Wardrobe

For other uses, see Wardrobe (disambiguation).

Armoire redirects here. See also Armoire desk.

Wardrobe

A wardrobe, also known as an armoire from the French, is a standing closet used for storing clothes. The earliest wardrobe was a chest, and it was not until some degree of luxury was attained in regal palaces and the castles of powerful nobles that separate accommodation was provided for the apparel of the great. The name of wardrobe was then given to a room in which the wall-space was filled with cupboards and lockers, the drawer being a comparatively modern invention. From these cupboards and lockers the modern wardrobe, with its hanging spaces, sliding shelves and drawers, evolved slowly.

Throughout the chronological changes in the form of the enclosure, it more or less retained its preset function as a place to retain a king’s robe. The word has gained coinage over successive generations as an independent store for among others, preserving precious items for a ruler like gold, well highlighted in King Edward 1 times. It is also a simple patio where clothes are hung from metal bars or tucked inside utility racks running from up to down. The modern wardrobe differs in one respect from the historical one for its triple partitioning: there are two linear compartments on either side with shelves as well as a middle space made up of hanging pegs and drawers, the latter being a latter-day addition, besides a clothes’ press in the higher central space on level with a person’s chest.

History

Intricately carved French Oakley style tallboy with under-cabinet instead of a chest of drawers

A Chinese Ming Dynasty compound wardrobe made of rosewood, later half of the 16th century

Etymological origins of the name can be traced to the Middle English rendering of the ancient French term, garderobe with the semantic import of a private store. Its more precise language origin is armoire for Francophone speakers. The 17th and 18th centuries marked the baroque period’s versatile exploitation of the wardrobe which helped it transmute to the modern type. In the Americas, oaken structures referred to as the tallboys were much in appeal though they later changed to the walnut types after the passage of oak as the hitherto preferred timber and partly due to the partial extinction in virgin forests of the latter wood. At first, the progress from the normal cabinet to the now fully-fledged structure was marked with bulky shelves and drawer-straddled wardrobes for a century or so before the now minimalist walled-in style became the functional norm.

The European royal culture in the meanwhile was making grand plans, like the Great Wardrobe of post-Elizabethan England where bedsteads, royal raiment and clothes’ chests were prepared specifically for Court functions (see below, UK section).

Wardrobe size

A common feature was to base future size on the eight small men method. A considered good size double wardrobe would thus be able to hold within its capacity, eight small men.

A modern fitted wardrobe

In the nineteenth century the wardrobe began to develop into its modern form, with a hanging cupboard at each side, a press in the upper part of the central portion and drawers below. As a rule it was often of mahogany, but as satinwood and other hitherto scarce finely grained foreign woods began to be obtainable in considerable quantities, many elaborately and even magnificently inlaid wardrobes were made.

Where Chippendale and his school had carved, Sheraton, Hepplewhite and their contemporaries achieved their effects by the artistic employment of deftly contrasted and highly polished woods.

The penultimate step in the evolution of the wardrobe was taken when the central doors, which had previously enclosed merely the upper part, were carried to the floor, covering the drawers as well as the sliding shelves, and were often fitted with mirrors.

American Type Wardrobes

Contextually, the American type, especially in highly populated cosmopolitan areas like New York, belies the need to bridge constricted space in apartments, studio rooms and tenement houses which accounts for the walk-in wardrobe. The latter is backless, having only a façade projecting in minimalist design from the receptacle wall.

The design is at once clutter free, sophisticated and functional. It gives license to the pun that post-war apartments in major suburbs like Manhattan gained huge appeal to tenants virtually because of their very designate and classy wardrobes.

The American walk-in enclosure vaunts 14 inches in height per storage rack. It has collapsible rods that run perpendicularly just shy of the floor meaning that one can change the positioning of a shelf or even the tangent beams. Sliding door types quintessentially come with the colonial timber look including oaken. They are meant for function and utility, rendering patio-like demarcation of space as well as for seamless essential opening and closing. The façade can have tinted, transparent or textural glass.

In walk-in wardrobes, one is likely to find a half a dozen, easy-to-dispose racks for footwear on the left chamber, with the middle reserved for hanging jackets at the top with the upper center for a press and lower center for other drawers. The right rack is commonly meant for under garments, robes and other delicate items of dress.

UK Type Wardrobes

The British are famous as the progenitors of the wardrobe to the popular taste through their majestic royal courts where kings required chests for their elaborate robes, while at the same time serving as private banks for precious possessions like gold. It was an essential point in the 18th century to have wardrobes ready as ‘serve-alls’ for such purposes as a coronation, a wedding, a burial and other Crown functions. According to the Master’s Chamberlayne of the year 1707, a quintessential Wardrobe for kingly and queenly functions stretching for 122 years was planned round the clock detailing how clothing was to be hung, arranged and appropriated with the rest of furnishings like bedsteads, per function. Every piece of livery required for dignitaries of the court were stored in chests, and later in rooms, as the century turned, for the given toilettes of high-class guests.

In the modern context, the British wardrobe has transpired from its humble progenitor, the chest, through the elaborate and heavy Victorian oaken cupboard, to the present post-war double-door, independent enclosure. Unlike the American, this is reserved as a closet, often being synonymous with its room rather than being necessarily appended to the wall. In certain cases however, the built-in wardrobe in the UK tends to be bigger and standing in better relief from that of the other side of the Atlantic that is at once functional and minimalist.

The UK style tends to incorporate a solid type that levels off from the cornice to the ground. The French Wardrobe is annotated with romance, mainly done in elegant tones like ivory; of small dimensions, it features craftsman’s homemade cupboard-styles with a set of drawers at the bottom beneath a double door for hanging attire at the top.

See also

• Cabinet
• Encoignure

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.