Cravat

CRAVAT, kre vat' n 1. an obsolete neck scarf 2. NECKTIE (Webster)

[In the eighteenth century,] neckwear continued, without much variation, the tradition of the late seventeenth century, that is the cravat or the steinkirk. (Laver 136)

In men’s neckwear the cravat took the place of the falling-band from about 1645-50. At first it was simply a length of white linen or lawn, lace-edged, folded and tied loosely round the throat. The name is derived from the Croatian word crabate and the fashion from Croat soldiers serving at the time with the French army, who wore scarves tied round their throats for protection. With the advent of the justaucorps in 1665-70, the cravat style became more sophisticated and was tied round the throat in a bow, its ends hanging formally in folds over the chest; these were decorated with lace or fringe. A later version of the cravat, worn in the 1690s and early eighteenth century, was termed the steenkirk or steinkirk, its name being derived from the Battle of Steenkerke in Belgium in August 1692. In this style the loosely twisted ends of the cravat were tucked into the shirt front or passed through a loop or button-hole in the coat edge. Towards 1720 the seventeenth-century cravat was replaced by the folded stock and this, in many and varied guises, was fashionable neckwear for men for much of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, though the word cravat was also sometimes used for this article. (Encyclopedia Of World Costume, Cravat)