Doublets
A complicated topic which I want to write more about! In a fourteenth-century context, I understand a doublet as a garment for the upper body which:
- Is worn over the shirt and under the coat, gown, or cloak.
- Is very strongly associated with wealthy young men or with soldiers.
- Is lined (doublé in French).
- Is most often covered with textiles made from linen, cotton, or silk (and not so often with wool or worsted).
- Is split from hem to collar at the front and fastened with laces or buttons. The opening up the front is very prominent with large buttons or spiral lacing.
- Has sleeves reaching to the wrist (and sometimes further) which fit closely from shoulder to wrist. The opening in the sleeves is much less prominent and often involves many tiny buttons reaching up to roughly the elbow.
- Is relatively short (somewhere between the crotch and the middle of the thigh)
- Fits very tightly in the hips and belly and creates a fashionable deep, rounded shape in the breast. There are often short slits in the bottom of the side seams for mobility.
- Often supports the hosen (and perhaps also the cuisses)
- Is stuffed with unspun silk or cotton, fabric scraps, multiple layers of linen, or a combination of these
Very similar garments can be called coats, jupons, aketons, gambesons, or pourpoints. I agree with Robert MacPherson that its wise to think about function, and that the tight fit of a doublet in the sleeves and belly suit it to particular functions which not all coats, aketons, etc. could fill. I am told that Italians tended to use either farsetto (Crabb, Merchant of Prato's Wife) or words in the jupe or chope family such as zuparello for these garments (Mazzaoui, p. 99), but have not had the opportunity to explore clothing in texts from Italy as much as I would like to.
The most fashionable shape of doublet from 1360-1410 is usually described as globulose-breasted, with a high narrow waist, rounded back and deep, wide chest. If you stare at artwork and focus on the transition between chest and belly, the presence or absence of a collar, and the length of the doublet you will notice a variety of subtypes.
- ... Other paintings by Altichiero and Jacopo Avanzi ...
- ... BNF Latin 757 Missale ad Usum Fratrum Minorum folio 286v (the wardrobe malfunction)
- ... Guiron le Courtoise, Queste del' Saint Graal, ...
- How Heavy Were Doublets and Pourpoints?
More pictures to follow!
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