1 There are two historical myths about Puritan costume. One is the image of the black-coated, steeple-hatted, round-headed killjoy. The second myth, a reaction to the first, was set in motion by Samuel Eliot Morison, who wrote that “on great occasions your Puritan might be gaudy. Governor Bradford left a red waistcoat with silver buttons, a colored hat, a violet cloak and a Turkey-red grogram suit” (S. E. Morison, Builders of the Bay Colony (Boston, 1930), 140). Other scholars have discovered bright colors in inventories of estates, and some have incautiously concluded that Puritan austerity was largely a fiction. Both myth and countermyth are very much mistaken, as Morison himself knew very well, but others have forgotten. Morison noted that Puritan costume was distinguished by “comparative plainness.” It is necessary to find a mediating position.