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"The materials of the gentleman's dress were usually rich and expensive--silks and satins, elaborately patterened brocades and velvets, gold and silver thread, lace, and fine linen. Their dress was as rich in color as it was lavish in material. Picture them, scarlet and gold and mutlicolored against a setting of dark forest, flowered clearing, and sluggish tidal rivers. They must have seemed strange, exotic figures as they moved about in their Old World finery, under the blazing Virginia sun, among the log and reeded huts of Jamestown...........even in the heat of midsummer, when comfort demanded the doffing of the doublet and jerkin, doubtless some in the motley company, jealous of their station and its proprieties, still clung to the stifling limits of endurance."*
"It must be remembered , the constantly changing English fashions were not always followed immediately in the colonies......It would not have been unusual in any large gathering to find the mingled fashions of several generations." From here, Cavalier fashion approaching 1700 turns to a more pronounced colonial fashion as we know it today, with the growing wealth of the VA Colony tobacco industry."*
*attribution unknown
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