The Ornamented Being

lyma79 requested Anne Boleyn’s dress code. Which like most everything Anne Boleyn does not exist. There are a handful of paintings left but that’s all the Anne things we have. I’m not even sure a dresscode for Anne ever existed. It’s sad there are hardly any reminders of Anne left but at Hampton Court when Henry gave the order to have all things of her removed they missed a few :D

So instead I shall do the Elizabethan Sumptuary Laws which are quite amusing. 

None shall wear

            Any cloth of gold, tissue, nor fur of sables: except duchesses, marquises, and countesses in their gowns, kirtles, partlets, and sleeves; cloth of gold, silver, tinseled satin, silk, or cloth mixed or embroidered with gold or silver or pearl, saving silk mixed with gold or silver in linings of cowls, partlets, and sleeves: except all degrees above viscountesses, and viscountesses, baronesses, and other personages of like degrees in their kirtles and sleeves

Cowls, sleeves, partlets, and linings, trimmed with spangles or pearls of gold, silver, or pearl; cowls of gold or silver, or of silk mixed with gold or silver: except the degrees and persons above mentioned; and trimmed with pearl, none under the degree of baroness or like degrees

            Gowns of silk grosgrain, doubled sarcenet, camlet, or taffeta, or kirtles of satin or damask: except the degrees and persons above mentioned, and the wives of the sons and heirs of knights, and the daughters of knights, and of such as may dispend 300 marks by the year so valued ut supra, and the wives of those that may dispend £40 by the year.

            Damask, taffeta, or other silk in their petticoats: except knights’ daughters and such as be matched with them in the former article, who shall not wear a guard of any silk upon their petticoats. 

… These are just a few of the laws but they are all slightly ridiculous right? How did you keep up with what you could or could not wear? I guess it was Good to be the Queen (apologies to Mel Brooks)