Audio: Early 17th-Century Costume

My name's Jenny Tiramani, and I'm Associate Designer at Shakespeare's Globe Theatre in London. The really exciting thing about being able to come to the V& A and look at these clothes is the fact that they're real clothes. A lot of us today I think, have a view of historical costume in the theatre which is a little like fancy dress. And what really helps a character is to have real clothes, so they can believe in that person they're playing. It's terribly important for an actor to get the right weight of materials as well as the look of the clothing being right. It's important to me that they move in the same way that the original clothes would have moved; particularly for something like a cloak. You have to work a cloak; you have to learn how to walk around wearing a cloak, and not let it wear you. You wear it with bravado; it's no good if it just sort of hangs off your back and looks limp. It should be something that moves with your body. The suit consists of a doublet and breeches or hose. The thing about it that's so different from modern clothing and makes it quite strange for an actor to get used to is that the top and the bottom are joined together at the waist, so the actors have to get used to always bending at the knee. And in fact you can die in these suits; you can kneel down, fall down, but you have to do it a very different way. And if you don't, if you try to move in a modern way, you always rip the centre back of the hose. So we can always tell when an actor's [chuckles] been doing modern movement in them.