Farthingale

, 1545. A farthingale is one of several structures used under Western European women's clothing - especially in the 16th and 17th centuries - to support the skirts in the desired shape and to enlarge the lower half of the body. The fashion originated in Spain in the fifteenth century. Farthingales served important social and cultural functions for women in Renaissance Europe as they expressed, primarily when worn by court women, high social position and wealth.

, 1545.]] A farthingale is one of several structures used under Western European women's clothing - especially in the 16th and 17th centuries - to support the skirts in the desired shape and to enlarge the lower half of the body. The fashion originated in Spain in the fifteenth century. Farthingales served important social and cultural functions for women in Renaissance Europe as they expressed, primarily when worn by court women, high social position and wealth.

French wheel farthingale or great farthingale

, 1626]] A second style of French farthingale, also known as the wheel, great, drum or cartwheel farthingale, became fashionable in England during the 1590s. It seems to have consisted of several hoops made from whalebone that graduated outwards from the level of the waistline in a wheel shape. This structure was often supported by a padded roll underneath, and was distinct in appearance from the other French farthingale roll, as it had a hard edge from which the skirts dramatically fell. Although there are also no surviving examples of this type of garment, there are a number of references to a "Great Farthingale" in Queen Elizabeth I's wardrobe accounts during the time when this style was in vogue. "Great" in this context referred to the large circumference of the farthingale, which was required in order to achieve the fashionable silhouette. Changes in the shape of the farthingale impacted the construction of other garments including the "forepart", the exposed front or apron of the skirt or kirtle made from richer fabrics. Later forms of the forepart were larger and wider and some surviving examples seem to have been extended to accommodate the new shape. The great farthingale appears to have been worn at an angle ("low before and high behind") which visually elongated the wearer's torso while shortening her legs. The angle was likely created by the use of bodies (corsets) or boned bodices with long centre fronts that pushed down on the farthingale, tilting it. Such an effect has been shown in many reconstructions of the garment. Some historians have raised doubts about the size of these garments, which some contemporaries claimed could be as wide as 1.4 metres. Instead they claim that the seemingly enormous size of these garments was an optical illusion created by wearing it with a pair of bodies (corset) that elongated and streamlined the torso. Criticisms of farthingales are also indicative of spatial anxieties relating to fears about these garments creating intimate personal spaces around the female body, masking the appropriation of social status, and physically displacing men. These fears continued into the eighteenth and nineteenth century, where tropes about the size of hoop petticoats (panniers) and crinolines continued.

Anne of Denmark and the fashion of farthingales

depicted wearing a farthingale]] Farthingales for Queen Elizabeth were made by specialist Robert Sibthorpe. Anne of Denmark had her gowns altered in 1603 to suit English fashions, and employed Robert Hughes to make farthingales from 1603 to 1618. Robert Naunton thought that Anne's farthingale might conceal a pregnancy in October 1605, writing, "The Queen is generally held to be pregnant, but no appearance eminent by reason of the short vardugals in use". Farthingales continued to be stiffened with whale baleen. In December 1607, the Lord Mayor of London, Henry Rowe, forwarded a petition to the Privy Council on behalf of traders with Biscay and makers of "Vardyngales, Boddyes, and Sleeves for women" that an import duty should not be levied on "whalebone-fins". During celebrations in London in 1613 at the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Frederick V of the Palatinate, it was said that women wearing farthingales were not admitted to crowded events to save space. The letter writer John Chamberlain hoped this would lead to the demise of the fashion. Princess Elizabeth herself was wearing a whalebone farthingale and "bodies" made by John Spence. In June 1617 Leonora, Lady Bennet's large English farthingale drew unwelcome attention from a crowd in the streets of Amsterdam. In December 1617 the Venetian ambassador Piero Contarini was surprised by the size of Anne of Denmark's farthingale which was four feet wide at the hips. Large styles of French farthingales remained popular in England and France until the 1620s when they disappeared in portraiture and wardrobe accounts. They were replaced by small rolls or bum-rolls that persisted throughout the rest of the seventeenth century. In Spain, the Spanish farthingales evolved into the guardainfante and remained an identifiable part of Spanish dress until the eighteenth century. Anne of Denmark's daughter, Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, was in Prague in 1620. She wrote of her surprise at the large Spanish style ruffs and Spanish style gowns worn without farthingales by aristocrats and townspeople. She ensured her gentlewomen adapted to the culture. A well-known anecdote concerning farthingales dates from the end of this period. It was said that in 1628 Jane, wife of the English ambassador Peter Wyche in Constantinople astonished Ayşe Sultan, wife of Murad IV, with her farthingale and she wondered if all English women had such an unusual shape. This story may have been composed in condemnation of the fashion.

