ABSTRACT
In 1520 hints of the act of apparel passed in 1515 can be heard in the memorandum outlining who could wear what at the Field of the Cloth of Gold. It stipulated that ‘All noblemen and others are to be apparelled according to their degrees, and no man must presume to wear apparel above his degree.’1 This link between dress and status was a subject for debate in the sixteenth century and much of this discussion was quite heated. It is noteworthy that the volume of adverse comment increased markedly in the second half of the century and it was typified by the writing of men like Philip Stubbes. In 1583 he observed that ‘there is such a confused mingle mangle of apparell in Ailgna [England] … that it is verie hard to know who is noble, who is worshipfull, who is a gentleman and who is not’.2 However, there were other points of view. When Holbein drew his illustrations for the Dance of Death he conveyed the nuances of rank visually by depicting accessories and styles of dress that were distinctive to particular social groups and that would have been readily identifiable by contemporaries. Holbein used this cycle of drawings to contrast the importance of social rank in life with its irrelevance in the face of death.3
