Fashion and Sumptuary Laws, November 2015

November 2015’s first episode was on fashion in Tudor and Renaissance England. It’s something that has been requested a number of times, but Lindsay’s text to the listener feedback line (801) 6TEYSKO inspired me to finally do the research and get an episode out about it.

So, if you’re going to be heading to a Renaissance Faire next summer, be sure to check out these resources. I might add, my especial pet-peeve at Renaissance Faire’s is kilts. England and Scotland were at war for much of the 16th century. Can we please make a rule that there should be no kilts allowed at Ren Faires? Please, dress as a fairy. Or a goth. Or an aging 70’s rocker. That’s fine. I can be ok with that. Kilts, not so much.

The Dynasty portrait showing the kirtles for all the women.

Ok, now that I’ve vented on Renaissance Faire fashions, let me give you some of the resources I used for this episode:

Renaissance Clothing and Sumptuary Laws:
http://www-personal.umd.umich.edu/~cfinlay/sumptuary.html
A great site with information on sumptuary laws, and a good introduction to how people dressed

Chart of Sumptuary Laws on the Tudors Wiki:
http://www.thetudorswiki.com/page/Chart+of+Tudor+Sumptuary+Laws

Elizabethan Sumptuary Laws:
http://elizabethan.org/sumptuary/

This is a gorgeous pinterest board with lots of costumes from various periods in history, many Renaissance:
https://www.pinterest.com/mbolo/pre-renaissance-post/

This is another pinterest board that has some amazing pictures of jeweled furs, and other clothing:
https://www.pinterest.com/mcadwellfastmai/tudor-elizabethan-zibellini/

Textiles at the Victoria and Albert Museum:
Their fashion history collection is marvelous
http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/t/textiles/

A brief history of the codpiece:
http://renaissancedancewear.com/codpices.html

Mary Firth, the famous cross dressing woman
http://marysharratt.blogspot.com.es/2011/04/mary-frith-original-roaring-girl.html

Holbein's The Ambassador showing the way wealthy men would dress — Holbein’s The Ambassador showing the way wealthy men would dress

Books

Patterns of Fashion by Janet Arnold
Pleasures and Pastimes in Tudor England by Alison Sim
The Tudor Tailor: Reconstructing Sixteenth Century Dress by Ninya Mikhaila and Jane Malcolm-Davies

The Peasant Wedding Feast which shows average people in their best clothes. Most people wear subdued colors since dyes were so expensive.

Heather Teysko is the creator, writer, and producer of The Renaissance English History Podcast, the original Tudor history podcast, started in 2009. She's been writing about history online for over 25 years, since her first site on Colonial American history became number one in history on Yahoo in 1998. In 2019 she created Tudorcon, which is now a yearly event, in addition to writing books, and running TudorFair.com - a whimsical Tudor Merch shop.

She has been passionate about Tudor England since she first read Alison Weir's The Six Wives of Henry VIII 30 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history (how exciting when she got to interview Alison for the first time!). In addition to history, she is passionate about travel, and has lived in 3 countries and 4 states (not counting her perpetual state of confusion), and her family (who help her host her YouTube channel occasionally).

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