Charlotte Bolland
Monarchs à la Mode
Tudor Fashion: Dress at Court
By Eleri Lynn
Yale University Press 208pp £35
The exaggerated profile of Henry VIII is instantly recognisable from Hans Holbein’s portrait – the colossal shoulders and chest counterbalanced by the broad stance that highlights his bulging calves. It is an image that has been reproduced countless times in paintings and prints, and subsequently on stage and screen. However, as Tudor Fashion seeks to demonstrate, it is perhaps not only Holbein who should be credited with the presentation of the English king as the embodiment of magnificence. What of the merchants, tailors and grooms of the chamber who supplied the textiles, cut the cloth and dressed the king? Furthermore, if ‘the apparel oft proclaims the man’, as Polonius declares in Hamlet, what insight can this image offer to our understanding of Henry’s interaction with his courtiers and household?
Interest in the Tudor court is seemingly inexhaustible and Eleri Lynn has been inspired to join a crowded publishing field by the regular enquiries that she fields as curator of the dress collection at Historic Royal Palaces. Tudor Fashion is a beautifully illustrated book that presents an overview of the creation and function of clothing at the Tudor court. Polonius’s advice was offered as guidance for navigating a path to the ‘best rank and station’ of France; Lynn similarly seeks to guide the reader through the rivalries of the royal household, going beyond the sumptuous surfaces to examine everything from linen to laundresses.
Few fragments survive. This is partly owing to changes in fashion, and partly to the fact that the intrinsic value of some of the materials – such as meticulously detailed embroidery or the threads of silver and gold that made up the warp and weft of the most
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
London's East End was long synonymous with poverty and sweatshops, while its West End was associated with glamour and high society. But when it came to the fashion industry, were the differences really so profound?
Sharman Kadish - Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers
Sharman Kadish: Winkle-pickers & Bum Freezers - Fashion City: How Jewish Londoners Shaped Global Style; Fashion City: ...
literaryreview.co.uk
In 1982, Donald Rumsfeld presented Saddam Hussein with a pair of golden spurs. Two decades later he was dropping bunker-busting bombs on his palaces.
Where did the US-Iraqi relationship go wrong?
Rory Mccarthy - The Case of the Vanishing Missiles
Rory Mccarthy: The Case of the Vanishing Missiles - The Achilles Trap: Saddam Hussein, the United States and the ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Barbara Comyns was a dog breeder, a house painter, a piano restorer, a landlady... And a novelist.
@nclarke14 on the lengths 20th-century women writers had to go to make ends meet:
Norma Clarke - Her Family & Other Animals
Norma Clarke: Her Family & Other Animals - Barbara Comyns: A Savage Innocence by Avril Horner
literaryreview.co.uk