Bands (neckwear)

Bands are a form of formal neckwear, worn by some clergy and lawyers, and with some forms of academic dress. They take the form of two oblong pieces of cloth, usually though not invariably white, which are tied to the neck. Bands is usually plural because they require two similar parts and did not come as one piece of cloth. Those worn by clergy are often called preaching bands, tabs or Geneva bands; those worn by lawyers are called barrister's bands or, more usually in Canada, tabs.

In catholic Church thes are known as Rabat, comes form the french Col en rabat or Col Rabattu. The rabat dates from the 17the Century was ornated with Venetian Lace.

Ruffs were popular in the sixteenth century, and remained so till the late 1640s, alongside the more fashionable standing and falling bands. Ruffs, like bands, were sewn to a fairly deep neck-band. They could be either standing or falling ruffs. Standing ruffs were common with legal, and official dress till comparatively late. Falling ruffs were popular c. 1615-1640s.

In the early sixteenth century "bands" referred to the shirt neck-band under a ruff. For the rest of the century, when ruffs were still worn, and in the seventeenth century, bands referred to all the variations of these neckwear. All bands or collars arose from a standing neck-band of varying heights. They were tied at the throat with band-strings ending in tiny tassels or crochet-covered balls.

Bands were adopted in England for legal, official, ecclesiastical and academical use in the mid-seventeenth century. They varied from those worn by priests (very long, of cambric or linen, and reaching over the chest), to the much shorter ecclesiastical bands of black gauze with white hem showing on the outside. Both were developments of the seventeenth century lay collar.

Bands varied from small white turn-down collars and ruffs to point lace bands, depending upon fashion, until the mid-seventeenth century, when plain white bands came to be the invariable neck-wear of all judges, serjeants, barristers, students and clerical and academical men.

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