Embroidered bodice, c. 1610s
Portrait of Margaret Layton wearing the bodice, c. 1610s
London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has one of the world’s top fashion treasures – a 1610s bodice and a portrait of Margaret Layton, the original owner, wearing it! I believe it’s the earliest example of an extant fashionable garment also appearing in an original period image.
Amazing! I saw an exhibition at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam some years ago – they had a pair of wedding gloves and a portrait of its owner showing them. I just checked the book again – they’re 1622, Dutch – but the museum only has the gloves, the whereabouts of the actual painting are listed as “unknown” but a print exists. The gloves had remained in the original owner’s family for centuries. They are amazing – soft white leather with richly embroidered cuffs, and they’re clearly visible in the painting, which was probably her wedding portrait.
A fair number of those early 17th century/late 16th century gloves seem to have survived but I didn’t know about the Dutch pair with the portrait.