braies question

[Mac]

About when does joined hose make its first debut?

I don't think anyone knows for sure. The short answer is probably "sooner than we were lead to believe" or "as soon as men's outer garments got short enough to warrant them".

I would be very surprised if this fellow was not wearing joined hosen



Mac

[Paladin74]

Thanks Mac...one of my peeves is the space that occurs between bunched up braies and flagging hosen.

[Mac]

It's all part of that big mysterious question of what garments are supposed to be worn together. I wish we had a better window into it. These depictions of martyred Saints can tell us something about braies, but they seldom tell us what aught to be worn with them.

The thing I am worried about right now is how an early 15th C craftsman should be dressed. The most common braies of the period are the ones I have just been working on... but they can not support hosen. The waistline is too low on the hips to do much more than hold them selves up. My working assumption involved a belt worn above the braies, but there is frankly less evidence for that than I am comfortable with.

I have started work on a style of braies with a belt in the waist casing. These will support hosen, but our examples are all a bit early for me.

Mac

[Ian L]

It's all part of that big mysterious question of what garments are supposed to be worn together.

Mac

Mac,

A question came up on one of my videos about the interaction of the arming doublet, braies, and hosen in a martial context. We know that at some point the civil doublet became the garment intended to support the hose (Charles de Blois for example). However, in a martial context it seems impractical to have a doublet suspension for hose when you're using your doublet or a lendener for the suspension of leg harness. It makes for an unnecessarily complicated cluster of points going to different things. This would especially be true of a lendener or arming girdle, because the points from the doublet and points from the lendener would have to cross over each other to get to their respective targets.

I've found that for me, the most practical solution is to use something similar to your braies w/ casing and a braies girdle to support the hose, keeping the internal layers (braies and hose) compartmentalized from the arming garment, and then using a doublet or lendener to support the leg harness. It keeps the inside layers and points inside, while keeping the outside layers (including the armor) and points outside. It just seems that in the specific context of wearing harness, having your hose point to something other than a doublet is ideal. This would then mean that for wear in harness, you would have to forego the fashionable habit of pointing hose to a doublet. Am I totally off base here? I ask because I've encountered people who insist that even in martial context, by the late 14th or early 15th century the hose should absolutely be pointed to the doublet, but in practice this just doesn't make sense to me. Especially if you need to shed layers in camp, would you really want to lose your hose because you feel like loosening up or removing your doublet? Braies or braies girdle suspension just seems to make the most sense.

[Mac]

Ian,

There's a lot to think about there, and I am glad to get a discussion going.

For the moment, though, let me offer this example of how to shed (most of) the doublet without loosing support for your hosen. Look to the guy just to the right of center. He's shrugged his doublet off his shoulders and is letting it hang from the waist. This is not the only example of this I have seen, but it's the one that I can find right now.



Mac

[Mac]

The Met offers a good blow up of that drawing, and there's a lot of good detail. http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the ... rch/459209

This guy is wearing separate hosen of the sort that has that little loop in the back. ....like these. https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/73 ... 7bb842.jpg He also has the grandest sort of grand assiette sleeves.





This guy is also wearing separate hosen, and we can see a swath of inner thigh as he stoops to his work. We can also see that I am confident is his braies in the middle. They seem to be the legless sort with a well defined pouch which, I will probably call "type 4" when I introduce my typology. Of course, none of this would be visible if he has not stripped off his outer garment.



This guy, though, I'm not so sure about. He has the butt of his hosen undone, but that point in the middle of the front of his doublet is probably for securing his codpiece. So, he may well be wearing joined hosen. If so, perhaps that explains whey he has not rolled them down... He can't.



(edited to make correction about nature of image... drawing, not print)

Mac

[Ian L]

Great images Mac, thank you! These are new to me and are wonderfully detailed for those of us who like to gaze at medieval men's underwear and think ourselves not weird for it! ha!

[Mac]

For hosen in a military context, these images from the Tourneo/bataglia by Pissonello come to mind.

Here we can see the he is wearing separate hosen. The turned down edge of his left hose is visible just past his finger tips. The right one shows as the fabric trailing from his cuisse. It looks like a bit of bare thigh showing between his braies and his left hose. Unfortunately, we can't tell much about what form the hosen took, or what held them up.



In this image, we can see what looks like the unsupported triangular butts of his separate hosen. I can almost convince myself that I can see those little loops at the apices . I suspect that these hosen are supported by a doublet.



Mac

[Mac]

Great images Mac, thank you! These are new to me and are wonderfully detailed for those of us who like to gaze at medieval men's underwear and think ourselves not weird for it! ha!

You are welcome, Ian! Don't miss my Pinterest page on medieval men's drawers. I have slogged through many St. Sebastien pages to bring you only the finest and most relevant underwear pics. https://www.pinterest.com/macs_shop/underwear/

Mac

[Mac]

We also have this image by della Francesca in which a soldier is wearing separate hosen trussed to a doublet.



He looks a lot like the guys who have stripped off their coats or giorneas to play civittino.



Mac

[John Vernier]

To clarify your question about craftsmen's clothing, are you, to put it another way, trying to figure out when the doublet with attachment points for hosen became commonplace for working class men?

