SOCIAL HISTORY
In order to understand the clothes the Elizabethans wore, you must understand why they wore them. To do this, you need to know how their society worked.
The Elizabethan social world was based on a concept known as The Great Chain Of Being. This was the idea that everyone had their own, God-ordained position in society. The top of the chain was God, directly below God was the Queen and everyone else was below her, in descending degrees of importance.
While this social order was beginning to break down, it still held true in general. People had their rigidly ordered stations in life, and their clothing reflected who they were.
The social order is often broken into peasants, middle class, and nobles.
Peasants were the agricultural laborers and their families. they usually lived their entire lives in one small village, working the land owned by the nobleman of the area. They had little leisure time and almost no cash. Their clothing was limited and designed for practicality.
Middle class people were the artisans, craftsmen, servants, and small merchants. Their clothing was still practical but also reflected that they had a bit more leisure time and a bit of money to spend on clothing. Servants of this class were likely to wear livery uniforms provided by their employers.
The wealthy middle class were the prosperous merchants, the highly skilled artisans, and the servants of nobles. They had money to spend on clothing, and they were the one social class with overriding ambition to climb the social ladder, so their clothing was often very fashionable. There were legal restrictions on what they could wear, called "Sumptuary laws". Sumptuary laws set fines for people who wore clothing above their station. They were usually ineffective because they added the additional status of having been able to afford to pay the sumptuary tax on the garment in question!
Nobles were the high status knights, earls, countesses, etc, who comprised "high society". Since they were often in attendance on the Queen, their clothing reflected their wealth and their respect for her position. Clothing at that time held approximately the same value that cars do today for reflecting social and financial status. Some noblemen's suits were literally covered with jewels, and might have a value equivalent to hundreds of thousands of dollars today.
The highest person in the land, and therefore the best dressed, was her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth I. Elizabeth's clothing reached an unprecedented level of artifice and onament. One reason for this was simple propaganda. Her claim to the throne was uneasy, and needed to be shored up. One of the ways she did this was to represent herself as beyond human-- the Faery Queen. The outrageous styles she affected helped convey the impression.
Men's clothing, in particular, reached its ascendancy with Elizabeth's reign. When the Queen is a single woman who is known to be fond of handsome men, catching her eye becomes very important.
All these factors led to one of the most clothes conscious cultures ever. To a costumer, few periods offer the range of challenges that this one does.
