Examples at the Victoria & Albert
T.228-1994
1359-1900
252-1902
T.124-1938
T.106:1 to 4-2003 (possibly used for a masque costume)
T.4-1935
T.259-1926
Other Examples
Primarily metallic thread and spangles (MFA Boston 43.243)
About 1620 (Museum of Costume, Bath)
A reconstruction of the Maidstone Jacket
And various others. These jackets are sometimes fitted, sometimes loose, and decorated with blackwork, polychrome embroidery in detached buttonhole and metal thread plaited braid (usually) stitch, sometimes with primarily metal thread, often with the addition of spangles in all cases.
It is unclear from period sources whether they were called “waistcoats” or “jackets.” There is definitely an item called a “waistcoat” that was worn under other garments for warmth. However, the Plimouth folks think based on primary sources that “jackets” of the shape of the fitted embroidered garments were also called “waistcoats,” at least in Jacobean times (reference, reference). In Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d, many of the references to “waistcoats” clearly refer to a plain, quilted inner garment. Given the general ambiguity of clothing terms, I wouldn’t be surprised if “waistcoat” referred to both types of garments, or referred to an Elizabethan inner garment and a Jacobean outer garment.
Janet Arnold and Kass McGann call the fitted garment a jacket; Ninya Mikhaila, Jane Malcolm-Davies, and the Plimouth folks call it a waistcoat. Laura of Extreme Costuming calls it a jacket. These are all excellent researchers whom I respect.
So, moving on. If a waistcoat/jacket is an inner garment, it would logically probably not be seen outside the home. This is the assertion of quite a few older costuming books which I don’t particularly trust. We do know that plain garments of the same cut as the fitted jackets were widely worn as outer garments in the early 17th century. It’s generally agreed that in the late 1600s, fitted jackets are informal wear; however, costume researchers seem to disagree on whether they are informal public wear or not.
Mikhalia and Malcolm-Davies:
Another outer garment worn by women was a waistcoat. This was a short jacket, fitted to the waist and shaped over the hips. Waistcoats were worn informally by the upper classes at the end of the [16th] century, when they were often made of linen and embroidered. They may have been worn by ordinary women from as early as the 1550s and possibly earlier. They were certainly typical by the end of the century. Many of the women depicted in the 16th-century Cries of London woodcuts wear them over their petticoats. (source: Huggett, J. (2005) Clothes of the Common Man, 1480-1580)
Drea Leed describes her “embroidered” jacket as being appropriate for a “gentlewoman of modest means” toward the end of Elizabeth’s reign.
Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion shows two early 17th-century portraits in which embroidered fitted jackets are worn under open loose gowns. I didn’t find any references in the text to venue of wear, but I was skimming.
Queen Elizabeth’s Wardrobe Unlock’d:
“Short embroidered jackets are sen in many portraits by the 1600s. A number of linen, flannel and silk waistcoats are listed in the warrants for the Queen’s tailor. One, made in 1570, was ‘of camerick enbrodered allover with silver’. Another, altered in 1577, was of ‘lynen cloth, quilted with blak silke’.” (p. 9)
The warrants for the Wardrobe of Robe list a large number [of waistcoats] made for the Queen. Linthicum states that a waistcoat was a waist-length undergarment, with or without sleeves, usually quilted or bombasted, and that, from the evidence of contemporary plays, a woman did not appear in public in a waistcoat unless she was a strumpet. It would seem that these garments, although often very decorative, were seen only in the bedchamber, worn over the smock and then covered with kirtle and gown…examples of waistcoats worn by Elizabeth show…they were also worn for warmth: some are interlined with cotton wool, while others are made of flannel.
Elizabeth had several waistcoats made for her by Walter Fyshe in 1563. One was of ‘fyne hollande cloth lyned with lyke hollande’. Two others were of white satin, the first ‘layed on with a lace of blacke sylke and sylver lyned with sarceonett and fyne hollande clothe’ which was then altered with the addition of ‘a lace of russet sylke and golde’, and the second ‘layed all over with a lace of black sylke and silver lyned with white sarceonet and fyne holland clothe’.
David Smith was entered in a warrant in 1565: for enbrauderinge of a wastcote of white taphata sarceonet with a worke allover of black silke lyke a scallop Shell wrought upon fyne lynen clothe for workemanship therof xlvjs. Item for viij oz of granado silke to worke the sa,e at iijs. Item for bumbast spent upon the same wastcote ijs vjd.
