In clothing, a train describes the long back portion of a robe, coat, cloak, skirt, overskirt, or dress that trails behind the wearer.
It is a common part of ceremonial robes in academic dress, court dress or court uniform. It is also a common part of a woman's formal evening gowns or wedding dresses.
Trains in modern (20th and 21st century) bridal wear have their own terminology:
Brides of the Ndebele people of South Africa traditionally wear long beaded trains hung from the shoulder, known as nyoga (snake). [7]
Trains are a common feature of the Royal mantles of Kings and Princes, as well as the mantles of many chivalric orders.
Officers of older, traditional universities generally wear distinctive and more elaborate dress. The Chancellor and the Vice-Chancellor may wear a black damask lay type gown with a long train. [8] [9] [10] In France the train is now usually hooked to the inner side of the robe.
The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales, when robed, dresses like a High Court Judge with the distinction of a train to his scarlet robe. [11]
Judges of the Court of Appeal wear the black silk damask gown, trained and heavily embellished with gold embroidery.
French court dress includes a train, now buttoned to the inside of the robe and suspended by fabric bands, a vestige of the former practice of lawyers carrying their trains. [12]
The Lord Chancellor, the Speaker of the House of Commons, and other high dignitaries also wear similar embroidered black robes with trains. [13]
The Lord Mayor of London also wears a robe with a train. [14]
A trained robe, the cappa magna (great cape) remains in use in the Catholic Church for certain ceremonial occasions. Cardinals, bishops, and certain other honorary prelates are entitled to wear the cappa magna, but within the territory of their jurisdiction. [15]
Eastern Orthodox bishops also traditionally use a cloak with a long train known as the Mandyas, which may have parallels with the development of the Catholic cappa magna.
For male peers, the Coronation robe is a cloak of crimson velvet extending to the feet, open in the front (with white silk satin ribbon ties) with train trailing behind. [16] The Parliament robe of a British peer is a full-length garment of scarlet wool with a collar of white miniver fur, cut long as a train, but this is usually kept hooked up inside the garment. [17]
Court dresses for women were commonly fifteen yards in length. [2] Court dresses for noble women sometimes had trains both behind and in front of the dress. [4]
Japanese Imperial court clothing, sokutai for men and jūnihitoe for women, both include a long train extending from the back of the robe. It remains in use with the Imperial Household of Japan for ceremonial occasions. [18]
Trains declined in popularity in the late nineteenth century when they were targeted by public health campaigns in Europe and the United States that argued they brought germs from the streets into the wearers' homes. The issue was the subject of a cartoon published in Puck in 1900 entitled "The Trailing Skirt: Death Loves a Shining Mark." [19]
A robe is a loose-fitting outer garment. Unlike garments described as capes or cloaks, robes usually have sleeves. The English word robe derives from Middle English robe ("garment"), borrowed from Old French robe, itself taken from the Frankish word *rouba, and is related to the word rob.
Court dress comprises the style of clothes and other attire prescribed for members of courts of law. Depending on the country and jurisdiction's traditions, members of the court may wear formal robes, gowns, collars, or wigs. Within a certain country and court setting, there may be many times when the full formal dress is not used. Examples in the UK include many courts and tribunals including the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom, and sometimes trials involving children.
The University of Oxford has a long tradition of academic dress, which continues to the present day.
A wedding dress or bridal gown is the dress worn by the bride during a wedding ceremony. The color, style and ceremonial importance of the gown can depend on the religion and culture of the wedding participants. In Western culture, the wedding dress is most commonly white, a fashion made popular by Queen Victoria when she married in 1840. In Eastern cultures, brides often choose red to symbolize auspiciousness.
The cope is a liturgical vestment, more precisely a long mantle or cloak, open in front and fastened at the breast with a band or clasp. It may be of any liturgical colour.
Clothing terminology comprises the names of individual garments and classes of garments, as well as the specialized vocabularies of the trades that have designed, manufactured, marketed and sold clothing over hundreds of years.
A mantua is an article of women's clothing worn in the late 17th century and 18th century. Initially a loose gown, the later mantua was an overgown or robe typically worn over stays, stomacher and either a co-ordinating or contrasting petticoat.
The jūnihitoe, more formally known as the itsutsuginu-karaginu-mo (五衣唐衣裳), is a style of formal court dress first worn in the Heian period by noble women and ladies-in-waiting at the Japanese Imperial Court. The jūnihitoe was composed of a number of kimono-like robes, layered on top of each other, with the outer robes cut both larger and thinner to reveal the layered garments underneath. These robes were referred to as hitoe, with the innermost robe – worn as underwear against the skin – known as the kosode. Hakama were also worn as underwear with the kosode; over time, the two would gradually become outerwear, with the kosode eventually developing into the modern-day kimono.
