Amazon.com description: Product Description: There has been an endeavor made to attribute this dress to the stimulus, to the influence, of Puritan feeling. Possibly some of the reaction against the absurdities of Elizabeth and James may have helped in the establishment of this costume; but I think the excellent taste of Charles and especially of his queen, Henrietta Maria, who succeeded in making women's dress wholly beautiful, may be thanked largely for it. And we may be grateful to the painter Van Dyck; for he had not only great taste as to dress, and genius in presenting his taste to the public, but he had a singular appreciation of the pictorial quality of dress and a power of making dress appropriate to the wearer. And he fully understood its value in indicating character.