Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 05.djvu/545

* COSTUME. 467 COSTUME. or flowing, not greatly tonding toward elabora- tion of folds or to what we eoiiiinonly call drapery; and over tliem are worn dalmatics, maniples, and stoles, not merely by the clergy, but by the laity as well, and showing plainly whore the iieculiar clerical dress took its origin. See Costume, Ecclesia-stical. The Eastern influence was still strong, and all costume which was at all splendid was a matter of long and ample robes, made of stufl's of almost incredible richness, and more or less richly decorated by embroidery. Western dress was at this early time verj' diiierent from any- thing in common use in the Byzantine Empire, except in so far as that the poorer people, and those engaged in out-of-door work, would natu- rally dress in almost the same careless fashion east and west. For one thing, it was more nearly classical Roman in character. If the costume of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, in the lands which are now France and tiermany and Eng- land, be studied in the sculptures of Romanesque and Gothic buildings, or in the rare illuminations of manuscripts of that time, it will be seen that a certain antique or early Roman character obtains in the garments worn by persons pre- sented as kings and princes, which had already been lost in the Eastern Empire. The robed figures of the porch of C'hartres, or the doorways of Le Mans, do not seem to record much that was splendid in the way of stuffs or of jew'elry, loose or apjjlied to the garment. Their robes are still simply falling in loose folds, girded at the waist and dift'ering from the garments of antiquity mainly in this, that the arms are always covered by sleeves. Men and women alike wore a gown, that garment which in the French archaeological vocabulary is called the robe. This garment, which is treated under Dress, sened for people of eveiy rank and of both sexes, but its fashion changed very much, and in like manner the re- sulting appearance of the clothed figure in the sculptures changed greatly between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries. In the fourteenth century it grew more and more into that stately but most inconvenient garment, well known to us from the paintings in manuscripts of the time of Richard 11. of England, and his immediate successor, and Charles VI. of France. This gar- ment swept the floor. It was girded around the waist with the military belt, or some modifica- tion of it; it had sleeves, which also reached the floor, and were of fullness equal to that of the skirts, covering the hands also when the arms hung down. The collar covered the neck com- pletely in a solid cylinder, and rose on the sides nearly to the ears. How this rich and grandiose dress could be used at all in summer, and how it could be girded and shortened in any way, in time of necessity, does not appear, nor is it known whether the men wore comjjlete leg-cover- ings of some kind beneath this long and com- pletely closed skirt. The dress of elegant women of the same epoch was less elaborately conceived ; the same ha'bit of long sleeves prevailed, but the upper part of the sleeve was pierced with a slit through which the forearm could be extended. The result of this was that the robe, as a gar- ment for women, hardly changed during the next two centuries, whereas the use of it for men went out very soon, and -while there are still representations of gentlemen of the first half of the fifteenth century dressed in robes reaching the ground, those robes are far more convenient than before; they are evidently cai)able of being flicked up, and the man is dressed beneath his skirt, which can either be removed or shortened up to nothing when the occasion of cerenuiiiy is passed. I'lnally, as early as the second decade of the fifteenth ecntviry, it disap])cars from the dress of men, and from that time on the short- skirted garment, called rochet, or corset, became the dress of business, while the name coUe was then and thereafter given to a very tight-fitting garment, laced or buttoned close to'tlie body and having a skirt reaching only to mid-thigh. This last-named garment existed under the name of cotte d'unncs as long as the complete suit of armor was worn by gentlemen, and in this case it was embroidered with tlie armorial bearings of the wearer. The French terms were commonly used in England as well, as Chaucer lets us know; and in modern study we can hardly find English equivalents. Under all these garments were worn the long, close-fitting stockings, serving as the only covering from the waist to the toes, except as the skirt covered the upper part of the thigh. These changes involved the complete establishment of tailoring as the main thing in elegant costume. From the middle of the fifteenth century on, the dress of nobles and court- iers, and of men who afl'ected elegance, was a matter of cutting out and shaping, fitting in gores and gussets, and, in fact, adapting gar- jnents closely to the body in the first place, and then covering them with elaborate adornment. This might be applied in the way of imssemen- terie, or by modifj'ing the whole surface of the stutt' by what we now call quilting and the like. A piece of brocade used for a doublet or the body of a gown would be gathered up into puffs and projecting rounded surfaces, the lines of sewing between those projections being themselves deco- rated and even including the setting of a pearl or of a jewel of some other kind set in a gold chaton at the junction of these two lines of stitching. The stockings were the only part of the dress that was not elaborately decorated; and these stockings were half concealed in the sixteenth century by the enormous Jiatits de chansses, which, in IS.'iO and the following years, are sometimes in two or three rings of puffs like rounded ridges, passing horizontally around the thigh, and which, in the closing years of Eliza- beth's reign and the corresponding times in France, the reigns of Henry III. and Henry IV., are closer in their fit and resemble not distantly the knee-breeches of the eighteenth century. They are, however, made of costly stuff, and elaborately adorned almost in the style of the body-garment. Still again, in the time of James I. of England, the hauts de chausses were stuffed (bombasted). or held with springs in a single rounded projection, as if the man had been thrust feet foremost through a ratljcr flat, oblate spheroid. This projected so much all around the hips that the sword had to be hung in a horizon- tal position and great pains taken to prevent its being entirely dislodged by the monstrous garment. At no time during the Middle Ages and the epoch of the Renaissance was the tailoring and mantua-making more rich and fantastic than during the French religions wars, and the suc- ceeding reign of Henry IV. "ainted portraits, prints from famous engravings, carved ivories.