The wardrobe of Mary, Queen of Scots, was described in several contemporary documents, and many records of her costume have been published. Mary's clothing choices are apparent in the contexts of her appearance as a ruler, at her pastimes, and as a prisoner in England. Mary was involved in textile crafts, dressed her gentlewomen en-suite, organised events including costumed masques, and made and accepted gifts of clothing. Her choice of clothing at Fotheringhay for her execution has been examined as gesture and political theatre.Clare Hunter, Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power (London: Sceptre, 2022), pp. 369-373 (Bibliography).
Clothes for a queen Mary, Queen of Scots (1542–1587) lived in France between 1548 and 1560 and clothing bought for her is particularly well-documented in the year 1551.Alphonse de Ruble, La première jeunesse de Marie Stuart, (Paris, 1891), selected transcriptions from BnF Fr. 11207, see external links. Her wedding dress in 1558 was described in some detail. More detailed records of her costume survive from her time in Scotland, with purchases recorded in the royal treasurer's accounts and wardrobe accounts kept by Servais de Condé. Inventories were made of her clothing and her jewellery during her time in Scotland and after she abdicated and went to England. Details of her costume on the day of her execution at Fotheringhay Castle in 1587 were widely reported and circulated in manuscript.David Scott, History of Scotland (Westminster, 1728), p. 514: William Camden, Annales Rerum Anglicarum Et Hibernicarum Regnante Elizabetha, vol. 1 (London, 1717), p. clxiii.
Few details of known of Mary's clothes in infancy in Scotland, except that Margaret Balcomie, or Malcomy,Register of the Privy Seal of Scotland, vol. 5:2 (Edinburgh, 1957), p. 137 no. 2874. had an allowance of soap and coal to warm the water to wash her linen. She became laundress to James VI at Stirling Castle in 1568.Steven J. Reid, The Early Life of James VI, A Long Apprenticeship (Edinburgh: John Donald, 2023), p. 34: HMC Earl of Mar & Kellie (London, 1904), pp. 18–19, her allowances for soap and coal in 1543 are recorded in Regent Arran's household books. In 1548 her mother, Mary of Guise, asked her envoy Henri Cleutin to buy cloth of gold for a gown for her, from René Tardif and Robert Fichepain, merchants of the "argenterie" who served the French court.Rosalind K. Marshall, 'Hir Rob Ryall: the Costume of Mary of Guise', Costume, 12:1 (1978), pp. 1-12: National Library of Scotland Adv. MS 29.2.5 ff. 18, 27. In January 1537, Tardif and Fichepain had supplied fabrics to James V for his wedding to Madeleine of Valois.Louis, duc de La Trémoille, Les La Trémoille pendant cinq siècles: Charles, François et Louis III (Paris, 1894), pp. 28–29. In France, in 1551, René Tardif supplied velvet, satin, taffeta, and Holland linen.Alphonse de Ruble, La première jeunesse de Marie Stuart (Paris, 1891), pp. 38–40, 283–285.Jane T. Stoddart, The girlhood of Mary Queen of Scots (London, 1908), p. 37 Mary's servant, Agathe Burgensis, made linen nightshirts and embroidered sleeves. The embroiderer serving the royal children was Pierre d'Anjou.Alphonse Ruble, La première jeunesse de Marie Stuart (Paris, 1891), pp. 294-295.
Mary's clothes were embroidered with jewels by her tailor Nicolas du Moncel, a white satin skirt front and sleeves featured 120 diamonds and rubies, and coifs for her hair had gold buttons or rubies.Alphonse Ruble, La première jeunesse de Marie Stuart (Paris, 1891), pp. 287-8, 297: Clare Hunter, Embroidering Her Truth (London, 2022), p. 37: Alexander Wilkinson, Mary Queen of Scots and French Public Opinion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), p. 16. Du Moncel had been one of Mary of Guise's tailors and was listed in her household rolls as the valet des filles, a servant to the maids of honour.Andrea Thomas, Princelie Majestie (John Donald, 2005), p. 240. Mary mentioned his wages in one of her early letters to her mother.Alexandre Labanoff, Lettres de Marie Stuart, 1 (London: Dolman, 1844), p. 7: James Maidment, Analecta Scotica (Edinburgh, 1834), p. 26. He made a farthingale, "une vertugalle", for her in 1551.Alphonse Ruble, La première jeunesse de Marie Stuart (Paris, 1891), pp. 38, 288-289. Moncel received a pension as an usher of the chamber, according to a 1567 household roll.Alexandre Teulet, Papiers d'État Relatifs à l'Histoire del'Écosse, 2 (Paris: Plon, Bannatyne Club, 1851), p. 133.
