The Authority of Clothes: Queen Elizabeth I and Her Succession Crisis of 1562/63

This thesis looks at the silent messaging associated with Queen Elizabeth I's clothing during her early reign. The goal of this thesis is to look at outfits Elizabeth could have worn and see what sort of messages her contemporaries in Parliament might haven taken from them. I specifically looked at Elizabeth's Parliamentary meeting from 1562/63. I did so because this meeting was early in her reign, her legitimacy was being questioned on two fronts, and she had just gotten over smallpox. Elizabeth was not known yet for her extravagant outfits, but she would have needed to have had a powerful outfit in this meeting to assert her authority.