English Costume

5: Girls' Clothing in the Time of Henry the First

More of this Feature

• Introduction
• Woman's Costume of the Time of William the First
• Woman's Costume in the Time of William the Second
• Woman's Costume in the Time of Henry the First
• Child's Costume of the Time of Henry the First
• Woman's Costume in the Time of Stephen
• Woman's Costume in the Time of Henry the Second
• Woman's Costume in the Time of Richard the First
• Woman's Costume in the Time of John
• Woman's Costume in the Time of Henry the Third

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Image © 2000-2002
Jone Johnson Lewis

What did the clothing of a Norman child in early England look like? Here's one author's presentation of a typical girl of the nobility during the reign of Henry the First in England.

Source: Calthrop, Dion Clayton. English Costume: I. Early English. London, 1906. This color illustration and this text are from the frontispiece.

A Child of the Time of Henry I

It is only in quite recent years that there have been quite distinct dresses for children, fashions indeed which began with the ideas of the improvement in hygiene. For many centuries children were dressed, with slight modifications, after the manner of their parents, looking like little men and women, until in the end they arrived at the grotesque infants of Hogarth's day, powdered and patched, with little stiff skirted suits and stiff brocade gowns, with little swords and little fans and, no doubt, many petty airs and graces.

One thing I have never seen until the early sixteenth century, and that is girls wearing any of the massive headgear of their parents; in all other particulars they were the same.

Next page > Woman's Costume in the Time of Stephen

English Costume

5: Girls' Clothing in the Time of Henry the First

A Child of the Time of Henry I

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