The Eastern influence was still strong, and all costume which was at all splendid was a matter of long and ample robes, made of stuffs of almost incredible richness, and more or less richly decorated by embroidery. Western dress was at this early time very different from any thing in common use in the Byzantine Empire, except iu 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 Germany 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 Chartres, or the doorways of Le Mans, do not seem to record much that was splendid in the way of stuffs or of jewelry, loose or applied to the garment. Their robes are still simply falling in loose folds, girded at the waist and differing 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 arelneological vocabulary is called the robe. This garment, which is treated under DRESS, served for people of every 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 II. 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 complete 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 habit of long sleeves prevailed. bat 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 inure convenient than before; they are evidently capable of being tucked up, and the man is dressed beneath his skirt, which can either be removed or shortened op to nothing when the occasion of ceremony is passed. Finally, as early as the second decade of the fifteenth century, it disappears front 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 eotte was then and thereafter given to a very tight-fitting garment, laced or buttoned close to the body and having a skirt reaching only to mid-thigh. This last-named garment existed under the name of eotte d'ornice as long as the complete suit of armor was worn by gentlemen, and in this case it was embroidered with the 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 lung, close-titting 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 affected elegance, was a matter of cutting out and shaping, fitting in gores and gussets, and, in fact, adapting gar ments closely to the body in the first place, and then covering them with elaborate adornment. This might be applied in the way of passemen or by modifying the whole surface of the stuff 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 limits de cheeses, which, in 1530 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 haute tic chausses were stuffed (bombasted), or held with springs in a single rounded projection, as if the man had been thrust feet foremost through a rather 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 titan during the French religious wars, and the suc ceeding reign of Henry IV. oainted portraits. prints from famous engravings, carved ivories, medallions. and painted enamels of the time.
exist in some quantity; and they agree in telling the most extraordinary tale of splendid extrava gance in the dress of both sexes. Embroidery was loaded upon bodice and doublet, or was dis pensed with only when a very rich brocade was employed; and lace, or its earlier forms of cut work and drawn-work, and needle embroidery in pierced patterns like filigree, were used with fi cedom. The circular ruff, projecting like a dish on which the head seems to lie, appears, but is not yet so popular as the broad and fiat laced collar, sometimes lying on the shoulders, some times standing stiffly out horizontally, or for women in steep, upward slope behind the head and neck. The fashion of bombasted thigh-cover ings for the men is identified in artistic histor,v with the reign of Henry IV. of France, but it did not last very long, being replaced by the loose, short trousers of about 1625 and after. No costume in the modern sense is perhaps more graceful and spirited at once than the dress of the gentlemen of the time of Louis XIII., which, with its short trousers, the stocking below cover ing the calf of the leg. which was concealed by the boots commonly worn out of doors, the doublet, reaching a little below the waist, and worn loose, generally unbuttoned in front and showing the shirt in its full folds, the short cloak, worn on the left shoulder, except when it was gathered around the body, the flat hat, with very broad brim, and soft falling feather, and the broad, loose collar, is a complete and graceful translation into form of those ideas which the modern world has conceived—ideas absolutely contrary to those of antiquity. Simplicity and grace have given place to picturesque combina tion of small details: and here is the new theory, perfectly put into practice. The reign of Louis X1V. had but little influence on this dress of men, except to stiffen it and make it rigid and bard, but the dress of women improved on the in tastefulness throughout the seventeenth century, and as late as 1670 was introduced that admirable costume which we identify with :Madame de S6vigm% a skirt not very full, over which was worn a short sipper skirt, open in front ; a bodice fitting snugly, but not involving very tight lacing: a stomacher. hut not excessive in its length; sleeves reaching the elbow, and accompanied by lace ruffles. which partly shroud the lower arm; the bodice cut low, but not to excess, and a cape worn over the neck and shoul ders on occasion of going out of doors. The same thing, in simpler stuffs and in graver colors, was worn by the wives of the wealthier bourgeois, and this is the dress which we identify with the women of Holland and the English Puritans. It is preserved for us in a great number of paint ings, and in the prints from Holiar's engravings; and it has impressed itself upon modern design ers as the most complete type of womanly cos tume which we know; but that is because the richer dress of the time is impossible to realize nowadays—it seems non-human, as if of fairy land. The eighteenth-eentury dress in England, which was at times popular and acceptable in decorative design, is a modification of it, not for the better. The fop of 1750 is less beautifully dressed than the muguel of 1650, and the ladies of 1775, with their enormous hoops, far less charming in appearance than Madame de SC?. vigne a hundred years earlier.
The French Revolution in 1780 brought in a number of vagaries in dress, red and white striped waistcoats, stockings. striped blue and white in horizontal rings, white cravats wound round and round the neck until they leached the point of the chin, while at the same time the women wore the lightest and thinnest costume possible, in fancied imitation of the Romans. Cooked hats of exaggerated shape for the men alternated with steeple-crowned hats with curly brims; while the female costume was finished by the most elaborate pile of curls and crimps, crowned by an enormous cap, either simply of muslin and lace, or with these com bined with a sort of hat half concealed with feathers, flowers, and ruffles of lace. The MO mentary prohibition of elegances of this sort under the Revolution led to a change in the dress of both sexes, which was not to be temporary, except in details. Thus the dress which we call that of the 'Empire.' the famous 'pink night gown,' girded immediately below the breasts and hanging thence to the ankles. but so close that a woman could hardly walk and was utterly unable to step across a gutter, was worn with low shoes and with an unprotected neck, while the cold of winter was met by a pelisse, generally worn open in front and affording merely shelter for the shoulders and back, however richly it might be furred. The men fell immediately into the simple and not impressive dress of a time when the civilian was of little account. and any man who was elegant in his aspirations found some excuse to wear a military or official uni form. The civilian dress was then merely a waistcoat, over which was worn a long-skirted coat, and the pantalon, or tight-fitting breeches reaching to the ankle instead of the knee. The large and loose white cravat still continued. From these dresses all our modern fashions have followed, succeeding one another through such changes as this—the coat with a round skirt, projecting much from the hips. from 1S30 to 1840; the double-breasted dress coat (habit), from 1840 to 1830, or thereabout, often blue, with gold buttons, often claret-colored or brown; the very high coat-collar, worn with either or both of these fashions, but disappearing about 1835; trousers succeeding the puntalon, and worn rather close-fitting. and with an immense spread. or 'spring,' at the bottom, covering the boot almost to the toes, succeeding the strapped trousers of an earlier time, and succeeded in turn by the 'bags,' as the English slang term very properly has it, which, since 1860, have remained in fashion throughout western Europe and the nal ions of European settlement. and con stitute certainly the ugliest article of costume hitherto discovered by mankind. The dress of women, now that we approach our own time. and the changes of every year become known to us, has a relative importance so diverse. with so many and such almost imperceptible changes. that a consideration of this is left for the article FAsiifox.