Fashion in the period 1550–1600 in European clothing was characterized by increased opulence. Contrasting fabrics, slashes, embroidery, applied trims, and other forms of surface ornamentation remained prominent. The wide silhouette, conical for women with breadth at the hips and broadly square for men with width at the shoulders had reached its peak in the 1530s, and by mid-century a tall, narrow line with a V-lined waist was back in fashion. Sleeves and women's skirts then began to widen again, with emphasis at the shoulder that would continue into the next century. The characteristic garment of the period was the ruff, which began as a modest ruffle attached to the neckband of a shirt or smock and grew into a separate garment of fine linen, trimmed with lace, cutwork or embroidery, and shaped into crisp, precise folds with starch and heated irons.
A pelisse was originally a short fur-trimmed jacket which hussar light-cavalry soldiers from the 17th century onwards usually wore hanging loose over the left shoulder, ostensibly to prevent sword cuts. The name also came to refer to a fashionable style of woman's coat-like garment worn in the early-19th century.
A pleat is a type of fold formed by doubling fabric back upon itself and securing it in place. It is commonly used in clothing and upholstery to gather a wide piece of fabric to a narrower circumference.
Fashion in 15th-century Europe was characterized by a series of extremes and extravagances, from the voluminous robes called houppelandes with their sweeping floor-length sleeves to the revealing doublets and hose of Renaissance Italy. Hats, hoods, and other headdresses assumed increasing importance, and were draped, jeweled, and feathered.
Fashion in fourteenth-century Europe was marked by the beginning of a period of experimentation with different forms of clothing. Costume historian James Laver suggests that the mid-14th century marks the emergence of recognizable "fashion" in clothing, in which Fernand Braudel concurs. The draped garments and straight seams of previous centuries were replaced by curved seams and the beginnings of tailoring, which allowed clothing to more closely fit the human form. Also, the use of lacing and buttons allowed a more snug fit to clothing.
A dress is a garment traditionally worn by women or girls consisting of a skirt with an attached bodice. It consists of a top piece that covers the torso and hangs down over the legs. A dress can be any one-piece garment containing a skirt of any length, and can be formal or casual.
The sack-back gown or robe à la française was a women's fashion of 18th century Europe. At the beginning of the century, the sack-back gown was a very informal style of dress. At its most informal, it was unfitted both front and back and called a sacque, contouche, or robe battante. By the 1770s the sack-back gown was second only to court dress in its formality. This style of gown had fabric at the back arranged in box pleats which fell loose from the shoulder to the floor with a slight train. In front, the gown was open, showing off a decorative stomacher and petticoat. It would have been worn with a wide square hoop or panniers under the petticoat. Scalloped ruffles often trimmed elbow-length sleeves, which were worn with separate frills called engageantes.
The Medieval period in England is usually classified as the time between the fall of the Roman Empire to the beginning of the Renaissance, roughly the years AD 410–1485. For various peoples living in England, the Anglo-Saxons, Anglo-Danes, Normans and Britons, clothing in the medieval era differed widely for men and women as well as for different classes in the social hierarchy. The general styles of Early medieval European dress were shared in England. In the later part of the period, men's clothing changed much more rapidly than women's styles. Clothes were very expensive and both the men and women of lower social classes continued also divided social classes by regulating the colors and styles these various ranks were permitted to wear. In the early Middle Ages, clothing was typically simple and, particularly in the case of lower-class peoples, served only basic utilitarian functions such as modesty and protection from the elements. As time went on the advent of more advanced textile techniques and increased international relations, clothing gradually got more and more intricate and elegant, even with those under the wealthy classes, up into the renaissance.
The academic dress of the United Kingdom and Ireland has a long history and has influenced the academic dress of America and beyond. The academic square cap was invented in the UK as well as the hood which developed from the lay dress of the medieval period.
An overskirt is a type of women's short skirt which is draped over another garment, such as a skirt, breeches, or trousers. Although peplum is often used as another term for overskirt, it should not be confused with the peplos or "peplum dress", which was worn in ancient Greece.
Peerage robes are worn in the United Kingdom by peers and are of two varieties for two occasions: Parliament robes, worn on ceremonial occasions in the House of Lords, and Coronation robes, worn at coronations of monarchs.
