A Labour of Love - Conspicuous Consumption in Fashion

This series of posts is about making a version of the red grosgrain silk doublet that is shown in “Seventeenth Century Men’s Dress Patterns”. This particular post is about a realisation that I have come to whilst making the doublet about the nature of tabs or laps.

We all know, and can easily see, that silk doublets with real silver cord are a demonstration of wealth. There is a theory of conspicuous consumption, however, that says a person will require that clothing is made in a method or using materials that are unnecessarily expensive - where more modest methods or materials would be perfectly adequate for the use or even better suited to it - in order to show they are careless about their wealth because they have so much of it. Examples of conspicuous consumption are pinked and slashed clothing, heavily pleated skirts with yards more fabric than needed, pluderhose (those 16th century breeches with yards of silk hanging out of the strips) and so on.

In the 16th and early 17th century, men’s doublets ended at the waist in a number of ways, most commonly with a shaped strip of fabric that went all the way around and commonly called a skirt. The skirt would be shorter or longer depending on fashion and might be split into 2 or 4 sections depending on fashion. The skirt had two functions. The first is to allow a strip of canvas to be sewn strongly into the doublet at waist height, on to which the breeches could be laced. Breeches at this time were never pulled tight around the belly and done up with buttons, like now. The sat loosely around the waist and were supported by being tied to this lacing strip or by hooks and eyes. The other function of the skirt was to hide the top of the breeches and flare out over them in an attractive fashion. The tailor in Giovanni Battista Moroni's painting from 1570 is wearing a doublet with a particularly short or narrow skirt peeking out below his belt.

By the mid-17th century, this skirt had become a series of separate, trapezoidal pieces on the doublets of the wealthy. The simpler skirt or four square panels are still seen in paintings on less wealthy people, but the paintings of wealthy men show 8, 10 or more of these tabs or laps overlapping to form a continuous cover over the top of the breeches. Attention is often called to them by means of colourful braid outlines around them. King Charles 1 is wearing such a doublet in this painting by Daniel Mijtens the Elder from 1629. Charles shows more obvious forms of conspicuous consumption in this outfit in the form of his ruff, the many buttons down the front and the very many ribbon ties around his waist, amongst other things. Originally, ties like this did indeed hold up the breeches but by the 17th century, the evidence is that the breeches were held by hooks and eyes and the ribbons were purely for show. Looking at the portrait as a modern person, the tabs on the doublet do not at first seem like conspicuous consumption, but I propose that they are.

Those Bloody Tabs

In last week’s post, I described the pad stitching that is seen on extant tabs, which makes them curve inwards to the body at the edges and prevents the corners from sticking out at odd angles. For the life of this new doublet, I suspect we will be calling the tabs on it “those bloody tabs”! (apologies to my American readers who will read that phrase more strongly than the British ones)

It is this process of pad stitching the tabs that I now believe was a form of conspicuous consumption. It takes hours to do! Even for someone experienced in hand sewing and embroidery, this was a mind numbingly boring and endless task. The doublet we are making has 8 tabs. At my fastest on the last tab, it took me just under 6 hours of sewing. There is no quicker method that gets the same result. In addition to the sewing, there is the normal cutting, basting, covering and lining to do, as well as applying some form of braid, ribbon or cord around the outside edge. That means each tab has taken us at least 8 hours to fully construct by hand. Allowing that a trained tailor with no alternative to hand stitching would be faster, it is unlikely they finished a tab in under 4 hours of labour. With 8 tabs, that is 32 hours of labour. For 10 tabs, which many doublets had, it is a full working week of the tailor shop time to create the tabs in this way. It is likely that the tasks were split up, with the cutting done by the tailor, the basting by the apprentice and so on, but it is still 32 to 40 hours of labour over a shorter period.

Compare this amount of effort to the effort required to make one single strip of skirt, which holds its shape by means of being wrapped around the body. Although labour costs were low in comparison to fabric costs and most people would have had clothes made by a tailor, this is still a demonstration of paying for something that is not really required but clearly shows your wealth to those who understand the hand-made economy. On this basis, I propose that lots of tabs on a garment, like the one worn by Charles above, are a demonstration of his wealth and status as much as the other forms of conspicuous consumption that our modern mind can spot.

Below are some of the finished tabs, with the lovely gold braid that David chose as the highlight material. Was the effort worth it in the end? The answer depends on the reason for making the doublet.

If the purpose was to re-create the original using the original method to museum quality, then clearly a decision has been made to do the work, so it must be worth it.

If the purpose is to create a lovely piece of fabric art that sits well and looks stunning at any cost, then yes, it is worth it. No simple sewing machine technique could produce the gentle curve over which the silk is stretched, enhancing the sheen and allowing the tab to form to the curve of the body. With the silk and braid added the curve is less pronounced but still perceptible.

If the purpose is to produce an affordable garment for use by a re-enactor who wants to look good and authentic but has to pay current wage rates, then I think the benefit is not worth the cost. This is unlikely to be a big seller on the Properly Dressed catalogue!

This series will continue in the next post as the pace picks up on construction of the body of the doublet and the sleeves are started. If you are interested in other things that I have made, take a look at the about tab. With only a few exceptions, all of the outfits worn in the photos were made by me over the years.