Doublet (clothing)

Like the pourpoint, its ancestor, the doublet was used by soldiers[4] in the 15th and 16th centuries to facilitate the wearing of the brigandine, breastplate, cuirass and plackart which had to cut into the waist in order to shift their weights from the shoulders to the hips.

Despite keeping the same silhouette as the pourpoint, early 15th century doublets feature some noticeable differences like puffed sleeves and the lack of quilting.

Through the Tudor period, fashionable doublets remained close-fitting with baggy sleeves, and elaborate surface decoration such as pinks (patterns of small cuts in the fabric), slashes, embroidery, and applied braid.

[6] In 1536, the embroiderer William Ibgrave fashioned the initials of Jane Seymour with pearls and emeralds to decorate a doublet for Henry VIII.

[8] In the early Elizabethan period, doublets for men were padded over the belly with bombast in a "pouter pigeon" or "peascod" silhouette.

Elizabeth I's tailor, Walter Fyshe, first made her a doublet in 1575, of yellow satin decorated with silver lace.

James Hay, 1st Earl of Carlisle wrote about the tight-fitting costumes worn by performers in English court masques, the fashion was "to appear very small in the waist, I remember was drawn up from the ground by both hands whilst the tailor with all his strength buttoned on my doublet".

[13] The doublet fell permanently out of fashion in the mid-17th century when Louis XIV of France and Charles II of England established a court costume for men consisting of a long coat, a waistcoat, a cravat, a wig, and breeches—the ancestor of the modern suit.