#8 - Technology, America, and Spain (1500 -1550 ce)

The Rennaisance might not have had a profound impact on the every day life of most Europeans but it did inspire some improvements in the technology.   For example, most fabric was cut by something which looked like this:

These are ancient scissors and were in common use since the time of the Egyptians.  They are mostly known as "shearers" and cutting slippery fabric with them is something of a challenge.  While the Romans invented scissors with a central pivot point, it was Leonardo da Vinci who perfected the pivot action.

As you might imagine, better scissors gave dressmakers much more precision and less reluctance to only cut fabrics in large triangles or squares.  So that's cool.

But, you know what else happened?  Christopher Columbus sailed the ocean blue in 1492, that's what!  The Columbian exchange meant wheat, horses, & smallpox in America and potatos, tobacco, and syphilus in Europe!  Yay!  We will talk more about potatos next week but for now we need to talk about gold.   Spain imported so much gold from the Americas that it changed the balance of power in Europe.   While Henry VIII

"Howdy"

and Francis I

"Bonjour"

competed with each other for the most glamorus royal courts, neither of them were even close to being as stinking filthy unimaginably rich as Spain.  And, when you are top dog, you get to set the fashions, which is what Spain did with this contraption.

Behold the farthingale which was so new and exciting that
they just stitched the hoops into the overskirt.

This is the beginning of every princess dress you have ever seen and it started with Princess Joan of Portigual (Portugal got Brazil, if you remember, so they were pretty well off also.)  Princess Joan tended to get herself pregnant with someone who wasn't her husband and the giant skirts tended to hide the baby belly.  But, the style was still seen as super cool and cutting edge, and hard to pull off, so of course everyone wanted it.   The Spanish farthingale (seen above) was hoops of cane or green willow branches sewn into a skirt.  The stitching it on the outside quickly became unpopular and so the farthingale was an underskirt which made the gown over it stick out.

Like this

The French, being French, decided that the hoops were silly and instead opted to imitate this look by wearing what is now called a French Farthingale.  It looks like this:

and instead of hoops in the skirt, they just wore a giant padded bum roll tied over their hips.  A bum roll looks exactly what it sounds like.

Though the French ladies in the painting probably wore one which
was much larger than this one.

Well, this kind of an extreme style (which was totally for the super rich and not for folks who worked) looked cool on the bottom but needed more "oomph" on the top.  So, the kirtle,

the yellow thing she's wearing

which had served as day wear for all middle- and lower-class folks and an extra layer for rich ladies, changed into a corset by the 1560's.

You knew they were coming eventually

The point of the corset was not to pinch the waist but to make the torso a nice inverted triangle shape to match the massive triangle shape that was your skirt.  The human female torso isn't actually flat at the top, though, so the corset also made the neckline of a dress interesting.

"No one should see my hair or ankles but my chest? Meh.."

Spain (and Portugal) were very VERY Catholic countries, and the wealthy of these countries prefered dark, somber, solid colors with very few designs.   Since the richest of the rich wore a lot of black and dark colors, it became the cool thing to wear the same thing.

We started out the century in this pink and blue

"Even wearing rick-rack on my forehead isn't
enough whimsy to make me smile."

but by the middle of the century those same colors are heavy and subdued.

Black, of course, was better than pink or blue.

"I am clearly a superior person."

And even dresses which were white really wern't all that bright or pastel.

"This is my Spring ostentation."

You can also trace in these paintings the evolution of the corset.   The first one (with the rick-rack) was painted in 1505 and features a woman with a normal woman-shape.   The painting of Eleanora of Toledo (above in the white/black/gold gown) was painted in 1545 and her torso is shaped like a sausage.  So that's awful.

Now, let's talk about the other elements we are seeing.   All of the women are wearing gowns with sleeves which have been tied on.  And, peeking out from the edges of the sleeves, or poking up through slits cut in the fabric, is the basic chemise which is worn under everthing.   The chemise, to stick out so much and to be so visible, must be LARGE, and to keep all that fabric managed, the neckline of the chemise was gathered into a band or by a drawstring.   The painting of the superior woman in black above has a lot of white stuff around her neck.  You might be tempted to think that this is her chemise.  You would be mistaken.  It is another, separate item of clothing called a partlet.   Partlets are a way to cover up the massive expanse of chest the style of the day displayed.  Here is another variation on the partlet:

"I cannot believe yall would walk around WITHOUT a
partlet on."

I made this photo huge so you can see the partlet.  The gown she is wearing is black silk and is very shiny.  Her partlet is just black wool and is not shiny.   If you look closely you can see the line where the two meet.   Also, the white inside her black partlet is part of the item and the style is called revers.  It's an old dumb word which basically means "reversable."

Take a moment and look at the cuffs of her sleeve.  That beautiful design is called blackwork embroidery.  It's stitched and not printed and I think it's fantastic amazing stuff.

So, by the middle of the century, women wore bell-shaped skirts, inverted triangle corsets, and giant puffy chemise under it.  What were the men wearing?

"I'm wearing hose, a chemise, a green doublet, and a
huge cloak, thank you for noticing!"

This is all looking pretty normal but where did the doublet come from? Well, the doublet, like the t-shirt, evolved from the underwear of military clothing.

Specifically, THIS military clothing

A doublet was a jacket a knight wore under his armor to protect him from the damage walking around in a steel can could inflict on tender flesh and to keep him warm.  It was made from two layers of fabric which were sometimes quilted, or a double-layer, which is where the word doublet comes from.  Since knights wore them all the time, and continued to wear them after the armor came off, and knights were cool and powerful, wearing a doublet became popular to wear as well.  But, a doublet is not enough because we are in the middle of an ice age so another layer was added on top of that which is called a jerkin.

"My doublet it pink, my jerkin is black, and my
overgown is black and lined in white fur because
I am COLD!!!"

A jerkin in the early 1500's is a long sleeveless robe which opens in a really low V-shape in front.  If you look very carefully you can see it on this guy:

Also, the term "hose" evolved to mean shorts and men began to wear nether-hose, or stockings under that.

This man is wearing hose with slashes in them
AND nether-hose or stockings (which are
his socks.) He is not wearing a jerkin.

So that is the first fifty years of the 16th century.  A lot happened but a lot of things were happening and fashion reflected that.   Go take your test and prepare yourself to do some research.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1e22F5EOiXV8aEVM3nGm-0dtaS3Nx83a1lAyG_H5rZrY/viewform