What are the social connotations hidden behind ornate clothing from the ostentatious consumption of the British Tudors?

British gorgeous clothing

The contemporary British royal family, has always been known for its emphasis on dress etiquette. Whether it is Queen Elizabeth, or Princess Kate, Princess Meghan's dress is fresh and elegant, not commonplace, showing the noble temperament of the royal family. However, the British royal family's style of dress has not always been so elegant. Looking back at history, the Tudor period of court dress can be described as extravagant.

French literary scholar Frans once said that the clothing magazines of an era can show much more about human civilization than scholars, novelists and philosophers can tell.

Court dress, a silhouette of a dynasty's cultural background, also epitomizes values. The Tudor dynasty was the golden age of the English monarchy, and if you want to explore the splendor of this period of history, the culture of court dress is a good entry point.

The Tudor court dress was luxurious

The court dress during the time of Henry VII, the founder of the Tudor dynasty, was relatively simple and not overly fancy or decorated. Dull-colored furs and dull silk skirts made up the men's and women's court dresses of the period.

Henry VII's son, Henry VIII, had serious differences with his father in his pursuit of dress. Immediately after he succeeded to the throne, a wave of extravagance was set in motion.

1, Henry VIII set off the wind of extravagance

The king of England with a golden key to grow up, for the consumption of clothing, not stingy. This is reflected in the huge amount of money to create each piece of clothing. It is said that he spent as much as 8,000 pounds a year on costumes, or 12,000 pounds in today's money. It was this that earned Henry VIII the title of the world's most extravagantly dressed monarch.

In the days of the highly developed feudal monarchy, nobles from outside the royal family, to the common people, would always pay close attention to the royal family's every move, and imitated them to varying degrees in their dress, food, clothing and other aspects. As a result, Henry VIII set off a wave of extravagance throughout the country.

2, the Tudor royal family on the court dress is flaunted consumption

1470, John Fortescue in the "rule of England", said, flaunting wealth for the ruler is essential, because it can play a deterrent to the ruled, so that they believe the role of the authority of the ruler. The royal family, which was at the center of the wealth pyramid, spent huge sums of money on fancy dress as a strategy to display a sense of nobility.

Court women

Through crushing conspicuous consumption, it instantly puts the rulers in an irreplaceable position and greatly distances them from ordinary people. It conveys to the ruled the truth that the ruler's position is supreme and unique, and that anyone who wants to fight against the monarch will not have a good end. Undoubtedly, this move to preserve the external image of the royal family served to strengthen the power of the king.

In this dimension, the culture of dress, embodied in the ideology, helped the British royal family to take power from the Pope.

Continuing the tradition of the Dark Ages, the Catholic Church was for absolute abstinence, and the Tudor royal family's pursuit of luxury and materialism triggered strong resentment from the Catholic monarchs.

Both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I would often argue and clash with the Catholic court, which expressed strong criticism, over extravagant clothing.

The Tudor and Catholic courts have long had many unresolvable conflicts over succession to the throne, division of property rights, and thought control. The controversy over clothing further intensified the conflict from the point of view of sensual stimulation and the idea of maintaining the external image of the royal family.

Noble women

1529 to 1536, Henry VIII through seven parliamentary Reformation, the rule of the supreme power successfully snatched into the hands of the British monarch, which is tantamount to announcing a complete break with the Catholic Church.

Behind the luxury court dress, is a strict hierarchy

1, the promulgation of the Law of Restriction of Extravagance

Henry VIII is the monarch by the feudal aristocratic concept of deep influence, he believes that there should be a strict hierarchical division of clothing. For this reason, the Limitation of Extravagance Act was introduced. This Act cannot be taken literally: a restriction on extravagance. Rather, it was an act to separate the Tudor people into strict classes, in accordance with the division of the royal family, the common nobility, and the commoners, and to restrict each class to wearing only clothing of the corresponding fabric, method of preparation, and color.

Henry VIII's concept of dress laid the foundation for court dress during the Tudor period, and after decades of development, the design of court dress became more and more elaborate, and the royal family's pursuit of splendor never changed.

Silk and velvet were increasingly put into the production of court dress, the luxury camp of women's clothing, but also added exquisite gloves, fans and other trimmings.

The Church

And Elizabeth I, for her part, took the grandeur of court dress and made the most of it.

Smooth, delicate satin gowns, covered from the neck to the very end with jewels of great value, were far denser than a sky full of stars. The restraints on the female body also began thereafter, and to show off her waist, Elizabeth I took it upon herself to corset and girdle her belly, wrapping her entire body in the midst of a wide whalebone skirt.

