Clothes Make the Queen

S5E9

How did our queens use clothing and jewelry to shape their public personas? What did their fashion choices say about their political agendas? How was the Tudor court influenced by the style of a queen? And what can we learn about our queens through the jewelry collection that they all shared?

In perhaps our most fun episode yet, Kate and Cally are discussing the fashion and jewelry of our six queens: the expensive fabrics and gems that denote their queenly status, the political messages hidden beneath headdresses and brooches, and the differences in styles throughout their six queenships.

Click above to listen now, or find us on your favorite podcast app.

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About the episode

Like we said, this is probably our most fun topic yet. Who doesn’t love to talk about clothing and jewels, honestly?!

Whenever you look at portraits of our six queens, you’re sure to notice the fabulous gowns, furs, headdresses, necklaces, brooches, and earrings that denote their status as the Queen of England. Our queens had access to the best, most costly fabrics of their age: silks and velvets imported from abroad, embroidered with gold thread, and dyed colors that could only be worn by someone at the top of the social hierarchy. When the court saw one of our queens in all her finery, there would be no mistaking that she was the epitome of feminine power and magnificence.

But how was court influenced by the styles of our queens? Could they even exert their personal styles at all? As it turns out, our queens used fashion for very political purposes that did influence the style of court—sometimes in not-so-subtle ways. For example, Anne Boleyn was so associated with French fashions that, when Jane Seymour became queen, she dictated that all her ladies-in-waiting should refrain from wearing those styles again! And when Katharine of Aragon and Anne of Cleves came to England, they gradually learned to shed the styles of their youths and transition to wearing English styles.

It’s the same with jewelry. While most of our queens didn’t wear a crown on the regular, they covered themselves with other kinds of jewels that showed just as much glitz and glamor. Sometimes we’re able to trace specific pieces, including a necklace and a brooch, that were passed down between queens. It’s fun to read between the lines (or at least try to) and speculate why our queens were drawn to certain pieces—is there a reason that Jane Seymour wore one of Katharine of Aragon’s brooches, for example?

It was always going to be hard to do a fashion episode without visual aids, so we encourage you to surf Google Images and observe some of the pieces we’re talking about throughout the episode. All in all, though, we wanted to keep the focus on the politics—how aesthetics and public image were such an important part of our queens’ experiences at the Tudor court.

Bibliography and Further Reading

• Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Volume 12 Part 1, January-May 1537, ed. James Gairdner (British History Online)

• The Lisle Letters: An Abridgement, ed. Muriel St. Clare Byrne (University of Chicago Press: 1983)

• Tracy Borman, The Private Lives of the Tudors (Grove Press: 2016)

• Eric Ives, The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn (Blackwell Publishing: 2005)

• Eleri Lynn, Tudor Fashion (Yale University Press: 2021)

• Franny Moyle, The King's Painter: The Life and Times of Hans Holbein (Apollo: 2021)

• Nicola Tallis, All the Queen’s Jewels, 1445–1548: Power, Majesty and Display (Routledge: 2022)

• Alison Weir, Henry VIII: The King and His Court (Ballantine Books: 2001)

Bonus Content