On Mar 29, 2008, at 3:49 AM, Kimiko Small wrote: > > I have found the effigy monument that shows a short > gown over very long kirtle from Dr. Jane > Malcolm-Davies effigies web site. > The woman: > http://s56.photobucket.com/albums/g173/sstormwatch/CostumeIdeas/? > action=view¤t=95_main.jpg > ( http://tinyurl.com/2kp5ay ) > The view of her hem: > http://s56.photobucket.com/albums/g173/sstormwatch/CostumeIdeas/? > action=view¤t=95_137_main.jpg > ( http://tinyurl.com/2kwfxq ) > > There is an interesting little note that Jane provided > with that image. > "The top layer (the gown) is shorter than the under > layer (the kirtle). This was described as > characteristic of Englishwomen's dress by the Venetian > ambassador in 1554 (quoted in Carter, A [1984] “Mary > Tudor’s Wardrobe” in Costume, 18, 20)."
This is a trifle misleading, I'm afraid. In “Mary Tudor’s Wardrobe,” Carter quotes Soranzo, the Venetian ambassador, as saying "Queen Mary's garments are of two sorts; the one a gown such as men wear but fitting very close, with an underpetticoat which has a very long train; and this is her ordinary costume, being also that of the gentlewomen of England. The other garment is a gown and bodice, with wide hanging sleeves in the French fashion which she wears on state occasions." (p. 15) It is the first style that Malcolm-Davies is using as textual evidence for this shorter outer gown. But Carter presents a fairly detailed argument that this style is actually a loose gown over a trained kirtle. Her summary is "Moreover, orders for French kirtles generally follow those for loose gowns, and it may be asserted that this is the combination inferred by Soranzo, with the kirtle train visible below the hem of the gown." (p. 19) It is implied here that Carter believes the loose gown on women to have been floor-length, but she states it earlier when discussing how a woman's loose gown differed from the "gown such as men wear" that Soranzo references. (p. 17) (There are of course shorter loose gowns on women later in the century, though the evidence for them is from France and Italy.) So using this reference as an argument that wearing a shorter fitted gown (like the one in this effigy or the other problematic examples we've seen) over a longer kirtle was a general fashion among Englishwomen at this time is a bit disingenuous. There is something of a disconnect between the idea of "loose gown" and the description of "fitting very close," but there are some funeral brasses from the 1550s and later that show loose gowns with a girdle worn on top so that the fullness is held close to the body. If anyone has a copy of Laver's _Costume of the Western World: Early Tudor_, plate 42 is a good example from 1550. Page 96 of Ashelford's _Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century_ has an almost identical look from 1578, but as Robin helpfully pointed out to me once, patterns for brasses were used long after the fashions they depicted went out of style. All that said, there do appear to be at least two English examples of a slightly shorter fitted gown over a longer kirtle that can't be explained via allegorical representation or sainthood without a bit of a stretch (the effigy and Mary Tudor's lady in waiting). Whatever it was, it doesn't seem to have been a general fashion. Melanie Schuessler _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
