#7 - Middle Ages Fashion Vocabulary - The Lesson!

Since (as of this writing) all ONE of you took the quiz from last week and that one said "Yes" to more information about wimples and hennen, today's class will be on a few of the strange and unususal words used to describe middle ages clothing.  You're welcome.
:)


Obviously we will begin with the

Wimple
The woman on the left is wearing a wimple.  A wimple is best described as a piece of fabric which covers the neck and fastens at the top or back of the head.  Generally a wimple was combined with othe headgear (which will be explained below) but I guess it's concieveable that someone somewhere could have worn it like this

but probably not if you were rich.  The wealthier you were, the more complicated your wimple became.  This lady prefered her's to look like a neck brace

"I like it because it keeps my head totally immobile"

while these ladies prefered black

like their souls

and these ladies like to wear them on weekends

After all, you need SOMETHING to do while your boyfriend hits people with
padded sticks at the park

Wimples were forbidden for prostitutes to wear.  So, they were considered the mark of a modest woman.  However, they wern't mandatory.  Wearing a wimple might just look cool, be favored by older ladies who had double chins to hide, or show people how rich you were.

Here are some places you might have seen wimples before:

Traditional nun habits

Your local Muslim neighbor

As you can see the wimple still has strong connotations of modesty and is closely connected to religion.

Well, unless you are this character:

And then it represents repression through unnecessarily strigent tradition.  I am really tempted to sidetrack here and talk about Merida's clothing in the movie Brave.  Does anyone mind?  No?  No one?

Well, alright then.  :)

Remember what I said about fashion changing each generation during the middle ages?  You can see this in the movie.  Queen Elinor has free hanging hair, large sleeves, and the low girdle of the high middle ages.

See?

But, when it's time to present Merida for marriage, she has the tucked in waist, tight sleeves, and the TOTALLY covered hair of the next generation.

And she's pretty mad about it.

Animators have the difficult task of having to SHOW ideas, traditions, and feelings of characters through the way they look.   The blue dress Merida wears here is not historically accurate.  They never cut seams this way, the sleeves would have been tied on, and no one in the Middle Ages was all that into binding.  Corsets and other torturous underwear didn't really happen until the 1500s.  But, in every movie that is set in a past era, the women invariably complain about the restrictions of the clothing they are wearing and when they bust out of the confining items, it symbolizes a literal escape from social constraints.

In reality, if it's an over garment or gown, the sleeves are tied on.  Only underwear (chemise, smocks) has stitched in sleeves.  And "sleeve" is a generous term since the item was really a rectangle with two rectangles sewn to it for sleeves.

THIS is exactly right

Aaaand... We're back!  On to the Barbette!

No, it's not a plastic fashion doll.  The barbette was a band of cloth, usually white, that is worn under the chin and fasten at the top of the head.   I'v shown you one before.  

We three whatevers, with barbettes galore, wearing gauffered toques we never will bore..

Fillets are bands of fabric around the head.  Like this:

Gauffered means a ruffley edge by way of pinching, gathering or pressing, and it's just to make stuff pretty.

Enough gauffering

Too much gauffering.

Under all these assorted straps they would wear a coif

which is a sort of loose cap which covers all their hair which has been braided up.

 Over all of this they might throw a veil

Visit the Wise Virgins at the Strausbourg Cathedral, France to find
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or perhaps just a toque (which is sort of an open-top pillbox hat.)

A woman could choose to wear any/all of these items.  Or, if she had it, she could just accessorize with a gigantic crown.

"Crowns just make me so cheerful, ya know?"

Also, a circlet is something you could use to keep your hair out of your eyes.

And a coronet is a mini-crown which also is handy for keeping your veil on.

I really like this statue because it seems like EVERY
KID IN THE WORLD likes to drop things down
my shirt and it's nice to see that statues have the
same problems.  :)

Oh, I just remembered that I'm ignoring the hennin.  Mainly because it looks like this:

As you have seen, the hennin eventually divided into not one, but two TWO horns on a woman's head so they would really look like cows.

Mooo...

So, that's pretty comprehensive.

"But", you may ask, "what kind of glamorous headwear were the men wearing?"   Well, I'll just show you:

Hoods.

Yup.  Pretty exciting.   They originally started out looking pretty normal

But eventually someone thought a long dangly bit at the back of the hood would look pretty cool.

Let's diagram the elements of a hood so you will know the terms later.

Learn the French words.  I will be using these terms later.

So, that's kind of a dumb looking hat but it gets dumber.  A lot dumber.   What men decided to do was to not pull the hood over their heads like normal people.  Nope, they decided to put the FACE of the hood on their head.

Labeled here as "A"

and then wad everything else up on their heads in interesting ways.

"Perfect!"

So, if you start Googling this, you will find people diagramming the chaperon. So, if you feel like figuring out which parts are hanging where, it helps to know the names of stuff while they describe it.

Oh, I forgot to mention something.  To keep the hood ON their heads, they had to roll the face part a little bit to make it smaller.  Eventually this became a giant roll around the head.

"Dude, do you know your rondell is HUGE?" - said man wearing
black hat to man wearing a red hat in the lower left corner

Anyway, let's look at some of these things.

