Farthingale Musings
May. 16th, 2006 10:50 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
callistotoniI got an email this evening from someone wondering why I wasn't wearing a farthingale this last Saturday. This was an honest question; the person was not berating me or anything, they just wanted to know. I thought I'd reprint my answer here because I know some of you are interested in costuming, so I thought I'd share. :-)
OK, I hope you are prepared for a much longer answer than you bargained for.
:-)
I'm going to break this answer down into three parts: Historical reasons/evidence, common sense reasons, and SCA-wearability issues. I'll end with an addendum on my take of the history of 16th C Costuming as practiced here in California since the 1970s (the relevance of which will be clear by the end of it).
Historical Evidence of no farthingale:
It is good to remember that not all late 16th C costume is "Elizabethan", i.e. it is not all English. One of the fun things about studying the clothes of this period is seeing the regional differences, and how styles changed and influenced each other over time. The outfit I was wearing Saturday was inspired (not copied) by one of Sofonisba Anguissola's self portraits from 1561. Sofonisba was Italian (from Cremona, northern Italy), and the portrait shows her sitting at a Clavichord. Doesn't look to me like there's any sort of farthingale being worn, but the picture is indistinct. I can point to another depiction of a woman at a keyboard who is very clearly not wearing a farthingale: an 1586 picture of a lady at the virginals from Ausburg (see Arnold Patterns of Fashion fig. 302).
The farthingale did not catch on in much of Italy. Landini and Niccoli make this point in their Moda a Firenze specifically for Florance. You can see this lack in painting by Giorgio Vasari, The Arrival of leo X in Florence, 1559-60 (MaF fig. 35). These authors also cite a Giovanni Strdano painting Baptism of Franceso di Cosimo I, where the lines of the women's dresses indicates no farthingales being worn.
I think that if one looks at the etchings from Jacques Boissard's 1581 Habitus Vairarum Orbis Gentium (see Arnold, Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlocked fig 181) one can argue the lack of a farthingale being worn (particuarly for the middle figure).
All of this is not to say that farthingales weren't worn, but only to show that they weren't *always* worn.
The Common Sense Arguement: I think it's just common sense that even upper-class women did not always wear farthingales, even when it was the fashion for that area. Women did ride horses, for instance. Even when sitting sideways a farthingale just wouldn't work unless you were a Queen making a state enterance--general travel would really not make sense (trust me, I have a horse and I've worn farthingales) ;-) . I have thought of that outfit I was wearing as a travelling outfit. We've got lots of evidence of loose-gowns worn with rather tubular kirtles, which don't seem to need a farthingale which make sense as pregancy gowns.
I also have a genteel picnic scene where women may or may not be shown with farthingales. When the artist shows them standing the silloette indicates one, but sitting the ladies knees and legs are clearly outlined under the draperies. I suspect the latter is artistic license on the part of the painter (1585 painting by Lucas van Valkenborch).
SCA consideratons: We are a camping kingdom. Overall we have many more outdoor events than indoor, and we have to be able to run around and do stuff in 80 degree weather. SCA / West Kingdom realities mean costume recreation is a series of choices and compromises. For some of us, that means not wearing a farthingale when we're at events, even if someone of our station might have worn one (but they wouldn't be washing dishes, either). Best thing to do is to learn as much as you can and make your own compromises.
Addendum: My Two Cents on "Elizabethan" costume as done in California since the 1970s.
Here's my version of reality. Back in the 1970's one of the main sources of Elizabethan costume information came from Herbert Norris. Norris did his own drawings, including just making stuff up (I'm not kidding). One huge consumer of this information was the Rennaissance Faire, started by the Pattersons. Thus the costumes that got made looked like those in Norris' book. Two costumer's from Renn Faire, Winter and Shultz, published a how-to book in the late 1970's, revised in the early 1980s, that again carried on this look. One may characterize this look in women's clothing as having a very low flat front, a very full skirt with a bum roll that gives a "shelf" effect. There was also a tendency to use decorative front plaquets/stomackers on gowns that come from before such stomachers became fashionable (i.e. on 1560-70's gowns, when they are suitable for the far-more-round-moving-towards-drum-farthingale's of the later 1580's).
Then in the middle of the 1980's Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion became available to us in CA and we finally got a look at how these garments were really cut. Hard on its heels came a reprint of Alcega's Tailor's Pattern Book from 1589. Now we saw how conical Spanish fashions were--no bumroll! Perhalps a smallish butt pad in the back to fill things out. We started to get better sources, so we could see how much higher and curved French (and even English) necklines were. Overall we got a lot more sources and those of us in the SCA started moving away from the "Renn Faire" look and tried to mimic more closely what we saw in the paintings and other available data.
But much of Renn Faire stayed codified. They had some rules that, although sorta rooted in fact, got transmorgafied and became unjustifiable. Example: "No one but the Queen can wear purple." Well, if you read QEWU she gave people purple gowns. Fools go to wear orange and purple. Now if you go to the new Tudor Tailor you see a citation of a sumputuary law that a particualar dye source--which will produce a purple--was by law restricted to nobility (don't have it handy to look it up specifically, but you get the drift).
Bottom line: The fun and the challange is to look at all the available data and make up your own mind. Sometimes I think farthingales are correct for the dress and sometimes I, with justification, decide to forego them. And I've got an opinion on bum rolls, too (as you can probably tell from my aforementioned description of Renn Faire costumes). But what I love about the SCA is that we have the freedom to make up our own mind and to create accordingly.
YIS,
Viscountess Genevieve de Vendome, Order of the Laurel and thus a proven obsessive about this stuff. :-)
About an hour later I sent this email:
I occurs to me that I did not tie my addendum to the farthingale question as tight as I should have. The connection is this: "Women always wore farthingales" sounds to me like a Renn Faire aesthetic / claim. My arguement is that if you look at the broader spectrum of 16th C across Europe that you'll find that statement not to be true.
