Tailor-made for Tudors
From decorated codpieces to ‘sheep colour’ fabrics, our podcast editor ELLIE CAWTHORNE discusses a recent episode on how to stay fashionable in Tudor England
Where did the Tudor fashion for enormous ruffs come from? That was just one of many fascinating sartorial questions to be answered in our recent episode with Jane Malcolm-Davies. She’s one of the creators of The Tudor Tailor – a project providing inspiration and advice for anyone interested in 16th-century dress, including dressmaking patterns to sew your own authentic Tudor outfits.
As Malcolm-Davies reveals, in the 16th century, what you wore really mattered. “People would spend roughly the same proportion of their income on clothes as we spend on our rent or mortgage today,” she says, “because clothes needed not only to be functional, but also to display social status.” Despite what you might assume, most people did not make their own clothes, and tailoring was a highly skilled occupation requiring a seven-year apprenticeship. Forget throwaway fast fashion; each clothing item was a significant investment to be carefully cared for. It was common to leave a ‘worst garment’ to a friend or relative in your will – and this wasn’t an insult, but an indication that even the poorest pieces of clothing had value.
Alongside quality, any aspiring Tudor fashionista also needed to consider colour. For those lower down the social scale, ‘sheep colour’ fabric was common for obvious reasons – no dyeing was required. Tawny and red were also popular, while violet (made using blue and then red plant dyes) offered a handy hack for the masses who couldn’t afford aspirational yet eye-wateringly expensive purple pigments. But, says Malcolm-Davies, “black was the single most important colour in all Tudor wardrobes. On the streets of a typical village or town, you would see a huge amount of black.”
No conversation about Tudor clothing would be complete without mentioning codpieces. What began as a simple functional flap to hold hose together gradually became more and more pronounced until it was an opportunity for display and decoration, with ribbons or gold braid signalling virility. “I’m not sure anyone can really explain the excesses of the codpiece in the middle of the 16th century,” says Malcolm-Davies. “But anyone interested in making their own should head to The Tudor Tailor for detailed instructions based on our examination of rare surviving originals.”