2005-11-16 - 4:11 p.m.

Webpage Update

Man, I'm tired . . .

Oh, well. Five minutes to splurge in my habit of posting here . . .

My neverending webpage is turning out very nice. I am still looking for a suitable name for the page, but I am blanking so far.

The page will be basically dedicated to the study of 16th Century French Fashion. It will, of course, feature fashion from other regions (how could it not?), but the focus will be mainly French.

This is part of my campaign of educating people and attempting to spread the word that *gasp* not everything 16th Century is Elizabethan.

I guess that the term Elizabethan rolls off the tongue very nicely, and it is a lot easier to say "Elizabethan" than "16th Century French," for instance. The fact that some serious webpages use terms such as "Elizabethan Spanish fashion", even when the wearer of the gown is a Spanish Infanta, who by definition was not Elizabethan, and who would have probably have had a fit if you called her that, does not seem to make any difference to the writer.

For one thing the King of Spain, the Infanta's father, thought that Elizabethan protestants (namely almost everyone) were heretics and their Queen an excomunicate usurper. Saying that his daughter is wearing "Elizabethan Spanish fashion" would have probably given him a heart attack.

The French would not have liked being called Elizabethan either, even if the French huguenots sympathized with the English Queen.

(French Catholics, on the other hand, shared the Spanish opinion of Elizabeth, while the French moyenneurs just thought "Can't we all get along"?)

But I digress . . .

In the end, Elizabethans were English people who were the subjects of Queen Elizabeth I.

In England.

And Spain is not in England.

Neither is France for that matter.

Or Italy, or Germany or the rest of Europe.

And, ror the record, Phillip II did not in any way resemble Queen Elizabeth.

For that matter, neither did Catherine d'Medici, nor Francios II, Henri II, Charles IX , Henri III, or Henri IV.

Plus with the exception of Queen Catherine, all of the aforementioned gentles at one point or another wore beards or mustaches or at least a goatee. The last time I checked, there was a conspicuous absence of facial hair on all of Elizabeth's portraits.

(Unless, of course, someone drew a mustache on her while I wasn't looking, but that is neither here nor there.)

Anywhoo, the page is an ambitious project, and I am not sure how it is going to turn out.

But I am having fun while doing it, and I do expect to launch this sucker for Xmas.

(And for the record, no Elizabethans were harmed during the drafting of this posting.)

(No French or Spanish people were harmed either, and if any mustaches were drawn on any portraits, you can rest assured it wasn't me.)

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