The Women Who Clothed The Stuart Queens

Preserved in surviving wardrobe accounts of six English queens are the names and signatures of women who forged successful careers via their needles and scissors. Together, they offer an extraordinary window into the changing world of women’s work in early modern England.

In the seventeenth century, London became a centre for luxury consumption, fuelled by global trade and the influence of French fashion. At this time, elite women’s patronage helped legitimise professional occupations such as milliner, mantua-maker, petticoat-maker, tirewoman and “Indian woman” for women.

In this talk, Dr Sarah Bendall will discuss the lives of some of these remarkable women, whose labour helped create the enduring image of royalty and fashions that defined the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Sarah's new book The Women Who Clothed the Stuart Queens (Bloomsbury, 2026) will be available for purchase at the lecture.