#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!

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#3 The Dark Ages (or The Early Middle Ages) 400 - 900 a.d.

"So, is everything dark because
 it's the dark ages?..."

So, Rome was sacked in 401 or 410 A.D. by the Visigoths.   The Roman Empire continued to exist because there was a second capital in Bysantium, but for Europeans, (and therefore Western Civilization) the idea of massive centralized government was a thing of the past.  And, just like in 3 Nephi 7, society devolved into tribes.  Cities fell, roads were haunted by robbers and highwaymen, and the basic infrastructure which keeps civilization mostly civil dissapeared.  There were wars and famine and plagues.  Cities were so dangerous, the rich folks moved to rural villas, taking their own private armies, slaves, families, and craftsmen with them.

"We're rich!"

Out of these estates, and the rich folks living in them, the feudal system evolved.   But, it was literally a few hundred years until that happened.  Because of the chaos and illness and bad stuff, there are very few records of the clothing folks wore in Europe at this time.  And by "time" I mean from 400 a.d. to at least 900 a.d.  Most of the clothing, however, was still pretty Roman.  Ya see, the folks up in northern Europe had started wearing those tunics, like the Romans did, but since northern Europe is seriously COLD, they added sleeves. They also wore leggings.  Or, they wore leg bandages, which is exactly what it sounds like, and probably just as miserable.

"Why wear shoes when I'v got
 perfectly good strips of wool to wrap around my feet?

If you will notice, the Frankish gentleman above has on a striped tunic which looks suspiciously Roman, right?  You see, if you identified yourself as a Roman, you kept the same sort of style as a Roman.  Specially since Bysantium (which was next Constantinople and is now Istanbul) was doing stuff like this:

"It's FABULOUS here!"

"And so are we!"

"Word."

The Eastern Roman Empire was still orderly and had scholars of many religions and countries learning lovely things and building lovely things and was, generally speaking, not so bad.  Being Romanish and wearing Roman-inspired clothing continued to be the cool thing, though we added more color and patterns and gold and cool hats and stuff.

But, if you were northern European, Rome was a fashion influence but you could also do your own thing.  These Anglo-Saxons were pretty Roman:

"Yes, we are!"

As are these nice Frankish noble people.

These Vikings throw their own twist on the look:

Not a single warrior ever wore a helmet decorated with cow horns.  It's stupid to give someone
a giant hook to grab your head with and is a made-up thing added to drawings of Vikings later in history.

Please look at the Viking man's legs.  This is called cross-gartering and in a time when NOTHING was stretchy, it was the one of the only ways to make your clothing tight and flexable at the same time.  Basically you would just wrap lengths of leather or fabric around your legs to keep your pants tight.   Needles at this point were still made of bone and not super strong so tailoring is still pretty minimal.

Now, let's look at this Swedish lady.  Her husband is pretty boring but she is... wait..  she is rocking a SKIRT AND BLOUSE!

"Trendsetting in the Bronze Age"

This Celtic lady has one on, too!!

Wait!  What is that??!

This is a skirt and blouse in case you forgot what they look like.
 I know, it's been all chitons and tunics lately..

 This is partially the reason why places like Sweden and Norway have national historical clothing which looks like this:

Though it doesn't explain the hats.

 Anyway, as is normal with tribal societies, local trends and technologies tend to determine what folks wear.  Also, just trying to survive determined what you wore since making fabric takes a LONG time.  Generally speaking, though, not a whole lot changed because everyone was trying to figure out how to live by eating rocks and sticks for dinner.   Men did start to wear their skirts longer

Probably cause their pants were terrible

and those glamor queens in Bysantium kept rocking the fashion world.

"Don't bother bringing the heat 'cause it's already been BROUGHT!"

Now, for your test!

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#2 Romans and Romanish Things

The Roman Epire.  It was freaking HUGE and for 200 years in the middle there was the pax Romana, meaning 200 years of peace within the empire.  The phrase pax Romana also kind of means "do what we say and be good or we will kill you."  So that's fun.

The Romans were folks from an Italian city-state called Rome (you may have heard of it) who overthrew their king and established a republican form of government sometime around 500 B.C.  They then proceeded to beat up their neighbors until the size of the Roman Empire by 117 A.D. covered 2,509,664 square miles.

"But what about the Greeks?" you ask.  "If they were so influential and invented so many neat things, how did this Roman stuff get so out of hand?"

"To-ga! To-ga!"

Well, the Greeks knew about the Romans.  They considered them uneducated barbarians and beneath their notice.  The Romans thought the Greeks were a bunch of pansies who should shut up about truth, beauty, and ethics and learn how to fight.

The Romans won.  However, in the process, the Romans realized that the Greeks had a lot of cool stuff going on.  Eventually, the Romans absorbed a lot of Greek culture, and the richer Romans collected Grek statues and books.  However, the Romans still thought the Greeks were girly so there weren't any Romans running around in "I Geek for Greeks!" t-shirts.

Though they totally should have..

Instead Romans collected Greek stuff and had Greek slaves teach their kids and basically pretended that they didn't love all things Greek while totally ripping them off.  Which, really, is what conquerors do.

But, we are here for FASHION.  So, let's take a look!