Farthingale sleeves

In England, sleeves were enlarged and shaped with a whale bone armature, worn as a support underneath wide sleeves, and these were called "farthingale sleeves" or "vardingall sleeves". They could also be called "trunk sleeves". An account from William Jones for making a gown for Queen Elizabeth includes "a payer of vardingall sleves of holland cloth bented with whals bone and covered with riben." Another account from Jones, for the queen's dwarf Tomasen in 1597, includes a "paier of verthingale slevis of fustian". Jones made many pairs of farthingale sleeves in the 1580s, perhaps for the women of Elizabeth's court. Such sleeves were worn by women outside court circles. Anne Williamson of Wilne in Derbyshire (a granddaughter of Lord Mordaunt), wrote in December 1590 to her husband about a London tailor who was making her "a pair of verdingale sleeves & a French verdingale". Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Norfolk, bought "vardinggale slevis" stiffened with "bents" for his wife and daughters in 1592. A Welsh MP William Maurice asked a Shrewsbury tailor to provide a French bodice with farthingale sleeves for his young daughter or cousin in 1594. Farthingale sleeves for Catherine Fenton Boyle cost 4 shillings and 4 pence in October 1604 from Robert Dobson, a London tailor. In 1605, Catherine Tollemache wrote to her London tailor, Roger Jones, about farthingale sleeves covered with satin, and he suggested another style of sleeve now in fashion would be "fytter" for her new gown. In 1607 there were discussions about taxing imported whale fin baleen, "used only in sleeves and bodies for women". A surviving single English farthingale sleeve with its whalebone hoops and an outer silk sleeve was rediscovered in 2022. These items, connected with the Willoughby family of Wollaton Hall, were shown on the television program, Antiques Roadshow. A collection of Elizabethan costume remaining at Wollaton Hall was described in 1702 by the family historian Cassandra Willoughby.

Farthingale pins

The wardrobe accounts of Queen Elizabeth mention the purchase of thousands of special "great verthingale pynnes", "myddle verthingale pynnes", and "smale verthingale pynnes" from 1563. These were probably used for pinning deep tucks in farthingales to hold whalebone supports, and to position heavy silk skirts in place over the farthingale. Elizabeth's pin-maker or "pynner" was Robert Careles. He delivered recycled old farthingale pins and other pins to "Ippolyta the Tartarian", a young Russian woman brought to Elizabeth's court by Anthony Jenkinson. She had a farthingale made of mockado fabric. Pins for Henrietta Maria were made by Thomas Ardington. In 1631 his bill included 13,500 "middle vardingale pins". Arnold, Janet (1988). 2020 Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd. Leeds: W. S. Maney and Son. . Bendall, Sarah (3 May 2019). "The Case of the 'French Vardinggale': A Methodological Approach to Reconstructing and Understanding Ephemeral Garments", Fashion Theory, 23:3: The Making Turn. . Bendall, Sarah (November 2019). Take Measure of Your Wide and Flaunting Garments': The Farthingale, Gender and the Consumption of Space in Elizabethan and Jacobean England". Renaissance Studies, 33:5. . Bendall, Sarah (February 2022). "Whalebone and the Wardrobe of Elizabeth I: Whaling and the Making of Aristocratic Fashions". Apparence(s), 11: Modes Animales (Animal Fashions).

External links

Elizabethan Costuming, including information about farthingales John Knox's criticism of female costume and farthingales

Text derived from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?oldid=1358442548 under CC BY-SA 4.0; modifications have been made.