FASHION RULES
Mention Henry VIII and everyone can picture the King. His wide foot pose, elaborate silhouette, and jewel-encrusted clothes.
Forget the 1980s, the Tudors were the first power dressers. They used clothes to convey their majesty and invincibility. Henry VIII inherited the throne from his father Henry VII, the first Tudor monarch, in 1509. Henry VIII needed to assert his right to rule, and he used the wealth of his father to create a powerful royal image.
For his coronation, on Midsummer’s Day, Henry VIII wore cloth of gold and cloth of silver. His robes were stiff with jewels – diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls. He shone and reflected light. The subliminal message was clear: ‘a divine right to rule’.
Shortly after his coronation in 1510, King Henry introduced the first of his Sumptuary Laws limiting the use of certain fabrics to the Royal Family. Nevertheless, royal born or not, nearly everyone began and ended their life wrapped in some sort of linen. Babies were clothed in linen for the first year of their life, and then they progressed to wearing short coats and finally into smaller versions of adult clothing. Children had leading strings on their aprons, that acted like modern-day reins and this is where the saying ‘cutting the apron strings’ originates.
Tudor clothes not only reinforced rank and status, but they also enforced gender stereotypes. Portraits of the time show boys wearing skirts while carrying swords, and wearing hats and doublets. Girls are shown wearing long dresses, bum rolls, and girdles with pomanders (perfume holders) and miniature prayer books attached. In Tudor England, men showed their legs whilst women hid theirs from view and covered their hair.
The contrast between men and women’s clothing was sharp. Henry’s heavily padded codpieces conveyed an impression of masculine virility. When fully gowned, a woman couldn’t raise her arm past her shoulder. The number of layers and the weight of the fabric quite literally weighed her down. I find it interesting that these beautiful clothes, so highly prized, never actually touched their skin. Today we have the luxury of feeling our cashmere or silk directly against our body; the expensive purchase seems worth it. Tudor men and women wore linen smocks against their skin then added the layers of clothing on top.
Buttons didn’t exist, ties and pins were used to hold the clothes in place. The Tudors had a practical side to everything, and this allowed them to let the clothes out when required, such as during pregnancy.
Henry used fashion as a means of identification. His subjects could identify him as their ruler, and he could identify those who served him. In 1514 he replaced the green and white uniform of the Yeomen of the Guard with a bold scarlet livery. We tend to think of emojis as a new language, but in Tudor times various symbols, sown onto livery, as well as the cut and colours of cloth, represented a person’s social and political standing. Sadly, not everyone in Tudor England had control over their self-expression as a result of the laws surrounding clothing. Henry VIII and Elizabeth I introduced very strict laws about what people could wear, depending upon their social rank. However, these laws of Apparel and Sumptuary laws, as they were known, were not very successful (there are few recorded prosecutions.) Although it is true that the Duke of Buckingham offended the King with his magnificent appearance. Among the charges brought against the Duke before his beheading was the following: ‘He sent his chancellor to buy cloth of gold silver and silk, to the value of 300 marks each time, which he was to use to procure the service of knights and gentlemen against the King.’ It is also true that the Earl of Leicester, in the reign of Elizabeth I, spent more on one item of clothing than Shakespeare spent on a house. Thomas Cromwell, on the other hand, fashioned himself not as an earl but as a lawyer by dressing in modest black robes.
In 1516, Henry owned 134 doublets made from 29 different fabrics. The Venetian ambassador Sebastiano Guistinian declared the King of England to be the ‘best-dressed sovereign in the world’. An inventory of 1521 estimates the cost of Henry’s wardrobe in today’s money at the equivalent of £4m.
Henry VIII’s daughter Elizabeth also understood the power of clothes. Elizabeth I wore only the most fashionable patterns and fabrics to convey her message of majesty.
The famous Rainbow portrait of Elizabeth, painted at the end of her life, shows the queen as young and beautiful, conveying the idea of royalty transcending time. Her bodice is embroidered with flowers, and she wears pearls as a sign that her virtue is intact. The serpent on her left arm symbolises her wisdom. Sown into her cloak are eyes and ears – she is all-seeing, all-hearing, like God. The glass tube in her righthand is the rainbow that the picture is named after. Above it is a Latin inscription that translates as ‘there is no rainbow without the sun’. In other words, England had seen off the rain with the defeat of the Spanish Armada and the resolution of the Scottish threat of Mary Queen of Scots. Elizabeth had emerged as bright and victorious as the sunshine.
In recent years, fashion designers such as Valentino, Vivienne Westwood, Alexandra McQueen, and Jonathan Anderson have looked to the Tudors for inspiration for their creations. Long flowing skirts, power relic style jewellery, frilly blouses, and opulent metallic fabrics are all reconnecting us with this fashion-conscious period of history. Most incredible of all is that in our time, women can wear something adapted from this masculine era purely for their pleasure.