Underthings... the beginning

The most important part of clothing in any period has to be, in my mind, underclothes. What you wear over your clothing, is often dictated by what you have on underneath. How many layers, what the line of your dress is, how your collar sits or even what sort of belt you may wear if any at all.

A researcher and anthropologist a heart, it is obvious that the best way to teach is by example. So, over the next few months we are going to go through the research and process of creating a complete tudor 'day dress' from the underpinnings up.

I will do my best to provide documentation of my reasearch as I go, photos of each project and even, some alternative ideas to what I may choose to do along the way.

The number one thing we have to do, however, is pick a year.
The Tudor era spanned roughly from 1485 to 1609, however, this encompasses several other 'eras' regarding clothing style. Officially it is the time of the Tudor Dynasty (reigning Tudors on the English throne, beginning with Henry VII and ending with the death of Elizabeth I. However, this era encomppasses many changes both in culture and climate and thus for our purposes we are going to exclude the "Elizabethan Period" of 1558 - 1609.

In part this is due to what some call a 'mini ice age' that started in the mid 1400s and came to a head in the late 1500s. Due to the slow progession to a colder climate the clothing of the era adapted with each change in fashion.

For our purposes, we are going to examine one of the turning points in Tudor fashion, the Reign of Queen Jane Seymour.