I thoroughly enjoyed Morwenna Ferrier’s untangling of the cultural significance of the bow (Untie me! Why big bows are everywhere – feminine, ironic and strangely subversive, 18 November). I read it just after teaching a seminar on Elizabethan virginity, and I couldn’t help but think of the famous Armada portrait.
The painting is an overt celebration of martial victory, with Spanish ships floundering in the view above Elizabeth’s right shoulder, British ships sailing triumphant on the left, her hand firmly placed on a globe. But she is also covered in pink bows, and a huge pearl hangs from a delicate white bow at the top of her skirts, symbolic of her virginity.
If men wearing bows on the red carpet is today considered an “alpha move”, Elizabeth I got there first.
Dr Charlotte Potter
Geneva, Switzerland
• Morwenna Ferrier’s article on big bows being everywhere made me wonder what Esme Young, one of the judges on The Great British Sewing Bee, would make of all this. Contestants regularly refer to the fact that “Esme likes a bow”. They are indeed a way to “zhoosh something up”. They also kept my unruly hair in check in the 1950s.
Chris Walters
Buxton, Derbyshire
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