If you want to bring timeless design up to date, look no further than our customised wardrobe designer, which allows you to create the fitted wardrobe of your dreams inspired by the beautiful storage solutions of the past.
Each colour choice, handle design, pull-out drawer, jewellery rack, woodgrain finish and fundamental layout choice is not only designed to enhance your wardrobe and ensure that it is built around your needs specifically, but also has a link to a past that spans thousands of years.
Of all of the main types of furniture that make up a home, wardrobes are perhaps the piece that has changed most fundamentally, adopting a completely different form, shape, size and function than it did in the distant past.
Why have wardrobes seen such a fundamental change? And how have these radical transformations shaped the wardrobes that we use today?
Who Invented The Wardrobe?
As a fundamentally important piece of furniture, it is perhaps unsurprising that some of the earliest forms of wardrobe emerged alongside some of history’s earliest civilisations, but they took a rather different form to the elegant, bespoke fitted wardrobes we see today.
The earliest wardrobes took the form of chests, typically made of wood or woven reeds in Ancient Egypt, used either alongside or as a replacement for shelves.
Whilst far different from the rather famous and ornate canopic chests, they were simple in construction, robust and easily transportable, ensuring that clothing and other household goods could remain relatively safe.
For over a thousand years, the wardrobe would largely take this form, with various regional shifts to reflect access to varying materials and the needs for particular functions.
What is interesting about the development of the wardrobe is that the concept evolved in parallel with its shape, and as early as Ancient Rome, there were pieces of furniture that resembled modern wardrobes in shape, albeit not in purpose.
Who Invented The Freestanding Wardrobe And What Was It For?
Up until the 18th century, the piece of furniture we think of as a wardrobe was not always used as one and was certainly not called one.
The Ancient Romans, who also used wardrobes, also used a longer, freestanding and typically movable type of wardrobe designed for forward operations and expeditions.
Known to the Romans as armoriums but most commonly known as armoires, these larger wardrobes were not initially intended to store clothes exclusively but were used for the storage of weapons and armour in makeshift barracks and military bases.
These armoriums themselves evolved from the armarium, a type of secure cabinet often used in ancient libraries and archives to store books and texts.
Whilst not intended as a clothes wardrobe, the functionality, versatility and durability of armoires meant that they became increasingly desirable as such, and throughout Medieval Europe, the armoire turned from a wartime necessity to a luxury statement piece.
What connected the two purposes was the use of oak in its construction; whilst the hardwood was an absolute necessity in order to sturdily carry racks and shelves of equipment, those same properties also made them valuable and desirable for the wealthy.
How Did Armoires Become Wardrobes?
The shift from mobile armoury to an essential piece of freestanding clothes storage furniture took centuries, with early wardrobes that retained the robust size and durability but were also increasingly made with style in mind.
The first step was to add more shelving; most armoires were designed to store weapons and armour, which are large, long and heavy enough to require most, if not all, of the open storage space.
Whilst this layout is sometimes seen today to allow for full-sized dresses and suits to be hung up, versatility was becoming increasingly important, which led to the introduction of shelves and later drawers to the armoire design.
By the Renaissance, the armoire was quickly becoming the standard for wealthy individuals to store their clothes, and the results became increasingly ornate status symbols.
The ultimate extreme of this was the Louis XIV-era armoires, designed as much to immediately catch the eye as a statement piece as to actually store clothes or anything else.
During this time, as the early concept of interior design started to spread from the aristocracy down to the upper and later middle classes, armoires started to more closely resemble the types of wardrobes you can design and build today.
When Was The Modern Wardrobe Invented?
As with a lot of modern interior design and furniture aesthetics, the origin point of the modern wardrobe can typically be found in the enigmatic Queen Anne style.
Unlike the earlier and highly elaborate William and Mary style, filled with ornamentation and exotic carvings, Queen Anne was perhaps the first furniture style which emphasised the functionality and lines of the furniture itself.
This would lead to a move towards simpler but far more effective and widely used wardrobe designs, which more closely resembled the types of wardrobes you can find today with similarly replicated styles.
It was also the point where wardrobes started to be a universal addition to homes, following a trend of elegant simplicity that would continue into the Victorian age, be briefly reversed by the Art Nouveau stylings of the Edwardian period, before the development of modern furniture styles.
Following this, the development of fitted wardrobes, flatpack furniture and the rise of custom flatpack wardrobes designed to fit your room has taken wardrobes even further than was ever thought possible.
What Is The Future Of Bespoke Wardrobes?
In some respects, the logical conclusion to the evolution of wardrobes is a combination of choice, affordability and ease of installation.
In all three regards, a custom-designed flatpack fitted wardrobe designed around your needs and aesthetic sensibilities using an easy design tool is a logical endpoint for wardrobes, but there is always the question of what comes next.
With minimalist interior designs potentially reaching their logical endpoint, the next step for wardrobes is to be an outlet for self-expression just as effective as the clothes stored within them.
Whether this involves alternative colour schemes, subtle but unique designs and a wide range of handle options, bespoke wardrobes are likely to be seen in a growing number of homes as this level of quality becomes more desirable and accessible.