[...]
Other attractive waistcoats in various materials worn by the Queen include one altered by Walter Fyshe in 1570, ‘a wastecoate of Camerike enbrodered allover with silver’ and another of white sarsenet which he made in 1573. The latter was ‘layed with lase of blak silk lyned with lynen cloth and fustian’. William Whittell made a ‘Wastecoate of lynen cloth quilted with blak silke’ in 1577 and William Jones altered and made wider one of ’sarceonett quilted with golde and silver’ in 1584.
[...]
[Elizabeth] had, for example, two waistcoats of ‘flanell bounde aboute with lase’ in 1573, which would have been very warm. In 1581 another two were described as ‘of fyne flanell layed with silke lase’ and in 1586 she had ‘two wastecoates thone flanell thother bayes bounde with reben’.
Some of the waistcoats had sleeves, probably made separately. In 1577 Walter Fyshe made ‘a wastecoate of white satten cutt & raveled allover striped with silver lase with doble Jagges and greate slevis bounde with passamaine lase of venice gold and silver lyned with strawe colour sarceonett’. (p.145)
Janet Arnold clearly distinguishes between waistcoats–an unstiffened, doublet-like inner garment, often quilted for warmth, which although often richly decorated served a largely practical purpose–and jackets, which are listed with the Queen’s doublets:
Linthium gives several references to jackets worn by men and says that they were form-fitting, lined, waist-length garments, with or without sleeves, worn for warmth. [...] The descriptions [of jackets in warrants for the Wardrobe of Robes] are brief, so it is not clear if these jackets copied masculine fashions very closely. William Whittell made ‘a Jaquett of wrought vellat garded with vellat drawne with satten layed with satten lase, with a peire of slevis of taphata cutt lyned in the bodies with course canvas hookes and eyes’ for Elizabeth in 1577 and altered and made new wings for four ‘Jaquettes of vellat satten and taphata’ later in the same year. He made a russet satin jacket ‘layed with oringe colour vellat and silver lase lyned thre severall tymes with sarceonett’ in 1578, a velvet jacket ‘bounde aboute with a passamaine of venice silver sett allover with small buttons lyned with white sarceonett’ in 1579 and a ‘Jaquett of blak satten cutt garded with vellat the garde edgid with sattten & wrought upon with lase lyned with sarceonett & fustian’ in the following year. William Jones was employed in ‘makinge of a paire of forebodies & Jagges for a Jacquett of Cloth of Silver with gold lace about yt lyned with Taffata’ in 1595, but only three jackets appear in the Stowe inventory. They are entered in the list of doublets, the first of cloth of gold, the second cloth of silver, and the third embroidered with raised mosswork. It is not clear what differences there were between a jacket and a doublet, from these descriptions, nit it seems likely that the word ‘jacket’ may have been used for the type of garment in figure 230 [a loose jacket], the forerunner of the jackets shaped at the waist with gussets [the fitted jackets]. (p. 144)
Jane Ashelford’s Dress in the Age of Elizabeth I, which uses “waistcoat” and “jacket” semi-interchangeably (but counterintuitively, “waistcoat” usually refers to the informal outer garment and “jacket” to the inner garment) has an interesting tidbit about off-the-rack embroidered polychrome jackets/waistcoats (I wonder if this refers only to loose jackets–could fitted jackets be sold off the rack?):
“A padded garment which could be worn under the doublet for warmth or worn as an informal top garment was the waistcoat…When the waistcoat was worn informally it was usually richly embroidered and could be bought ready-made in a milliner’s shop by the end of the century. In Jonson’s play Cynthia’s Revels, 1601, one of the characters wears a ‘rich wrought waistcoat to entertain his visitants in, with a cap almost suitable’” (p. 47)
“By the end of James I’s reign [milliners'] shops were ’stored with rich and curious imbroydered Waistcoats of the full value of some tenne pound apiece, twentie and some forty pound’.” (p. 79)
So overall, I am personally inclined to think that the fitted jackets were (a) generally called jackets, at least in late Elizabethan times, and (b) worn outside the home as an outer informal garment, sometimes with a loose gown atop (maybe even mostly likely, in the case of the embroidered jackets worn by upper class women).
Whew.
If you are crazy enough to embroider your own polychrome jacket, Hedgehog Handworks sells very nice gold and silver spangles. The Plimouth folks have done some very interesting experimental archaeology on recreating spangles.
