Way back in 2007 an article made the rounds through the googlesphere that Elizabeth I’s christening gown had been rediscovered, and was on display at Sudeley Castle. There are a couple of strands to the story – several people said that they saw the gown prior to 2007 at Sudeley. Other people have pointed out that the gown looks like it’s 17th century.
Either way, Sudeley still states on their website that the gown was likely worked on by Anne Boleyn as she prepared it for the birth of a son who would, of course, turn out to be Elizabeth.
I wanted to know more about christening gowns in general, and found an interesting article from The Fashionable Housewife. She writes that christening gowns evolved from the swaddling bands that babies were originally wrapped in. In the very early days of Christianity, couples who were married had their hands bound together during the ceremony. When they had a baby, those same bands used in the wedding would be used to wrap the baby up. Up until around the mid 15th century babies weren’t fully immersed when they were baptized, so the same bands would be used for the infant at their christening ceremony.
Once full immersion of infants became the norm in the last 15th century, parents needed something that was easy to both get off the baby, and put back on the drenched infant. And when you’ve got a squirmy, upset, and potentially very cold baby, you don’t want to be messing around with swaddling bands. My daughter was 18 months old when she was finally baptized, it wasn’t even a full immersion, and she was the angriest I think I’d ever seen her up until that point. Nobody likes being doused in cold water against their will! Especially when they have no idea what’s going on, they’re brand new in the world, and less than a week ago they were still safe and warm in mama’s tummy!
So a gown evolved, so you could easily get the baby wrapped back up again after the baptism. Of course, over time those gowns became more ornate, and for the wealthy they became an heirloom item with ornate embroidery, pearls, and other decorations.
Whether or not the gown at Sudeley is really Elizabeth’s doesn’t matter. It’s a gorgeous example of a fashion we still have today that originated because of a change to a religious ceremony.
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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 20 years ago, and subsequently moved to London after college to spend her time immersed in Tudor history.