#4 High Middle Ages (1000 - 1300 c.e.)

Women hunting deer in dresses. Like you do.

Hello friends!  Welcome to the High Middle Ages!  The weather was nice!  People started having babies!  Folks started clearing land!  Governments stabilized!  Universities were formed!  Spain was called Al-Andalus, Germany was known as the Holy Roman Empire (though neither holy, Roman, or an empire), and all the Scandinavians were now Christian.



Generally speaking, it wasn't a bad time to be alive.  Sure, there were a few crusades, war and death, but there was FOOD.  And, usually, not starving to death makes folks more cheerful.  Also, when there's plenty of excess food, your community can do things like let artists paint and sculptors sculpt and scholars study.  And, important to fashion development, it let inventors make stuff. Cool stuff.   Fashion stuff.

 Before, everyone had always woven fabric on vertical looms.  Like this:

You begin to see why they never wanted to cut the fabric.

But, some clever woman or man figured out how to make horizontal looms with foot shuttles.

This, as you might imagine, GREATLY improved the speed and quality of fabric available.

Oh, and I forgot to mention the conversion from distaffs:

Which, admittedly, looks pretty glamorous..

to spinning wheels.

Sure, spinning wheels are far less relaxing than distaffs, but the quantity and quality of thread which could be spun was massively improved.  Which means it was possible, if you were rich, to have really NICE clothes, clothes which were brightly colored and felt good, clothes which you got to impress the neighbors with.  Clothes which looked like this:

Quick! Look at their faces and tell me which one is the girl.

Hard to say, right?  Well, I found this quote:

"Men’s clothes were generally shorter, but the body shape that the clothes emphasized, and also partially created, was the same. In addition, the beauty ideal appears to be virtually identical for both sexes, something that also can be seen in mediaeval literature where a young man frequently is mistaken for a young woman. This confusion is possible because the concept of human beauty was the same irrespective of sex; a beautiful young man was expected to look the same as a beautiful young woman.

 This can be tied to what historian Thomas Laqueur termed “the one-sex model” or “the Aristotelian model”. This is the medical and scientific view of sex as a difference in degree of development and not as a difference in nature. The degree of masculinity and femininity was determined by the balance of the different humours that were thought to govern the body. According to this view, that which today is seen as primary and stable, biological sex, was seen as mutable. The basis for what was perceived as masculine and feminine was instead men’s and women’s social roles and the hierarchy between them. This was also the starting point when the body was interpreted; woman was not inferior to man because her body was weaker, but her body was weaker because she was inferior to him. 

  This fact explains several phenomena in mediaeval dress. That the cut and appearance of most garments were largely identical is a natural consequence of a common ideal of appearance and beauty for both men and women, based on the one-sex model. It also explains much of the critique directed at fashionable dress. When it was branded as indecent that a woman wore a belt on her hips, as happened in the second half of the fourteenth century, it had nothing to do with exposure of or emphasizing of sexed body parts, or with sexuality. Instead it was the symbolic value of a belt worn at the hips, the traditional placement of the sword-belt, with its implications of knighthood and masculinity that made it unseemly for a woman." 

Source: Developments in dress history” at Brighton University December 8th-10th 2011
Eva I Andersson PhD

Q: Is this a man and two women, three women, or three men? A: Yes!

Crazy, right?

Anyway, the guys who worked in the field still wore the same stuff they had pretty much always worn since forever:

"I've been workin on the wheat farm, all the live long day.."

This means a tunic, leggings, and some linen underpants. Though, these items might also be called a blouse, trousers, and braies.  Peasant women wore an undertunic (or chemise, or chainse, or smock) made of linen, and then one or more ankle-length tunics (or gowns or kirtles.)

"Peace out, homies!"

Later on women started wearing surcoats.

I'm including this medieval glamour shot cause I think it's kind of funny.

Surcoats were basically long tunics with no sleeves.  Eventually men started wearing them, too.

Hawt

 So, what's different about this stuff compared to the Dark Ages?  Well, the hats are new, right?

"What about our hats?"

"You mean these old things?"

Pretty exciting, huh? Well, not only are the hats kind of ridiculous, they tell everyone looking at them that the wearer of such a hat is IMPORTANT!!!

The High Middle Ages was when Sumptuory Laws were first invented.  These laws, passed by kings and lords, basically said that only certain (rich or noble) people could wear certain kinds of fabric (silk, gold, brocade, velvet) or certain colors (purple, red, gold.)  

This is brocade.  The idea of weaving this WITHOUT a horizontal
loom makes me want to cry.

There were also rules about how married women did their hair vs unmarried women, and what court officials wore vs what rich tradesmen could wear, and even what color cloak scholars could wear.  (Red. Scholars wore red.)  There were even rules about how short a man's tunic could be, with only noblemen allowed to have a tunic so short it showed his bottom.  The crusades happened at this time, which means stuff like turbans and silks came to Europe.  Obviously there had to be rules because if everyone was in a turban then chaos would ensue, right?  (Oh, and watch this video about the crusades because it's super cool:    http://youtu.be/X0zudTQelzI )

Really, what this means is, no matter where you were or what you were doing, EVERYONE knew EXACTLY who you were JUST by the clothes on your body.

"Just me, a rich unmarried woman, hanging out with my two math teachers
and a couple of guards being watched by a crowd of creepy praying guys."

Kinda interesting, huh?  But, they also had to invent sumptuory laws because something else was invented in the high middle ages, and it's the reason we are here.  

That's right.  They invented FASHION.

"Because we are FABULOUS!"

 Now, fashion in the high mids didn't change every few months or every few years, like it does now.  Clothing still took a long time to make.  Fashion, instead changed every generation.  That's right, the kids didn't want to look like their parents, so they changed stuff.

Sleeves got really long.

"You kids today with your long sleeves and uncovered hair...!"

Dresses got tight in the waist.

"You kids today with your long sleeves and tight dresses...!"

And, some unmarried girls even went so far as to wear ONLY ONE TUNIC.

"You knew I looked scandalous, you just didn't know why.."

For men, the skirts just kept getting shorter

and shorter with fancy socks

until eventually, the mens' hemlines were back at Greek levels of naked. (Though, they were totally wearing tights  underneath so maybe it wasn't AS naked.)

"Hey baby..."

And, yes, you caught me.   I cheated with the above picture because it's a fashion from the 1400s, which is later than what we are discussing today.  However, it shows the evolution.

You may also have noticed the lack of cross gartering.  This is because folks figured out how to keep their socks up by tying them to their underwear.

I totally wasn't kidding.

Amazing.

I believe that's enough for now about the High Middle Ages, a time of food and plenty, war and strife, and some fabulous new inventions.  Now go take your test!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qkxKNI-CuKBJffm6Uqo9CNUZP-hFtYnT2YMrGfVJlpg/viewform