.14.23/240 - Release Date: 25/01/2006 _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
