Fashioning the Tudor court: identifying the primacy of elite dress and textiles as a signifier of status, magnificence, and power at the Tudor royal court, 1485-1603

This introductory section – ‘Fashioning the Tudor court: Identifying the primacy of elite dress and textiles as a signifier of status, magnificence, and power at the Tudor royal court, 1485-1603’ – is submitted for the degree of PhD by Prior Publication. It accompanies and presents four publications and demonstrates their contributions to knowledge and their coherence as a unified body of work. The submitted work consists of two monographs, namely Tudor Fashion (2017) and Tudor Textiles (2020), an article in a peer-reviewed journal entitled ‘The Bacton Altar Cloth: Elizabeth I’s ‘long-lost skirt’?’ (2018), and a chapter in an edited book entitled ‘Canopied with Flowers: Adorning Court Spaces with Floral Tapestries and Hangings’ (2024). This introductory section situates the submitted work within existing literature and methodology, particularly the interdisciplinary, material culture approach of my practice as a museum curator. It further illustrates my own method and practice, which itself provides a unifying element to the submitted work.

Within the submitted work, I present the case that elite textiles and dress were a primary communicator of status, magnificence, and power at the Tudor court from 1485 to 1603. Until recently, the role of textiles and dress as an indicator of Tudor material and visual culture was relatively neglected, except for important work that was nonetheless siloed by material, technique, or reign. My research across the breadth of the long Tudor century allows for a comparative investigation that contributes new knowledge to the fields of Tudor history and dress/textiles history. The major foci of the submitted work are the changing symbolism and meaning of elite textiles and dress across the Tudor period and their utilisation in the communication of royal power and magnificence. The submitted work also examines the materials, production, trade, dissemination, and administration of textiles and dress that supported and facilitated their pre-eminence within Tudor society. Through an examination of these themes within the context of existing scholarship and alongside my own research and curatorial practice, this introductory section will demonstrate an original contribution to knowledge.