Tudor Fashion and Clothing

By Amelia McGarvey

When considering Tudor period clothing, people are most often drawn to think of large ruff collars, thick white makeup, long silk gowns, clothing with pleats and folds and layers, and generally the extremes of high fashion worn by the upper classes. Although these distinctive fashions were present, Tudor clothing in actuality varied widely in complexity and design depending on a range of factors including social class, gender and the reigning monarch.

Henry VIII – After Hans Holbein the Younger

Tudor clothing was usually made from natural materials like linen and wool. The upper classes could afford to wear more luxurious items made from satin, silk and velvet. Fabric was expensive and clothing was time consuming to produce, so only the wealthy could afford new garments. Ordinary people’s clothing was usually hand-me-downs that would have been adapted and repaired, and sometimes altered to follow fashions.

Much of what historians know about Tudor era clothing comes from portraits. Unfortunately, due to the expensive nature of portraiture, only the wealthy elite were able to commission them. As a result, much less is known about the clothing of ordinary people.

Fashion moved much slower amongst the lower classes and they were also limited by the sumptuary laws which attempted to impose obvious distinctions between the classes by limiting certain clothing styles and colours for lower class people. Although Women were absent from the sumptuary laws until 1574 under Elizabeth I (perhaps she was fearful of being outshone). The new law declared that no woman “shall wear any cloth of gold, tissue, nor fur of sables” with the exception of duchesses, marquises, and countesses. However, the sumptuary laws were abolished in 1604, so under the Stuarts, both men and women across the social spectrum could wear clothing to match their personal taste and fashion, rather than what the law permitted them to wear.

Elizabeth I, Darnely Portrait c.1575

The poor wore simple, practical clothing made from wool. Women’s most common over garments were kirtles. Tudor period kirtles varied but would generally be constructed by combining a fitted bodice with a skirt gathered or pleated into the waist seam. Kirtles could lace up the front, back or side. All women covered their hair with a linen cap, but the rich would place a decorative hood on top of this. Lower class men would wear trousers made of wool and a tunic which came down to the knee.

The idea that ordinary lower-class people in the past solely wore drab shades of browns and greys is a modern misconception as a range of fabric colours were produced using natural dyes. Wool was common for hose, doublets and kirtles and when undyed allowed for a range of colours such as grey, black, white and russet. Common plant dyes were used for a variety of colours, such as weld a plant used to make yellow dye, woad – used to make blue and madder used for red. Other things were often added to the dyes added such as oak galls or iron oxide (rust) to produce a variety of colours.

Modern Woad Dyeing

More expensive dyes for fabrics worn by the rich produced deeper shades or rarer colours and had to be imported. For example Tyrian purple, a colour reserved by sumptuary laws, to be worn only by the royal family. It was a reddish-purple dye that was worth more than its weight in gold created by crushing certain seashells.

To the upper classes clothing was a chance to show off affluence and status. Those who could afford it would wear layers of expensive and embroidered fabrics and would follow the extravagances of Tudor fashion. Fashion in Tudor England was often inspired by other European countries, and was also heavily influenced by members of the royal court. Elizabeth I, for example, had 260 gowns, 99 robes, 127 cloaks, 125 petticoats plus hundreds of smaller accessories (so clothing was of vital importance in portraying status and power).

Katherine Parr 1545, © National Portrait Gallery, London

The wealthier aristocratic women would demonstrate their status through their pronounced silhouette and elaborate, expensive outer clothing. An example of this is the farthingale. The Spanish farthingale was initially introduced to England by Catherine of Aragon and was a structured skirt made of wooden hoops, which gave fashionable shape to the layers which went over it. The French farthingale was later popularised by Elizabeth I in the 1580s when a busk would be worn which pushed the front down and allowed the back to raise up, giving the unusual shape commonly associated with Tudor dresses.