Title: A Guide to Elizabethan and Shakespearean Costumes
Headings: Guide to Elizabethan and Shakespearean Costumes
Guide to Elizabethan and Shakespearean Costumes
A Guide to Elizabethan and Shakespearean Costumes
Elizabethan and Shakespearean Men's Costumes
Elizabethan and Shakespearean Women's Costumes
Elizabethan and Shakespearean Accessories

Content: Elizabethan Clothing for Men
Elizabethan and Shakespearean Women's Costumes
As with men's clothing in the Elizabethan era, women's clothing represented their social standing. Expensive materials, such as silk and furs, were reserved for women of the royal family as well as duchesses and countesses. These high-society women often wore purple clothing like the high society men. Wives of knights often wore leopard furs and velvet, while wives of peasants wore clothing of wool, sheepskin, and linen. The colors for peasant women were also dull colors, such as beige, brown, and green, like their husbands and fathers wore. Women of all society rankings wore gowns, although peasant gowns were very plain in material and design. Higher-ranking women wore more elaborate gowns, along with petticoats (an underskirt that gave dresses and skirts a domed, fluffed-out shape), kirtles (an undergarment with a waist seam, similar to a girdle), sleeves, partlets (a type of modesty panel to be worn over the chest), and cowls or wisks (wired, fan-like elaborate collars). Young girls would wear fashions that were simpler than those of women, but the colors and fabrics would reflect their father's status. Elizabethan Costume Elements
Elizabethan and Shakespearean Accessories
In the Elizabethan and Shakespearean time period, accessories were a large part of high-society attire. Capes, hats, bonnets, hair accessories, and jewelry were the staple accessories of middle- and upper-class citizens.