Borne Out with Whalebone: A Late Sixteenth-Century Farthingale Sleeve

Abstract

An extant farthingale sleeve support and a silk satin sleeve to wear over it form part of a collection of garments still owned by the Willoughby family to which it originally belonged in the 1590s or early 1600s. This paper provides an insight into its history as part of the Willoughby women’s wardrobe and a technical description of its materials, manufacture and current form. Its construction matches contemporary documentary evidence for farthingale sleeves which were assumed to form part of elite dress. Evidence presented here suggests that the fashion moved rapidly through society and became a feature of ordinary women’s dress by the early seventeenth century.