Middle Class Fashion In The Elizabethan Era

“Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but follows religiously the new.” (Fashion Quotes 1) The words once spoken by Henry David Thoreau are politically correct. People often look at Elizabethan‘s choice of fashion and ridicule everything about it from the hair, down to the stockings. As it appears, fashion has always been a broad topic of discussion in the world. Whether it is NY Fashion Week or a Macy’s fashion show, fashion is something that has always been an eye catcher. Fashion has been around for many years, and whether we know it or not, Elizabethan fashion has influenced the way modern fashion is today.

During the Elizabethan Era, there were a set of rules controlling which classes could wear which clothing called the Sumptuary Laws. The Sumptuary Laws controlled the colors and types of clothing a person could wear. This allowed an easy and immediate way to identify rank and privilege (Elizabethan Era | Clothing). Those found dressed in inappropriate clothing could be fined, lose property, lose rank, and even be killed (Elizabethan Dress

The Elizabethan Era is often considered the ‘Golden Age’ or ‘Renaissance’ of English History. It was called Elizabethan simply because it coincided with Queen Elizabeth I’s rule. It was a generation of expansion of ideas and flowering of poetry, music, and literature and it greatly contributed to the theatre field. Many of the most famous people in English literature have come from the Elizabethan Era. Like all the other eras in English history, the Elizabethan had many notable similarities and contrasts with the present day.

There are cheaper materials that don't last as long and there are more expensive materials that last longer. Unlike today, in Elizabethan Time the people didn't chose what fabrics to wear. Just like the colors it depended on their status and rank. "Elizabethan Nobles and Upper classes wore clothing made of velvets, furs, silks, lace, cottons and taffeta" ("Material & Fabrics used in Elizabethan Era Clothing"). "The Elizabethan Lower Classes had to wear clothing made of wool, linen and sheepskin however, silk, taffeta and velvet trimmings were allowed" ("Material & Fabrics used in Elizabethan Era Clothing"). Just like breaking the law of colors people would also get punished for breaking the laws of fabrics and materials. In the Elizabethan time the rank of a person made a huge impact on the clothing they would

The richer class believed “Clothing was a sign of importance and power.” (Stevenson, par 1) Nobles believed the amount of money they spent on their clothes determined the amount of authority they had. The more rich you were, the more people looked up to you. Chaucer writes about the Summoner “The better he looks the more successful he will be.” (Prentice Hall 113) Nobles such as the Summoner had extra money to spend on things like clothing. These people in the second estate dressed to impress more than dressing for comfort. Comfort did not apply to the nobles, because they had less work than the other estates. The nobles wanted to show their riches, so the bigger and brighter their clothing the

People use to wear clothes that we would see in plays, wearing costumes practically. Kind of like the hunger games with less technology ha-ha. People wore colors that based off of their royalty or as we call it "classes" purples, reds, and golds were for the higher royalty and lower classes could not wear those colors. Men liked to wear clothes that made them look bigger because the bigger you were meant that you could afford to eat a lot of food "royalty." Now we like to wear clothes that make us look more skinny, black does that. Jeans and t-shirts are worn daily and we only wear fancy clothes for occasions, well for the most of us. We don't were costumes as regular clothes, that's only for plays or if your acting. We can wear any colors we want and it won't tell us if we have any kind of royalty.

In the Elizabethan period, the law on what clothing people wore was so strict that people could have penalties such as fines, the loss of property, and even life (www.elizabethan-era.org.uk)! Clothing was very important to people in the Elizabethan period, and regardless of what social class people where in, what they wore mattered a lot to them and defined them. This applies to younger girls and younger boys, who spent a lot of time dressing nice. Young girls spent their morning putting on their many layers of clothing.

Men and Women’s clothes portrayed ranking in society. Wealthier people had more elegant clothes than others. Women usually tried to look like men when they wore outfits with big shoulders, wide hips, and a small waist. A woman's age also influenced what she wore. They wore two piece dresses, which was constructed of many individual parts to it. “The well to do Elizabethan woman might have looked something like this: make up base of white of lead and sulfur, various dyes on the cheeks, beauty spots drawn on, eyebrows plucked thin, lips thickly lipsticked, hair powered pinned and perfumed.” (Tomecek, Jan) These individual parts of the dresses that the women would wear included the bodice, partlet, sleeves, ruffs, kirtle and bumroll. Women usually always had their hair pulled back from their face and wore it in many different styles. Men’s clothes during this period included doublets, breeches, underwear, collars, ruffs, hats and

Some might ask, why was clothing in the Elizabethan Era so monumental? The ruler of The Elizabethan Era, Elizabeth I, who possessed two thousand exquisite gowns upon her death was a woman, with her being a woman, fashion was nothing to be toyed with; it was serious business(Lad). Fashion in the Elizabethan Era defined citizens as persons; colors, fabrics, and even hair lines could indicate whether you belong to the lavish upper class or the lower class clothed in wool. Clothing of the Elizabethan Era was indeed serious business, so serious that Elizabeth I introduced the Statues of Apparel In Greenwich on June 15, 1574. (Alchin)

The Elizabethan Era was a time that reflect the mood and values of the 16th

In the Victorian Era, clothes showed social rank, wealth, stability and style. The rich wore really expensive clothes. The women always wore big, puffy, shiny dresses. The men wore suits and ties with a vest and dress pants and black or brown leather dress shoes. If you didn’t have nice clothes, you were considered useless or

Elizabethan clothes in that time provided other people the information about the social status of the person wearing them. Their clothing showed the person’s wealth and social standing. For example the only people permitted to wear clothes trimmed with ermine were royalty. Elizabethan laws dictated what colors and type of clothing individuals were allowed to own and wear, by doing that everyone had a quick and easy way to spot out which people were important and which were not. It was during this time that men’s clothing was usually more elaborate than the woman’s. People’s hairstyles were very important in order to achieve attention and was considered upper class fashion. During the elizabethan era

In the Elizabethan era, their lives were governed by strict laws and rule. According to “Elizabethan Era,” “the Parliament regulated the clothes that can only be worn by each rank and it was considered a defiance of the order if a laborer wore clothes of the rich.” The Parliament governed the citizens very strictly, and even decided what the people would wear. Stated by Melanie Jones, “a person's class determined how they could dress, where

In the earlier parts of the sixteenth century, everything was changing in England. Everything from their queens right down to fashion. The fifteenth century was a time if simple styles, anything that would create a simple silhouette of a woman. The sixteenth century was different, this era is what we now call Elizabethan fashion. Clothing wasn't just merely an insignificant thing in the days of Elizabethan England. There are some very small yet important items that must be worn to have a proper Elizabethan outfit. Everything was equally important, all the way down to the make up that was worn. During the Elizabethan times they had everything, specific outfits and accessories, some more lavish, according to classes. In fact, it is quite significant

The people who lived during the Elizabethan Era were not allowed to wear whatever they like or desired. Their Fashion choices had to be followed by a strict law! The English people chose to establish social classes by the colors they wore and this had an affect on costumes used in theatre. Queen Elizabeth I followed the sumptuary laws, which was only certain classes were consent to wear specific fabric and colors. Therefore in plays the actors could only wear certain colors for their costumes that displayed what role and class their character was in. The clothes worn during this era was a result of Queen Elizabeth’s sumptuary laws, which had an affect on costumes used in plays, and each color a person wore had a significant meaning.