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The Tudors
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Men wore a shirt and doublet (a bit like a jacket), and padded hose, like thick tights. While women wore long sleeved dresses with skirts to the floor. It was fashionable to make the skirt stick out using a cage or bumoll (padded material tied around the hips). During Elizabeth I reign ruffs around the neck became popular for men and women, (the lady in the picture above is wearing one) and both would wear hoods and hats. The rich wore expensive clothing of velvet and silk, whilst the lower classes wore linen or wool.
The Tudors did not wash as often as we do, Elizabeth I was said to bathe once a year, and that was more often than most! Few people had a change of clothes so they wore the same clothes all the time, even at night. This led to problems with lice, fleas and illnesses. Herbs were used to perfume the air against the unpleasant odours, and were used in cures for illness. If you had tummy ache one cure was that you should eat live spiders to make you better!!