Everybody wore a tunica.  Tunica is where we get our word "tunic,"  Tunica are remarkably like a chiton.

"No, it's not a chiton!  It's a tunica! Duh!"

When the tunic first came along, men wore them with no sleeves.  When it got cold, they just put another sleeveless tunic on over their first one.  Then another if it was still cold.  Because sleeves are for girls and not for big mean tough (dumb) Romans.

The big thing, though, which showed citizenship in the Roman Empire, was a toga.  In the early days they wore them without shirts, just like the Greek himation, but over time they wore tunics under them.   Only citizens of Rome could wear a toga.  (And your citizenship was based on how much money you had and who you were related to.)  Here is what an early toga-and-tunic looked like:

"Taxi!"

And here is what the toga-and-tunic evolved into:

"Mine is so complicated I have to be dressed by someone else each morning."

Eventually, by the end of the Empire, the Emperor had to pass laws telling men they HAD to wear their togas to events because they were such a huge bother.  And, really, they were.  Let's look at pictures.

Step 1: get a RIDICULOUSLY HUGE piece of fabric

Step 2: Throw one end over your shoulder and wad up the rest of it in interesing ways.

Step 3: throw that whole mess over your shoulder again

Step 4: Prance!  But not too much 'cause it will fall off.

Contrast that with a tunic pattern --

"Hi. I'm a tunic"

and you will see why tunics were more popular.

So, that's what Roman men wore.  They didn't wear pants because that was something barbarians in the north did.  Pants were for chumps.  Tunics were for everyone.

Now, you may notice that the tunic pictured above has two red stripes.  Those stripes mean something.  In fact, what a Roman wore always meant something.  There are even special names for each of the different types of toga and strict rules about who could wear them.  It's kind of boring to list them all so I won't.  However, it's important to note that what you wore literally told everyone who you were and your place in society.  In fact, here's a quote:

“Dress for a Roman often, if not primarily, signified rank, status, office, or authority. . . . The dress worn by the participants in an official scene had legal connotations. . . . The hierarchic, symbolic use of dress as a uniform or costume is part of Rome's legacy to Western civilization.” (Larissa Bonfante. "Introduction.” The World of Roman Costume. Ed. Judith Lynn Sebesta and Larissa Bonfante. University of Wisconsin Press, 1994. Pp. 5-6)

Women had a few more rights in Roman society than in Greek.  They could own property, get divorces, run businesses, and learn stuff like midwifery.   Unmarried women wore long tunics.

Here I am pouring perfume from one bottle to another..

and married women wore stola.   A stola is a dress on top of your tunic.  It usually didn't have sleeves but it really was up to the woman.  

"My tunic is blue, my stola is white"

Women also wore a palla over their tunic and stolla.  A palla is a long bit of fabric which kind of drapes like a mini toga.  It could also be draped over the head... just like a himation

"I am ready to PARTY!"

Women wore any color they liked and any pattern they liked.  The richer women wore a TON of jewelery including diadems, bracelets, rings, earrings, and necklaces... and all at the same time.  

"I just barely have enough jewlery on"

Hairstyles were elaborate as well, with all sorts of extreme styles being experimented with.

Pretty in the front...

and where-did-your-hair-go? in the back

Roman women totally dyed their hair (with yellow-red being the prefered color), wore wigs, put fake hair into theirs to make it seem bigger, and wore makeup.

Ancient Roman sandal and shoe up top
Replica sandal and shoe below

Shoes for the Romans also had rules.  Sandals were worn inside a house.  Shoes (closed toe) were always worn outside the house.  One would never been seen wearing sandals outside or shoes inside.   So, if you went to someone's house to visit, you would take sandals with you and change into them when you got there.  If you were someone important, like a curule magistrate, you got to wear shoes dyed red to match the stripe of importance on your toga. 

Children in Rome wore different clothing as well.  When a child was born it was given to the father to be inspected.   If the child was sick, weak, or unacceptable, it was left outside to die.  If the father accepted the child he just rocked it to sleep.  When the baby was nine days old, there was a ceremony to name the child and a bulla was placed around the baby's neck.  A bulla looks like this:

The word bulla means bubble or blister.  It's a hollow thingy which children wore to protect them from evil spirits.   When a girl got married she took off her bulla and presented it in the temple to the gods along with all of her childhood toys.  Boys did a similar thing when they turned 13 or 14 except they kept the bulla and wore it on great occassions to protect themselves from the envy and ill-wishing of other men.

So, what does all this stuff tell us?

"And this has better be interesting, Susan, because I am BORED!"

Romans are not indiviualistic like Greeks.  Romans believed in rigid heirarchies and in letting everyone else know how important you are in that structure. There were rules about everything, including your shoes (though the one time an emperor tried to tell women they couldn't wear fancy clothes there was a revolt by the women.  The law didn't last long.)  Unlike the Greeks, fashion did evolve a little bit in the Roman empire, and it changed in a way which reflected the change in social structure.   Togas became cumbersome and for rich men only.  Tunics and the specialized armor and clothing of soldiers became more common as generals took over more parts of the government.   Silk, linen, and cotton became available through trade in the farthest parts of the empire.  Clothing became more and more decadent as the empire began to crumble from within.

And, I'm done.  Please see the below link for your quiz!

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