Kirtle

The luteplayer wears a kirtle over her smock, 1626.

A kirtle (sometimes called cotte, cotehardie) is a garment worn by men and women in the Middle Ages or, later, a one-piece garment worn by women from the later Middle Ages into the Baroque period. The kirtle was typically worn over a chemise or smock which acted as a slip and under the formal outer garment or gown/surcoat.

Kirtles were part of fashionable attire into the middle sixteenth century, and remained part of country or middle-class clothing into the seventeenth century.

Kirtles began as loose garments without a waist seam, changing to tightly fitted supportive garments in the 14th century. Later kirtles could be constructed by combining a fitted bodice with a skirt gathered or pleated into the waist seam. Kirtles could lace up the front, back or side-back, with some rare cases of side lacing, all depending on the fashion of the day/place and what kind of gown was to be worn over it. Kirtles could be embellished with a variety of decorations including gold, silk, tassels, and knobs.^[1]

See also

• dirndl
• girdle

References

• Arnold, Janet: Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd, W S Maney and Son Ltd, Leeds 1988. ISBN 0-901286-20-6
• Arnold, Janet: Patterns of Fashion: the cut and construction of clothes for men and women 1560-1620, Macmillan 1985. Revised edition 1986. (ISBN 0-89676-083-9)
• Ashelford, Jane: The Art of Dress: Clothing and Society 1500-1914, Abrams, 1996. ISBN 0-8109-6317-5
• Ashelford, Jane. The Visual History of Costume: The Sixteenth Century. 1983 edition (ISBN 0-89676-076-6), 1994 reprint (ISBN 0-7134-6828-9).
• Hearn, Karen, ed. Dynasties: Painting in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530-1630. New York: Rizzoli, 1995. ISBN 0-8478-1940-X.
• The Passionate Shepherd to His Love poem by Christopher Marlowe, in the 1590s.

1. Walter, Thornbury (1875–1887). "The Costume of English Women from the Heptarchy to the Present Day. Chapter III. Henry VII. Henry VIII". The Art Journal. New Series 2: 173–177.