Category: 17th century

The first decade of the 17th century saw a continuation of many Elizabethan trends, with small changes in skirt length, sleeve shape, and collar types slowly being introduced.

Fashion of the 1610s witnessed a gradual softening in the silhouette as women began to discard their farthingales and men’s breeches became baggier.

The 1620s saw the adoption of leg-of-mutton sleeves in both men’s and womenswear; while men’s clothing achieved an elegant, longer line, women’s dress became high-waisted and fuller.

For men, the 1630s was an age of leather, long locks and lace, while women shimmered in soft satins and plenty of lace of their own.

The 1640s saw womenswear trend in a softer and slightly simpler direction, with low necklines and billowing three-quarter length sleeves often in satin of a single color. With much of Europe at war, menswear took on a more militaristic edge and a parallel simplification, with the wearing of buff coats widely adopted in England.

Women’s bodices elongated in the 1650s coming to a point in the front, but in general evolved only slowly from the fashions of the previous decade; whereas men’s doublets shrunk radically and their breeches expanded, becoming heavily ornamented with ribbon loops. With England under Cromwell’s control, France takes the lead in fashion.

In the 1660s, men’s and women’s fashion took on added extravagance. Silk brocades became fashionable for womenswear again and enthusiasm for ribbons in menswear reached its peak. A new style of long collarless coat displaced the doublet by the end of the decade.

1670s womenswear saw the advent of the looped-up overskirt along with a growing enthusiasm for brocade fabrics. Men of the period uniformly adopted the long collarless coat (known as a justaucorps) and full curly wigs became the dominant hairstyle.

In the 1680s, the bustled and trained mantua became the dominant dress for women, often in dark silk brocades. Men continued to wear the justaucorps, which was now slightly shaped at the waist, with a lace cravat and curly full-bottomed wig.

The 1690s silhouette for women was extremely vertical and linear with the long-trained mantua being amplified by the towering fontange lace headdress. The more modest jacket-style mantua bodices are often attributed to the influence of Madame de Maintenon, the secret wife of King Louis XIV. Men’s coats gained fuller skirts and their wigs were now two-peaked and, by the end of the century, powdered gray or white.