Mary's portrait, and the portraits of the French royal children, were painted in June 1552. The painter was supervised by the governess of the royal children Françoise d'Humières.Hector de la Ferrière, Lettres de Catherine de Médicis, 1 (Paris, 1880), pp. 62, 66. Germain Le Mannier, a painter was an usher in the children's household. A chalk drawing, attributed to François Clouet at Chantilly dated 1 June 1552 and July 1552 showing Mary at the age of 9 years 6 months may represent the painter's work.David A. H. B. Taylor, "Damnatio Memoriae: Iconography", Steven J. Reid, Afterlife of Mary Queen of Scots (Edinburgh, 2024), p, 37: Andrew Lang, "Portraits and Jewels of Mary, Queen of Scots", Scottish Historical Review, 3 (Glagow, 1906), pp. 136–137.Etienne Moreau-Nélaton, Le Portrait à la cour des Valois; crayons français du XVIe siècle, conservés au Musée Condé à Chantilly, 1 (Paris, 1908), pp. 84–85.Marie Stuart, July 1552, Musée Condé MN 38 She wears slashed sleeves and her hair is in an embroidered caul banded with jewels.John Guy, The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (Fourth Estate, 2004), pp. 80–81.
A French household for Mary was formed in January 1554.John Guy, The Life of Mary Queen of Scots (Fourth Estate, 2004), p. 62.T. F. Henderson, Mary Queen of Scots: Her Environment and Tragedy, 1 (London, 1905), p. 87. In 1555, Mary gave some of her old gowns to her aunt, to be recycled as altar frontals. Mary wrote to her mother in December 1555 about a disagreement with Françoise de Paroy, and said she would have an inventory of her clothes since coming to France drawn up. She wanted Jean, possibly Jehan Allotot,Louis Paris, Négociations, lettres et pièces diverses relatives au règne de François II, (Paris, 1841), p. 748 a valet of her chamber to be promoted to Master of the Wardrobe.Alexandre Labanoff, Lettres de Marie Stuart, 1 (London: Dolman, 1844), pp. 29–32
Gift giving was an important part of court culture.Felicity Heal, The Power of Gifts: Gift-exchange in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2014), p. 99. In 1560, a courtier, Florimond Robertet, wrote of his plans to give Mary two pairs of long Granada silk stockings of the best kind, one of red or pink (incarnate) and another turquoise (bleu turquin) of an azure shade.Jane Stoddart, The girlhood of Mary Queen of Scots from her landing in France to her departure (London, 1908), p. 283Louis Paris, Négociations, lettres et pièces diverses relatives au règne de François II, (Paris, 1841), p. 446
A woodcut illustration for a book on hunting by Jacques du Fouilloux, first printed in 1561, shows the author and Francis II. A full-length female figure in a portico in the background is very probably intended to depict Mary.John M. Gilbert, Elite Hunting Culture and Mary, Queen of Scots (Boydell, 2024), pp. 66–68: Jacques du Fouilloux, La venerie de Jacques du Fouilloux (Poitiers, 1562), frontispiece
Masques in France
