In message <[email protected]>, [email protected] writes
Dear Lace Historians,
In closing, I have to ask: Why not have very extravagant clothing,
including lace stockings, to distinguish the Queen from other people?
Men were
wearing lace shoe roses, lace knee sashes, and lining the inside tops of
wide-cuffed boots with laces! Consult portraits of the period to confirm.
Of course! Men were wearing hose - effectively stockings - and lace in
the 1500s and 1600s - whereas we associate stockings with female
clothing, and are getting stuck with the "why decorate stockings to be
worn under floor length gowns?" in the days when "a glimpse of stocking
was looked on as something shocking", stocking fronts would be visible
and probably fashionable on the legs of the males of the day. Men
dressed to attract, in the same way as peacocks have colourful feathers
to attract the female... and what better way to show off one's shapely
calves?
I suspect where females were concerned, it would only be the prostitutes
who showed any leg in those days, and at least in Elizabeth I's reign,
they would have been banned by law from wearing lace.
--
Jane Partridge
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