1570s English middling sort

This was my first attempt at a tailored ensemble using only period-appropriate materials and construction techniques! My aim was to represent a woman of the middling sort from 1570s England who is wealthy enough to afford high-quality materials but not likely to be wearing extravagant clothes.

The kirtle was made from linen canvas and a worsted wool in dark madder red from Burnley and Trowbridge, a specialist re-enactment supplier. I quilted two layers of canvas together to form the stiffening layer for the kirtle, with one on the straight grain and the other on the bias. I hoped this would help prevent stretching, and it seems to have been successful. I have no evidence for this in period, but as there are no surviving garments of this type and social class I am willing to experiment with fabric-based stiffening. Separate "pairs of bodies" begin to show up in household inventories in the 1590s, but I have not seen any earlier than that. If you have, please let me know!

I modified a pattern from the Tudor Tailor that I had on hand for the kirtle, and they had placed the seam for the strap not on the shoulder but on the upper edge of the bodice (which you can hopefully see in the above in-progress shot). Most of the period imagery I've seen of this variety of kirtle (mostly Italian genre paintings of fruit sellers, to be fair) shows the seam in the shoulder, not here on the neckline. It is, however, very helpful with the issue of finishing that acute point at the strap-neckline intersection, and I'm glad I at least tried it. The side seams are handsewn in linen thread, for strength, and the rest of the stitching is in a matching dark red silk. Instead of trying to poke holes in two layers of canvas and two of wool I used brass lacing rings. I ended up fingerloop braiding a red silk braid to lace the kirtle, which isn't shown here (pretty sure I did all the fittings with kitchen twine....)

The skirt is a quite extravagant 3 widths of fabric sewn together at the selvedge and cartridge-pleated into the bottom of the bodice. I'm quite small, so the pleating is dramatic, but I am also not naturally endowed with hips, so the pleating helps disguise that. I also think it is quite a subtle way for a middle-class woman to emulate the large rolls and wheel farthingales coming into fashion for the wealthy.

A note on the smock before we go any further-- I originally made this to be a camicia/camisa for 1520s Spanish and Italian styles. It's perfect for that, but it has way too much fullness in the body and sleeves for 1570s England, and not enough of a ruff (or cuff ruffs, for that matter). As part of my Florentine 1570s set I am making a partlet and suite of ruffs that are more appropriate for this era.

The apron is based on a number of paintings (particularly Aertsen's Market with Christ and the Woman Taken in Adultery) showing women wearing aprons in shades of salmon pink. I'm sure this would have been something left for best, and not worn day-to-day, but I liked how the color fit in with the other rich tones I had picked for this set.

The next garment to tackle was the gown. I had been gifted some lovely purple wool broadcloth from B. Black & Sons that wasn't too bright to be appropriate for a person of this class. It is lined with fine linen from an antique sheet and trimmed with black wool tape from W. M. Booth, Draper. I also ended up adding some of the same trim to the bottom of the kirtle as well. It closes with reproduction brass hooks and eyes and is entirely handsewn with silk thread.

I wore this set to Drachenwald Fall Crown 2019 and was very happy with it! All the layers of wool were definitely needed. I threw together some pin-on sleeves since I never got around to making the waistcoat I was planning as an intermediate layer, and they're super simple. At the advice of a friend I did not add elbow shaping, since she found that more of a nuisance than anything else with pin-on sleeves which have a tendency to shift.

I also got to pose as a virtuous woman of the middling class (spinning, of course, because we cannot have idle hands) in a Tudor knot garden, which was amazing. Somehow the smock's high neck and ruffle did not make it into any of my pictures, much to my annoyance! Setting in those cartridge pleats was by far the slowest part of the whole process.

References

Levey, Santina M. “References to Dress in the Earliest Account Book of Bess of Hardwick.” Costume, no. 34 (2000): 13–24. https://doi.org/10.1179/cos.2000.34.1.13.

Malcolm-Davies, Jane, Caroline Johnson, and Ninya Mikhaila. “‘And Her Black Satin Gown Must Be New-Bodied’: The Twenty-First-Century Body in Pursuit of the Holbein Look.” Costume 42, no. 1 (2008): 21–29. https://doi.org/10.1179/174963008X285160.

Mikhaila, Ninya, and Jane Malcolm-Davies. The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing 16th-Century Dress. Hollywood, CA: Costume and Fashion Press, 2015.

Stern, Elizabeth. “Two Sixteenth-Century Norfolk Tailors.” Costume 15, no. 1 (1977): 13–23.