Masques and dance were the heart of festivities at royal courts.John M. Gilbert, Elite Hunting Culture and Mary, Queen of Scots (Boydell, 2024), pp. 54-55: Clare Hunter, Embroidering Her Truth: Mary, Queen of Scots and the Language of Power (Sceptre, 2022), p. 151. Mary danced in masques (with the French governess Françoise d'Humières) in costumes made with lightweight silver and gold fabrics decorated with silver and gold metallic spangles.Michael Pearce, 'Maskerye Claythis for James VI and Anna of Denmark', Medieval English Theatre 43, 2021 (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2022), p. 113. These were a type of sequin or "oes" called papillotes or espingles in French.Alexandre Labanoff, Lettres de Marie Stuart, 4 (London: Dolman, 1844), p. 222. Her dance teacher, or balladin, was Jehan Paulle alias Paule de Rege,Alphonse de Ruble, La première jeunesse de Marie Stuart, (Paris, 1891), pp. 70, 281, 286-92: Margaret M. McGowan, Dance in the Renaissance: European Fashion, French Obsession (Yale, 2008), p. 152: Patrick Fraser Tyler, History of Scotland, 6 (Edinburgh, 1837), p. 434, citing BL Egerton MS: BnF, Côme Clausse, Comptes des Enfants de France pour l'année 1551, Fr. 11207 f. 79v otherwise known as "Giovan Paulo".Louis Paris, Négociations (Paris, 1841), p. 355. Whether Italian or French, he was sent to teach the royal children and their companions to dance in January 1549 by Henry II of France and said to be "virtuous and well conditioned".T. F. Henderson, Mary Queen of Scots: Her Environment and Tragedy, 1 (London, 1905), p. 74.P. F. Tytler, History of Scotland, 4 (Edinburgh: Tait, 1845), p. 481, from British Library Egerton MSS. In 1554, Mary played the Delphic Sibyl and Mary Fleming was the Erythraean Sibyl in a masque at Saint-Germain-en-Laye written by Mellin de Saint-Gelais.Marcus Merriman, 'Mary, Queen of France', Innes Review, 38:38 (1988), p. 41: James Emerson Phillips, Images of a Queen: Mary Stuart in Sixteenth-century Literature (University of California, 1964), pp. 3–4: Alphonse de Ruble, La première jeunesse de Marie Stuart, (Paris, 1891), pp. 95-08.Marcus Merriman, The Rough Wooing (Tuckwell, 2000), pp. 55–56.
In 1554 her governess Françoise d'Estainville, Dame de Paroy, wrote to Mary of Guise asking permission to buy two diamonds to lengthen one of Mary's headbands (worn on her French hood) with rubies and pearls. She also wanted to buy a new gown of cloth-of-gold for Mary to wear at the wedding of Nicolas, Count of Vaudémont (1524–1577), and Princess Joanna of Savoy-Nemours (1532–1568) at Fontainebleau.Retha Warnicke, Mary Queen of Scots (Routledge, 2006), p. 42. This new costume was intended to emulate the fashion adopted by the French princesses of the blood, Elisabeth of Valois and Claude of France (1547–1575), and accord with her status as queen of Scotland.Retha M. Warnicke, Mary Queen of Scots (Routledge, 2006), p. 42: Marguerite Wood, Balcarres Papers, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1925), pp. 252-6. In a letter to her mother, Mary mentions a pair of embroidered sleeves that were being made for her in Scotland.Labanoff, Letters de Marie Stuart, vol. 1, p. 45.
Pageants at Mary's wedding in April 1558 were designed by Bartolomeo Campi of Pesaro,Herbert Van Scoy, Bernerd C. Weber, 'The Marriage of Mary Queen of Scots and the Dauphin', Scottish Historical Review, 31:111, Part 1 (April 1952), p. 47. who had previously worked for Guidobaldo II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino,Stuart W. Pyhrr & José-A. Godoy, Heroic Armor of the Italian Renaissance: Filippo Negroli and His Contemporaries (Metropolitan Museum, 1998), p. 283: Marina Belozerskaya, Luxury Arts of the Renaissance (Getty, 2005), p. 160. and designed costume for two court festivals in Urbino.Carolyn Springer, Armour and Masculinity in the Italian Renaissance (University of Toronto, 2010), p. 87.