English Costume

Clothing was never merely clothing in medieval and Tudor England. A man's hose announced his trade, a woman's head-dress declared her marital status, and a merchant's velvet cap could spark as much conversation as a noble's coat of arms. Dion Clayton Calthrop's 1907 study traces English dress from the Norman Conquest through the early Victorian era, revealing how what people wore functioned as a language of power, respectability, and identity. This is a book for anyone who has wondered why Henry VIII's doublets grew ever more theatrical, what Elizabethan ruffs were actually constructed from, or how the English gentleman gradually abandoned his wig and shoe buckles. Calthrop writes with the affectionate precision of someone who has handled these garments, describing the weight of velvet, the stiffness of starched linen, the particular swagger of a well-cut coat. The line drawings and watercolour plates capture details no photograph could: the texture of chain mail beneath a surcoat, the subtle gradations of colour in a lady's petticoat, the particular drape of a scholar's gown. Over a century old, this remains a fascinating portal into the English past through the cloths that draped it.