The age of fashion

 

Fashion historians often credit the development of the doublet as the event which gave birth, around 1350, to an "age of fashion." The first appearance of this short jacket, which took its name from the padded garment used as soft body armor under metal armor, occurred at a time when the military importance of the armored knight on a horse was declining, being superseded in actual fighting by the efficient and deadly long- and cross-bowmen. In the latter half of the fourteenth and throughout the fifteenth centuries, the knight continued to be designated as a military leader, even as he became less functionally important as provider and warrior. Simultaneously, his presence in the court took on greater significance, and the knight sought to make a more spectacular impression through dress. At this time, the long, full robe employing rich folds of material, now considered appropriate to the upper civic elite class of lawyers, physicians, and merchants, as well as for male members of the aristocracy, was dramatically replaced by a new silhouette. If the previous generations had preferred to hide the body in sedate movement-encumbering robes that denied physicality, the styles of the 1350s—when the aristocrat's connection to combat was becoming more symbolic than real—emphasized male freedom of movement and sexuality in an hourglass figure. Especially in the 1500s, such new fashions were specifically associated with the courtier class of persons who maintained themselves by various forms of royal and ducal appointments and "preferments." Two features of this costume are notable: the pourpoint, or short doublet showing the legs and buttocks, and the long pointed shoes called poulaines supposedly originating in Crakow, Poland. These exaggerated styles, as well as a trend towards tall headdresses that seemed to mimic the perpendicularity of Gothic architecture, were the subject of numerous satires against excesses in court dress.