Genevieve
OK, I hope you are prepared for a much longer answer than you bargained for.
:-)
I'm going to break this answer down into three parts: Historical reasons/evidence, common sense reasons, and SCA-wearability issues. I'll end with an addendum on my take of the history of 16th C Costuming as practiced here in California since the 1970s (the relevance of which will be clear by the end of it).
Historical Evidence of no farthingale:
It is good to remember that not all late 16th C costume is "Elizabethan", i.e. it is not all English. One of the fun things about studying the clothes of this period is seeing the regional differences, and how styles changed and influenced each other over time. The outfit I was wearing Saturday was inspired (not copied) by one of Sofonisba Anguissola's self portraits from 1561. Sofonisba was Italian (from Cremona, northern Italy), and the portrait shows her sitting at a Clavichord. Doesn't look to me like there's any sort of farthingale being worn, but the picture is indistinct. I can point to another depiction of a woman at a keyboard who is very clearly not wearing a farthingale: an 1586 picture of a lady at the virginals from Ausburg (see Arnold Patterns of Fashion fig. 302).
The farthingale did not catch on in much of Italy. Landini and Niccoli make this point in their Moda a Firenze specifically for Florance. You can see this lack in painting by Giorgio Vasari, The Arrival of leo X in Florence, 1559-60 (MaF fig. 35). These authors also cite a Giovanni Strdano painting Baptism of Franceso di Cosimo I, where the lines of the women's dresses indicates no farthingales being worn.
I think that if one looks at the etchings from Jacques Boissard's 1581 Habitus Vairarum Orbis Gentium (see Arnold, Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlocked fig 181) one can argue the lack of a farthingale being worn (particuarly for the middle figure).
All of this is not to say that farthingales weren't worn, but only to show that they weren't *always* worn.
The Common Sense Arguement: I think it's just common sense that even upper-class women did not always wear farthingales, even when it was the fashion for that area. Women did ride horses, for instance. Even when sitting sideways a farthingale just wouldn't work unless you were a Queen making a state enterance--general travel would really not make sense (trust me, I have a horse and I've worn farthingales) ;-) . I have thought of that outfit I was wearing as a travelling outfit. We've got lots of evidence of loose-gowns worn with rather tubular kirtles, which don't seem to need a farthingale which make sense as pregancy gowns.
I also have a genteel picnic scene where women may or may not be shown with farthingales. When the artist shows them standing the silloette indicates one, but sitting the ladies knees and legs are clearly outlined under the draperies. I suspect the latter is artistic license on the part of the painter (1585 painting by Lucas van Valkenborch).
SCA consideratons: We are a camping kingdom. Overall we have many more outdoor events than indoor, and we have to be able to run around and do stuff in 80 degree weather. SCA / West Kingdom realities mean costume recreation is a series of choices and compromises. For some of us, that means not wearing a farthingale when we're at events, even if someone of our station might have worn one (but they wouldn't be washing dishes, either). Best thing to do is to learn as much as you can and make your own compromises.
Addendum: My Two Cents on "Elizabethan" costume as done in California since the 1970s.
Here's my version of reality. Back in the 1970's one of the main sources of Elizabethan costume information came from Herbert Norris. Norris did his own drawings, including just making stuff up (I'm not kidding). One huge consumer of this information was the Rennaissance Faire, started by the Pattersons. Thus the costumes that got made looked like those in Norris' book. Two costumer's from Renn Faire, Winter and Shultz, published a how-to book in the late 1970's, revised in the early 1980s, that again carried on this look. One may characterize this look in women's clothing as having a very low flat front, a very full skirt with a bum roll that gives a "shelf" effect. There was also a tendency to use decorative front plaquets/stomackers on gowns that come from before such stomachers became fashionable (i.e. on 1560-70's gowns, when they are suitable for the far-more-round-moving-towards-drum-farthingale's of the later 1580's).
Then in the middle of the 1980's Janet Arnold's Patterns of Fashion became available to us in CA and we finally got a look at how these garments were really cut. Hard on its heels came a reprint of Alcega's Tailor's Pattern Book from 1589. Now we saw how conical Spanish fashions were--no bumroll! Perhalps a smallish butt pad in the back to fill things out. We started to get better sources, so we could see how much higher and curved French (and even English) necklines were. Overall we got a lot more sources and those of us in the SCA started moving away from the "Renn Faire" look and tried to mimic more closely what we saw in the paintings and other available data.
But much of Renn Faire stayed codified. They had some rules that, although sorta rooted in fact, got transmorgafied and became unjustifiable. Example: "No one but the Queen can wear purple." Well, if you read QEWU she gave people purple gowns. Fools go to wear orange and purple. Now if you go to the new Tudor Tailor you see a citation of a sumputuary law that a particualar dye source--which will produce a purple--was by law restricted to nobility (don't have it handy to look it up specifically, but you get the drift).
Bottom line: The fun and the challange is to look at all the available data and make up your own mind. Sometimes I think farthingales are correct for the dress and sometimes I, with justification, decide to forego them. And I've got an opinion on bum rolls, too (as you can probably tell from my aforementioned description of Renn Faire costumes). But what I love about the SCA is that we have the freedom to make up our own mind and to create accordingly.
YIS,
Viscountess Genevieve de Vendome, Order of the Laurel and thus a proven obsessive about this stuff. :-)
About an hour later I sent this email:
I occurs to me that I did not tie my addendum to the farthingale question as tight as I should have. The connection is this: "Women always wore farthingales" sounds to me like a Renn Faire aesthetic / claim. My arguement is that if you look at the broader spectrum of 16th C across Europe that you'll find that statement not to be true.
Genevieve
