Golden Age

Is fashion ready for something totally Tudor? Invoking Henry and Elizabeth, costumers break out the ruff stuff

Not Chanel. Not Gucci. Not even Halston. The sexiest new-old house to bask in the fashion limelight again first held sway more than 500 years ago. From 1485 to 1603, the house of Tudor ruled with iconoclastic sovereigns Henry VIII and Elizabeth I and an unshakable belief in power dressing. Forget horse bits and camellias; in the Tudors' heyday, outré looks like the ruff, the codpiece and the farthingale hoopskirt were high-fashion musts.

This fall the Tudor trumpet is being noisily sounded again on the cultural front by the novels of Philippa Gregory, the Showtime series The Tudors and big-screen spectacles...

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