Working Class Dress in the 16th Century

The dress of the working classes echoed the dress of the richer folk, but lagged one to two decades behind current fashion. It also stayed more static. Fashions seen on peasants in the 1520s in some cases showed up in the 1570s.

It is not easy to find pictures of working folk in the 16th century. Simon Bening's daCosta Hours show some good pictures of peasants from the 1530s. Pieter Brueghel painted peasants and village folk in the 1560s and 1560s, and Flemish artists Pieter Aertsen and Joachim Beuckelaer painted servants and marketwomen in the later 1560s through the 1580s. Woodcuts of the 1570s show some working women as well. Because almost all available pictures are from Flanders and Germany, the dress described here is inevitably biased towards Flemish and German styles.

In Tudor times, the working classes wore the same three items of dress that their betters did: A smock, a kirtle, and a gown. The smock was of white linen, and cut in a T-tunic shape with a square or rounded neckline.

The kirtle laced up the front, and also had a rounded or square neckline. This undergown usually had a seam at the waist, and a skirt which flared rather than gathered--or gathered only slightly. The kirtle could be sleeveless or have short sleeves, to which longer sleeves could be pinned. It looked, in fact, very much like the fashionable dress of the 1470s and 1480s<picture 1> made of simpler materials.

There are pictures of women wearing only a smock and kirtle working in the fields and doing other hard labor. <picture 2> A black woolen partlet was sometimes pinned over the neck of the kirtle for more coverage of the chest. This partlet could fasten under the arms, or come to a V shape in the back. <picture 3>

Over the kirtle, a gown was worn. This gown was again similar in shape to the gown worn by Tudor women at the beginning of the century: a relatively close-fitting bodice that closed in the front, with flared sleeves, a square neckline and a skirt gathered to the bodice. This gown is worn well into the 1550s. <picture 4>

The apron was an essential item of wear, and is shown in all pictures of lower class or peasant dress. It could be white, but pictures also show blue, pink, olive and yellow aprons after 1550.

A style which shows up in the 1560s is similar to the woman in the background of Picture 2. A gown with short bicep sleeves is worn with a black partlet over it. The doesn't lace all the way across the front; rather, it stops at mid rib and laces cover the rest of the front. A kirtle can be seen beneath this gown. Sleeves are pinned to the gown sleeves. A flared black partlet or white linen partlet is worn over this ensemble. <picture 5> A similar outfit shows up in a woodcut of a 1570s French Peasant. <picture 6>

Another item of dress which shows up later in the century is a jacket, worn over the kirtle and open-laced gown above. <picture 7>

   

The Well Dress'd Peasant by me (Drea Leed) has details on Flemish working women's Dress.

Pictures and Web Resources

• Working Women's Dress in 16th Century Flanders
• Men and Women's Work Clothing: 15th & 16th century.
• Constructing a Breughel Peasant Gown
• A Working Woman's Gown Revisited
• A Gallery of Lower-class Dress

Timeline:
16th Century
Dress