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When we think of the Puritans, what do we usually picture them wearing?
this?
certainly this, right?
But dyeing clothes black, for instance, used to be very costly, so those who wore black had green.
Even if outfits like the ones above look minimalist, they were actually a flex.
And contrary to popular cultural beliefs, Puritans wore a lot of color, too.
As early as the 1630s, the Puritan governing body of the Massachusetts Bay Colony (MBC) “had to” pass a number of laws that criminalized what Puritan settlers wore.
Yes, the MBC would fail spectacularly.
In the beginning…
As soon as the settlers could afford it—I mean after the first few years of hardship and establishing trade networks that relied on Native labor/fur supplying, resources, and local economies—the Puritans were off and running, buying English-made fancy clothes, which followed the fashions of the king’s court.
Seal of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, featuring a fictional Native American person saying, “Come over and help us,” highlighting some of the missionary zeal felt by the colonists.
The Puritans bought lace, ruffles, clothes with gold and silver thread and embroidery…oh, and garments with slashed sleeves. Lots of slashed sleeves. That’s when the sleeves of a shirt are deliberately sliced open all around to show off the luxurious fabric the wearer has on underneath.
Talk about messy chic.
It wasn’t long after this that the MBC government passed the first sumptuary law to maintain morality. They prohibited 1“new fashion, or long hair, or anything of the like. This would have been directed at both sexes, 2because dressing stylishly wasn’t just a dangerous sport for the ladies. Plenty of Puritan guys were fashion outlaws as well. Of course, women were policed more.
Later, the MBC would pass a sumptuary law aimed expressly at maintaining social hierarchy. This time, they banned commoners from wearing lace. More laws would follow.
Things like:
3A man had to have at least a thousand pounds before his wife could wear a silk scarf.
A brief run-in with the Fashion Police
In her will, one Jane Humphrey of Dorchester leaves to her descendants, among other items:
”…Best Red Kersey Petticoate, Sad Grey Kersey Wascote. My blemmish Searge Petticoate & my best hatt. My white Fustian Wascote. A black Silk neck cloath. A handkerchiefe. A blew Apron. A plain black Quoife without any lace.
A white Holland Appron with a small lace at the bottom. Red Searge petticoat and a blackish Searge petticoat. Greene Searge Wascote & my hood & muffe. My Green Linsey Woolsey petticoate. My Whittle that is fringed & my Jump & my blew Short Coate. A handkerchief. A blew Apron. My best Quife with a Lace…”
None of those were typos :|
Alive, Jane Humphrey (likely a commoner) may have been in breach of the law by holding on to some of those items—things made with Silk? Lace?
Young woman wearing a white coif on her head.
Woman wearing a white hood, most likely made of silk.
That would have been enough to land you in front of a judge with the threat of 5“forfeiture of said clothes.”
That’s exactly what happened to a group of thirty-eight women in Northampton, Massachusetts in 1676.
The 38 women were presented before a judge at the same time and among them was a sixteen-year-old named Hannah Lyman, charged with wearing a silk hood in a 6“fflaunting manner.” So bad she deserved the extra f.
And what does she do?
Shows up in court fflaunting her silk hood. My girl.
Only six years later, judges would throw out such cases presented in court.
It was official.
The fashionistas had won.
The proper minimalists
Ironically, later descendants of Puritan New England developed almost the opposite fashion ethos, not for piety’s sake, however.
Wealthy Bostonians who were the heirs of merchants—or opium traders with China (ahem, drug dealers, ahem)—took to dressing with greater strictness, sobriety, and thrift.
They had at least two relatively recent examples of what not to do if you’d like to keep the family money, well, in the family.
7John Hancock, merchant, first governor of Massachusetts, and one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, had a greatly diminished fortune by the end of his life in 1793. His house, Hancock House, was eventually torn down in 1863 for taxes.
Next up was Harrison Gray Otis.
This 5G Hancock liked his expensive waistcoats and hats with gold lace.
Otis also spent a good deal of money on food, eating four meals a day…pâté de foie gras for breakfast and the like. In addition, he built three large homes on Boston’s Beacon Street for himself and three of his married children.
“Such children, of course, were not likely to think of salting away much of the Otis fortune for the rainy days which fell upon future Otis heirs, and they did not. Speaking for the Boston Otises of today, the present Mrs. Harrison Gray Otis puts the matter frankly. ‘We don’t live on Otis money,’ she says, ‘any more.’”
Thus, armed with 8stern wills, trust funds, and other ways of nipping extravagant heirs in the bud, wealthy Bostonians in the following centuries weren’t likely to spend much money on the latest fashions, favoring hand-me-downs from the ancestors, making do with what they had.
9“A familiar legend is the story of the lady who, asked by an amazed visitor to Boston where Boston women get their hats, replied: ‘Our hats? Why, we have our hats.”’
Another of these wealthy Boston ladies was reported to have stepped out of a social club 10“dressed in a mandarin coat dating from the days of the Boston clippers and the China trade.” Yikes.
This was a step beyond quiet luxury. So quiet it went back a century.
My favorite story is about the rich old lady who wore the same “white” satin evening gown to every formal event. Society editors who wrote for the Boston newspapers would dishonestly describe the gown as white one year and then in the next year as something like off-white and then after that—more truthfully—as light gray, until, at last, they’d go back to calling it white.
Perhaps these quiet-luxury Bostonians of yore would’ve made better Puritans than the Puritans themselves and the Puritans would’ve made great modern-day Americans.
Can you imagine if online shopping existed in the 1600s?
I’d love to know what a Puritan would buy off Amazon—lace? black dye? buckles? ruffles? What if a commoner’s phone got confiscated by the authorities and there was evidence he tried purchasing gold thread and silk scarves on Etsy?
Oh well. We can only imagine.
*(The Puritans shouldn’t be confused with the Pilgrims, who were the poorer, simpler early settlers in what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts, although both groups were part of strict Protestant sects from England. The Pilgrims wanted to separate from the Church of England, while the Puritans wished to remain and purify the Church from within.
The Pilgrims’ journeys were funded by English merchants who gave them ships and supplies and who expected to be paid back in goods such as timber and fur; Puritans, however, tended to be wealthier and more educated, and were the investors themselves [or had investors among their leadership]. They established settlements in present-day Boston and surrounding areas.)
Footnotes
Kimberly S. Alexander, Fashioning the New England Family (Boston: Massachusetts Historical Society, 2021), 14.
Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 317.
Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1957), 37.
Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 316–17.
Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 316.
Alice Morse Earle, Customs and Fashions in Old New England (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1916), 317.
Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1957), 38.
Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1957), 38.
Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1957), 202.
Cleveland Amory, The Proper Bostonians, (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1957), 202.