2, from the royal family and commoners in the difference in clothing to see the strict hierarchy

And the break with the Catholic court, accelerated the pace of the court dress more ornate.

The Protestant cross, the Tudor rose, white ermine is the 16th century England's highest rulers dress necessary elements. White ermine is the finest of animal furs, not only because this cute little animal has excellent skin, but also because it is very difficult to tame, and the taming time is very short.

Court dress

According to records, in Renaissance Europe, people only just began to domesticate this fierce little animal. And the United Kingdom at that time, only by the Renaissance inculcation soon. The white sable fur has been widely seen on the royal dress, the degree of luxury can be seen.

Not only that, many of Elizabeth's portraits, can be seen in the complex process of "ring collar", from sewing, to sizing, and then finally fixed shape, each step will take about five hours.

And in England during the same period, many peasants were driven from their homes and left without clothing or food because of the enclosure movement. Under the provisions of the Limitation of Luxury Act, commoners were only allowed to buy fabrics not exceeding two shillings per yard. And, imported fabrics were not allowed to be purchased for commoners.

In contrast, the fabric requirements were relatively lax compared to the common nobles. Imported fabrics can be purchased and the color is not a single dark shade.

Weddings

With the voice of the Catholic court in decline, the Tudor court dress was more ornate. The royal family enjoyed luxury on one side, while suppressing the beauty and materialism of the rest of the class.

3, showy consumption for the Tudor dynasty brought the bitter fruit

Luxury wind, so that the Tudor royal family, in the face of the domestic big families, not timid, set up enough authority, but also make and foreign missions in the process of the encounter in the process does not lose the momentum at all. But the showy spending of successive generations of English kings led to Tudor corruption, a fact that had been building up for a long time.

The vast majority of the money that the Tudors spent on ostentatious expenditures on clothing and other aspects of their lives was obtained through taxation. Even within the constraints of Parliament, English monarchs were able to collect many sums each year from levies. With the opening of new shipping routes, Britain also gained much from triangular trade.

But Britain's ambitions for foreign expansion continued, and this required extremely strong financial support. Plus, capitalism was gradually developing and sprouting in Britain, and a lot of infrastructure needed to be invested in.

Noble families

The Oxford Companion to the General History of the United Kingdom describes Elizabeth's inertia as accelerating the collapse of the Tudor dynasty, which left little in the way of tax revenues. The prevalence of corruption within the central government, and the imperfect institutional mechanisms of local government, accelerated the collapse of the Tudors.

It is clear that the British royal family failed to control its property well, and the Tudor dynasty of the late 16th century was already heavily burdened. Indeed, ostentatious spending once brought the Tudors glittering glory, but ultimately made them eat the bitter fruit.

The positive aspects of Tudor court dress

The truth is, there are two sides to everything. Even court dress during the Tudor period was like that.

1. The court dress of the period was a strong expression of self-awareness and was y influenced by the Renaissance

In medieval Europe from the 5th to the 15th centuries, clothing was mainly plain, and the women, who were supposed to be bright and vivid, all wore fat black or gray clothes. Not only that, but the Church at the time despised money, so even the British royal family was not allowed to spend too much money on clothing, which led to the medieval clothing style is very single.

And under the influence of the Renaissance's lightning fast momentum, the overthrow of the church-centered dominance, the pursuit of human pleasure and freedom in the present world has become a lot of Europeans **** knowledge. This was also evident in the Tudor court dress. It is believed that the original intention of the improved court dress was to break the normal desire for beauty that was suppressed in the Middle Ages, and to express the awakening of self-consciousness by emphasizing the female form.

2, gradually breaking the Church of England's ideological control of the public

The Qing government face the demise of many literati think that the braid cut off, in order to save the country's new ideas to pass the popularity of the open. Modification of court dress plays a similar role.

The dark, bulky clothing was a mark of the Middle Ages, and since the Renaissance began to shake the foundations of the Middle Ages on an ideological level, the clothing, which mapped out the ideology, should also be changed.

It is a pity that Tudor court dress fell from one extreme to the other.

Elizabeth and her husband

Court dress was a silhouette of a court's cultural background, a microcosm of its values. Tudor court dress was, above all, a certain positive significance of the revolt and confrontation against the medieval asceticism and suppression of individual thought. Royal clothing should reflect the dignity, majesty and nobility.

However, after Henry VIII and Elizabeth I modification, overkill, fell into the abyss of extravagance, to a large extent, led to the national financial deficit, accelerated the demise of the Tudor dynasty.