Christina upturns the clothes box and shreds our shifts and kirtles.
|
|
It depicts a Florentine street in what at first appears to be the full spate of a Renaissance procession, with men on horseback in tights and doublets and women in overdresses and kirtles.
|
|
"Wedding Dance in the Open Air," a merry painting of dozens of partygoers kicking up their heels beneath kirtles, spent many years undated and unsigned in storage at the Holburne Museum in Bath.
|
|
Kirtles were part of fashionable attire into the middle of the sixteenth century, and remained part of country or middle-class clothing into the seventeenth century. Kirtles began as loose garments without a waist seam, changing to tightly fitted supportive garments in the 14th century. Later kirtles could be constructed by combining a fitted bodice with a skirt gathered or pleated into the waist seam. Kirtles could lace up the front, back or side-back, with some rare cases of side lacing, all depending on the fashion of the day/place and what kind of gown was to be worn over it.
|
|
Kirtles could be embellished with a variety of decorations including gold, silk, tassels, and knobs.
|
|
Over the chemise, women wore a loose or fitted dress called a cotte or kirtle, usually ankle or floor-length, and with trains for formal occasions. Fitted kirtles had wide skirts made by adding triangular gores to widen the hem without adding bulk at the waist. Kirtles also had long, fitted sleeves that sometimes reached down to cover the knuckles. Various sorts of robes were worn over the kirtle, and are called by different names by costume historians.
|
|
A robe, tunic, or kirtle was usually worn over the shirt or doublet. As with other outer garments, it was generally made of wool. Over this, a man might also wear an over-kirtle, cloak, or a hood.id. p. 97 Servants and working men wore their kirtles at various lengths, including as low as the knee or calf.
|
|
Dresses are outer garments made up of a bodice and a skirt and can be made in one or more pieces. Dresses are generally suitable for both casual and formal wear in the West for women and girls. Historically, dresses could also include other items of clothing such as corsets, kirtles, partlets, petticoats, smocks, and stomachers.
|
|
In 1506 they were both given gowns of russet cloth with velvet bands, with red skirts or kirtles. In 1507 they, and another girl in the castle, Marjory Lindsay, were given red skirts with green ribbons.Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1901), lxxxv, 114, 155, 172, 175, 310-11, 321-2, 336, 361, 370-1, 387: Accounts of the Lord High Treasurer, vol. 4 (Edinburgh, 1902), 51, 59, 61-2, 82, 100, 116.
|
|
Women's clothing consisted of an undertunic called a chemise, chainse or smock, usually of linen, over which was worn one or more ankle-to-floor length tunics (also called dresses or kirtles). Working-class women wore their tunics ankle-length and belted at the waist. Women of the French court wore a loosely fitted tunic called a cotte or the form-fitting bliaut over a full chemise with tight sleeves. The bliaut had a flaring skirt and sleeves tight to the elbow and then widening to wrist in a trumpet shape.
|
|
Silk brocades and velvets in bold floral patterns based on pomegranate and thistle or artichoke motifs remained fashionable for those who could afford them, although they were often restricted to kirtles, undersleeves and doublets revealed beneath gowns of solid-coloured fabrics or monochromatic figured silks. Yellow and red were fashionable colours.Kybalová, Ludmila, Olga Herbenová, and Milena Lamarová: Pictorial Encyclopedia of Fashion, 1968, p. 154 Inspired by the mended uniforms of the Swiss soldiers after the country's 1477 victory over the Duke of Burgundy, elaborate slashing remained popular, especially in Germany, where a fashion arose for assembling garments in alternating bands of contrasting fabrics.
|
|
After that date, either kirtles or petticoats might have attached bodices or bodies that fastened with lacing or hooks and eyes and most had sleeves that were pinned or laced in place. The parts of the kirtle or petticoat that showed beneath the gown were usually made of richer fabrics, especially the front panel forepart of the skirts. The bodices of French, Spanish, and English styles were stiffened into a cone or flattened, triangular shape ending in a V at the front of the woman's waist. Italian fashion uniquely featured a broad U-shape rather than a V. Spanish women also wore boned, heavy corsets known as "Spanish bodies" that compressed the torso into a smaller but equally geometric cone.
|
|
Berkeley first married, in September 1554, at Kenninghall, Norfolk, Katherine Howard, third daughter of Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, and Frances de Vere, daughter of John de Vere, 15th Earl of Oxford, and Elizabeth Trussell, by whom he had a son, Sir Thomas Berkeley, who predeceased him, dying on 22 November 1611, leaving a son, George Berkeley, who succeeded as 8th Baron Berkeley.. Berkeley's first wife, Katherine, died of dropsy at Caludon on 7 April 1596, and was buried on 20 May near the Drapers Chapel at St Michael's, Coventry. Katherine was fond of field sports, and said to be 'so good an archer at butts with the longbow, as her side, by her, was never the weaker'. She was also fond of falconry, and 'kept commonly a cast or two of merlins, mewed in her own chamber, to the detriment of her gowns and kirtles'. Berkeley married for a second time, on 9 March 1598 at St Giles, Cripplegate, Jane Stanhope (c.1547–1618), widow of Sir Roger Townshend (d.
|
|