Boy with rondel on his head, the patte on his left,
and the coronette on his right.
The coronette is the long bit.

Man with a small rondel, coronette on his left and patte on his right

Glamorous artist who couldn't be bothered to do anything
but wad it all up so it wouldn't get in his eyes

The Italians never really got into this look.  But, it wouldn't do to NOT wear a chaperon so they modified it to this:

"There.  I'm wearing it.  Are you happy now?"

This style lasted only a hundred years, from 1400 until 1500 but it got kind of silly along the way

"I'd like to mail this letter.."

"No one will ever know the secret of my complicated hat,
bwaa haa haa!"

"Erm.. I think this is how it goes..."

"I am FABULOUS!!!"

And SCA-ers still think they're pretty cool today:

"I always have my portraits taken at Sears!"

"Hello... miLADIES!"

"That's right... I have a hawk."

"And I have strong rervations about ALL of you..."

Eventually (in the late 1400's) the style of the chaperon faded until no one wore them except when they wanted to communicate something by wearing one.  Something like

"I'm wearing a tiny version of the hat my
grandfather wore because I think it's totally ironic."

Now, go take your quiz!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1iQ_xoOA0dVM74lzyWBQ_JhKjsb5vJNFclcmJv7Bqd2Q/viewform

#6 - 1400 - 1500 c.e.

"No, I'm totally not looking down your
dress... Why do you ask?"

So, where were we?  Oh, yes, that's right, massive social upheaval.  John Wycleff has been condemned as a heretic and is dead but everyone who thinks that the Church is full of corrupt officials or who wants to read the Bible in English is still talking about him. (And trying to get their hands on one of his bibles.)  The Spanish Inquisition gets started,  the Hundred Years War in England (which actually was 116 years long) is still going strong, the peasant uprisings are spectacularly unsuccessful, and there is a lot of general dissatisfaction with the way things had been going. So much so that Martin Luther starts nailing things to church doors by the end of the century.

This period of history is commonly called the Renaissance.  Here is a video about that...

So that's fun.   However, this is a class about fashion.

Generally speaking, I'm not all that thrilled about fashion during this century.  Sure, all sorts of things were happening but I consider it a "transition" century.  The first part of the 1400's looks a lot like the tail end of the 1300's, 

"The black line on my head is the wire keeping my
horns on.."

and the second part looks almost just like everything in the 1500's.  

"Ugh, I'm so tired of this lame pearl rosary.."

Which is to say, it's pretty much like studying women's fashion in the 1930's. 

Both of these images are from the same decade

 It just isn't anything but what it was and what it will be and it's probaby that way because there was a lot of war.

Yeah, I know that sounds weird.  Let's look at some actual facts.

Women's fashion consisted of the smock, the kirtle, and the gown. 

Her smock is white, her kirtle is black,
and her gown is red with grey trim.

 The smock or chemise I think we all understand.  It was the underdress which kept sweat and dirt from the heavy outer clothing.  One would change your chemise every day (hopefully) but keep wearing the gown because it never touched skin.  The kirtle is harder to explain but I think it's best thought of as a precursor to the corset. A large, full-length-dress-sized corset.  It was an extra layer (in a cold cruel world) which was laced tight and acted as a foundation garment.  Sounds pretty corset-y to me... 

You can't see anything here but gown, an amazing
hairstyle, and some terribly disproportiate arms.
I love looking at this picture.

  

Hats continued to evolve, with the shaved forehead look becoming popular for the fashion victims of this century.  

So.. much.. forehead..

 The waistlines remained pretty high for most of the century but eventually moved down as the deep v-necks moved into the square necklines which would dominate the next century.

One interesing thing was the beginning of slashing. While the word sounds dramatic, it really just meant cutting parts of the gown (or doublet) to show the rich fabric underneath. (Allegedly, soldiers started this trend when they raided a rich city and mended their torn clothing with bits of fancy silk from the vanquished.)  Sometimes this just meant slashing the sleeves of the gown to show the kirtle, but sometimes it also meant cutting a lot of little slashes and making puffs out of the smock beneath.

I'm showing my kirtle

Our chemise is showing... out of our sleeves.

One thing to remember about this time period is that the only fasteners they had for clothing were laces, buttons, or pins.  Sleeves were generally just tied on, 

as you can see here,

and if they were of good quality, they sometimes got tied on to other dresses.

which is what is happening here.

By the end of the century, women were beginning to either have a high square neck or to simply lace up the front of their dresses like this:

"My gown is blue, my kirtle is black with
a fancy red and gold brocade skirt."

The important thing to remember is that waistlines got lower as the population stabilized.

In menswear, however, an awful thing started.  Here's the video.

I do need to make one correction to this video.  In it I stated that hose were knit.  While that was sometimes true, men's hose was also made out of fabric which had been cut on the bias, thus allowing for the tight fit in a world without elastic or zippers or velcro.

And, that about covers it.   One more picture of a hipster-looking man from the late 1400's and then you need to take your quiz!

"I totally wear a codpiece... You've probably never
heard of them...."

Your quiz is here!

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/13-Zv1EIvnpZK6KgqvminUK0eunteyPv3CPre9g4Jt_0/viewform