The Voluminous Fashion of the Infanta Margarita
Earlier this year I completed some research at the Burrell Collection on the interesting clothing of a little-known Spanish princess. Although not very well recognised nowadays, the ‘Infanta Margarita’ (b.1651 — d.1673) was the daughter of King Philip IV of Spain, and the wife of the powerful Holy Roman Emperor, giving her an impressive array of titles including ‘Archduchess of Austria’, and ‘Queen of Hungary’.
The style of dress the Infanta wears in her many portraits is visually striking to say the least. The enormous silhouette provided by her dresses on such a young girl is so excessive that the Infanta and her paintings stuck with me even after I finished my research. (Admittedly the disgruntled impression the Infanta also shows in many of the paintings also left a humorous impact. It’s as if she is thinking, ‘wow, this really is a bad hair day’.)
Driving me to write this post though was a personal discovery I made last month. Over Halloween I was sharing posts of historic fancy dress costumes in museum collections (Check some out on my instagram at missfashionhistory), and one in particular caught my eye. In 1897 Jean-Philippe Worth designed an exact replica of one of the dresses the Infanta Margarita wore in her portraits. Made for a client named Ms Kate Brice, the House of Worth designed and made the dress for a costume ball Ms Brice was attending. As usual the couture house produced a spectacular garment, but making this dress extra special is the time period it was created in. Ms Brice gave the team at Worth just 24 hours to design and make this costume!
Why you might ask, was such a short time frame given to create such an elaborate costume? Well, it was only at the last minute that Ms Brice decided to attend a special event, the Bradley-Martin Ball, a lavish affair held at the Waldorf Hotel in New York. The party was organised with the intention of being ‘the greatest party in the history of the city’, and the theme for the eight-hundred socialites attending was kings and queens. Therefore, although Ms Brice’s costume imitated the style of a Spanish princess, and was made by a French couture house, the dress was worn in New York, and now lives in the Museum of the City of New York.
The magnificence of the costume was likely-well received when it was worn at the ball, carried as it was by an adult woman. Yet in the 17th century portraits, the Infanta Margarita was only around 11 years old. During the early modern era, the practice of dressing children as miniature adults in similar clothing to their parents’ garb was completely the norm. Thus, the Infanta can be seen to be dressed in the style of an adult Spanish woman. It is also a distinct cultural style being portrayed, as the rest of Europe looked to the French court and fashions for their own inspiration in the late 17th century.
So starting from the top down…
Hairstyles were designed to ‘broaden the outline of the head’, matching the exaggerated size of the farthingale under the skirt. Instead of traditional headwear such as a hood or hat, Spanish women were adorning their heads with jewels, bows, lace, and feathers. A prominent fashion in particular was the one the Infanta demonstrates with one feather worn on one side of the head.
Working downwards, every part of the body was concealed except the neckline and shoulders which were allowed to be shown off. Sleeves on the other hand, as can been on Margarita, were deliberately designed to cover the natural shape of the arms. This was in especial contrast to the rest of Europe at this point who had slowly begun baring their arms from the elbow down. (How outrageous!)
Lastly, the guardinfante (farthingale) was worn. In a curious turn of events this fashion had originally been associated with the lower classes and prostitutes. The middle classes had even been banned from wearing it! Accentuating the wearers hips to a humungous degree, the guardinfante exaggerated wide hips on a woman. As wide hips were often thought to denote fertility in this period, the guardinfante provided an illusion which also alluded to this common belief.
To be painted wearing such a garment then tells us so much about the early modern marriage market. As an 11-year-old she was already being ‘advertised’ to foreign suitors, and her perceived fertility was readily on display. Just four years later, the Infanta was married, to Leopold I, the Holy Roman Emperor, and disturbingly, her maternal uncle and paternal cousin.
