Elizabethan Mafia

Since I posted a tutorial on incorporating pockets into venetians and trunkhose yesterday I thought I would post a bit today about the pants the tutorial is based on.

I had posted recently that the first project of my great wardrobe overhaul was going to be new rapier armor.  Since I wanted to base it off of depictions of suits worn by soldiers in De Ghyen’s The Exercise of Armes I spent several hours pouring over my copy of the treatise.  While there were several examples of men wearing trunkhose, most appeared to be wearing venetians so I decided to start with a pair of those first.  Most of the venetians depicted appeared to have legs that were gathered or pleated into a leg band but a few appeared to be made with a fitted knee similar to the ones depicted in Janet Arnold’s Patterns of Fashion.  Since I’ve always like those pants but never made a pair for myself I thought this would be a great opportunity to finally have my own pair.

I decided to make my venetians out of a burgundy wool flannel which I purchased from B. Black and Sons several years ago.  The are lined with linen and the pocket bags are also made of linen.  Since many of the venetians depicted in The Exercise of Armes and the ones I was basing mine on from Patterns of Fashion also had contrasting trim on the sides I decided to trim mine with pink linen bias tape that I made myself of a remnant I had left over from a previous project.  Pictures of the pants currently in progress can be found in my gallery.