rs.

[Illustration: {Three types of wig for men}]

God willing, he will begin next week to wear his three-pound periwig.

He has spent last month (October) L12 on Miss Pepys, and L55 on his
clothes. He has silk tops for his legs and a new shag gown. He has a
close-bodied coat, light-coloured cloth with a gold edge. He sees Lady
Castlemaine in yellow satin with a pinner on.

In 1664 his wife begins to wear light-coloured locks.

In 1665 there is a new fashion for ladies of yellow bird's-eye hood.
There is a fear of the hair of periwigs during the Plague. Even in the
middle of the Plague Pepys ponders on the next fashion.

In 1666 women begin to wear buttoned-up riding-coats, hats and
periwigs.

On October 8 the King says he will set a thrifty fashion in clothes.
At this momentous date in history we must break for a minute from our
friend Pepys, and hear how this came about. Evelyn had given the King
his pamphlet entitled 'Tyrannus, or the Mode.' The King reads the
pamphlet, and is struck with the idea of the Persian coat. A long
pause may be made here, in which the reader may float on a mental
cloud back into the dim ages in the East, and there behold a
transmogrified edition of his own frock-coat gracing the back of some
staid philosopher. Evelyn had also published 'Mundus Muliebris; or,
the Ladies' Dressing-Room Unlocked.'

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Charles II.}]

So, only one month after the Great Fire of London, only a short time
before the Dutch burnt ships in the Medway, only a year after the
Plague, King Charles decides to reform the fashion. By October 13 the
new vests are made, and the King and the Duke of York try them on. On
the fifteenth the King wears his in public, and says he will never
change to another fashion. 'It is,' says Pepys, 'a long cassocke close
to the body, of black cloth and pinked with white silk under it, and a
coat over it, and the legs ruffled with black ribband like a pigeon's
legs.'

[Illustration: {A woman of the time of Charles II.}]

The ladies, to make an alteration, are to wear short skirts. Nell
Gwynne had a neat ankle, so I imagine she had a hand in this fashion.

On October 17 the King, seeing Lord St. Alban in an all black suit,
says that the black and white makes them look too much like magpies.
He bespeaks one of all black velvet.

Sir Philip Howard increases in the Eastern fashion, and wears a
nightgown and a turban like a Turk.

On Novemb