Market woman wearing a black partlet with a white lining over a reddish kirtle, Netherlandish, 1567.
Apartlet (orpartlett) was a 16th-century fashion accessory. The partlet was a sleeveless garment worn over the neck and shoulders, either worn over a dress or worn to fill in a low neckline.[1][2]
Partlet makers emerged,[6]putting out a product often made ofsilk orlinen, and worn to fill in the low necklines of both men's and women's Burgundian dress. Men continued to wear partlets, usually of rich materials, with the low-cut doublets of theearly 16th century.[1][7]
Fine partlets made of linenlawn, with small standing collars and ruffles, could be worn directly over a low-necked smock, or over the kirtle. The "Pelican Portrait" ofElizabeth I shows theElizabethan fashion for matching partlet and sleeves worked withblackwork embroidery.[12] Such sets of partlet and sleeves were common New Year's gifts to the queen. In 1562, Lady Cobham gifted the queen "a partelett and a peire of sleeves of sypers wrought with silver and black silke".[13]
Elaborate lattice-work partlets such as that worn byEleanor of Toledo (1522-1562) in one of her portraits byBronzino could be decorated by goldsmiths[14]with gold, jewels and pearls. This was called "Caulle fashion" in England.[15] In 1563 Elizabeth'ssilkwoman Alice Montague employed a woman "altering and translating" the queen's partlets.[16] 1568 Elizabeth I set her "Mistress Launder" to work to "translate" her partlets with 520 pearls costing a penny each.[17]
The origin of the term 'partlet' (attested from 1515) is uncertain, but it may derive from 'Dame Partlet', a traditional name for ahen, perhaps in reference to the ruffle of feathers on some hens' necks.[18]
^abCumming, Valerie; Cunnington, C. W.; Cunnington, P. E. (2010-11-23).The Dictionary of Fashion History (Reissue ed.). Oxford; New York: Bloomsbury Academic. p. 150.ISBN9781847885333.
^Johnson, Caroline (2011-12-01). Jane Malcolm-Davies; Ninya Mikhaila (eds.).The Queen's Servants: Gentlewomen's Dress at the Accession of Henry VIII. Lightwater, Surrey England: Fat Goose Press Ltd. p. 22.ISBN9780956267412.
^Compare:Cumming, Valerie;Cunnington, C. W.;Cunnington, P. E. (2010) [1960]. "Partlet".The Dictionary of Fashion History (revised ed.). Oxford: Berg. p. 150.ISBN9780857851437. Retrieved5 May 2023.Partlet [...] Period: 1500-1550. A sleeveless jacket or merely a covering for the upper part of the chest and neck left exposed by a low-cut doublet, then fashionable.
^Arnold, Janet (1988).Queen Elizabeth's wardrobe unlock'd: the inventories of the Wardrobe of Robes prepared in July 1600, edited from Stowe MS 557 in the British Library, MS LR 2/121 in the Public Record Office, London, and MS V.b.72 in the Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington DC. Leeds [England]: Maney. p. 22.ISBN0901286206.
^Janet Arnold,Queen Elizabeth's Wardrobe Unlock'd (Maney, 1988), p. 224.
^Elizabeth Goldring and others, eds,John Nichols’s The Progresses and Public Processions of Queen Elizabeth I: A New Edition of the Early Modern Sources, vol. 5 (Oxford, 2014), Appendix 16, Account of the Queen’s Purse, 1559-1569, ed. by Jayne Elisabeth Archer and trans. by Sarah Knight, p. 252.
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