Which is an excellent question. The Charles de Blois pourpoint is a very high-status garment c. 1367 (if the attribution is accurate, but other evidence of the period demonstrates that pointing hosen to a doublet was a thing by then). There is good evidence for working class men wearing hosen pointed to doublets by the 1440s (the van der Weyden drawing being one of the best). Other evidence suggests that pointing one's hosen to the braies remained a practice in the interrim, in which case a doublet serves no structural function under a tunic/coat/gown. When did the doublet become de rigeur for the working man?

I was struggling with this problem back when I wore such things, but I never came up with anything solid to narrow the date range. It's a pity the Flemish painters didn't get interested in painting lower-class people a few decades earlier. It seems like the 1430s is sort of an event horizon for so much evidence, because it "suddenly" occurred to people to record the details of everyday life.

[Mac]

That's basically the question. If the year is 1415, does Roberto the Pewterer wear a doublet under his coat/gown on a day to day basis? I am content to dress a bit beneath my station for the sake of comfort, but I don't want to loose sight of the truth.

I'm thinking that I need to spend some time looking at images of the Flagellation of Christ. Those tormentors are not very high status, and they sometimes strip down a bit. The guys who are working up a sweat by stoning St. Steven might be worth looking at as well.


Mac

[Mac]

I've started a new Pinterest page. https://www.pinterest.com/macs_shop/underpinnings/ It's devoted to the question of understanding how the various layers of clothing interact. Please feel free to recommend other relevant images that you know of.

Thanks!
Mac

[Tom B.]

Ian,

There's a lot to think about there, and I am glad to get a discussion going.

For the moment, though, let me offer this example of how to shed (most of) the doublet without loosing support for your hosen. Look to the guy just to the right of center. He's shrugged his doublet off his shoulders and is letting it hang from the waist. This is not the only example of this I have seen, but it's the one that I can find right now.


Mac

That is the same example that popped in to my mind.
I know I have seen other examples but can't find them.
The best I have come up with is this one
The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (The Altar of St. John, right panel), ca 1455. Artist: Weyden, Rogier, van der (ca. 1399-1464)

It seems I mis-remembered it since his hose are down.
It is another interesting configuration, beheading is such hard & messy work.
I like how his doublet sleeves are tied together to keep them back out of the way.

[Ernst]

Didn't know if you had this one, fresco from Chiesa di San Fiorenzo, Bastia Mondovi, reportedly from 1472.
http://www.sanfiorenzo.org/immagini/aff ... s.fior.jpg

[Mac]

That is the same example that popped in to my mind.
I know I have seen other examples but can't find them.
The best I have come up with is this one
The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (The Altar of St. John, right panel), ca 1455. Artist: Weyden, Rogier, van der (ca. 1399-1464)

It seems I mis-remembered it since his hose are down.
It is another interesting configuration, beheading is such hard & messy work.
I like how his doublet sleeves are tied together to keep them back out of the way.

That's always been one of my favorites. If you look closely, you can see that his hosen have those little loops like I mentioned earlier. That means that one must begin by folding the upper part of the hose down to the knee before rolling them. I have apparently been doing it wrong.

Now, we still don't know exactly what those loops are about. Do they just tie up in the center back, or is there a hook there to serve as a convenient quick release.... and that warrants special treatment of the holes?

Mac

Mac

[Mac]

Didn't know if you had this one, fresco from Chiesa di San Fiorenzo, Bastia Mondovi, reportedly from 1472.
http://www.sanfiorenzo.org/immagini/aff ... s.fior.jpg

Thanks, Ernst! A detail of that one is in my underwear page. I'll pin the whole thing directly.



Mac

[Mac]

The thing I think I am seeing from the turn of the 14/15 C is that even guys who are pretty far down the social scale are wearing hosen that are intended to cover their butts. We mostly notice this when they have undone the butt part and the fabric hangs loosely behind.









In the cases of higher class guys, It's clear that they are holding them up by with a doublet of some other sort of garment.







It's clear that these hosen are a different sort of thing than the hosen of the early 14th C as per the Herjolfsnes and Boksten finds. Those hosen came to a point in front, or over the hip, and are only held up in one location.








By contrast, butt-covering-split-hosen (BCSH) need support in back as well. Are these lower class guys and laborers wearing doublets? In some cases they seem to be too lightly dressed to imagine that they are.

...This garment looks too loose to be expected to support hosen.


...Here, the bodice looks structured enough, but the skirts are very loose. Tying hosen to them would make them hang badly.


So... Are the hose held up some other way. Here are a couple of examples where the hosen are clearly held up by a belt.....

....No doubt about it here.


...This guy is later, and the issue is complicated by the Biblical nature of the scene, but it's certainly a belt.


..This guy is from the middle of the 14th C., and his hosen are probably of the earlier form. I can't tell if I am seeing a belt or not.


Here is a tantalizing image of what appear to be extremely ill fitted BCSH trussed up to braies.



This brings us to another issue. If one is to try to support his hosen by tying them to his braies, the waistline of the braies must be up at the "blue jeans waist" and not at the "hiphugger waist". This is at odds with what we are seeing in the majority of underwear images from the turn of the Century. It also may require that the braies are supported by a belt in the casing, rather than a drawstring. Again, this feature seems to be pretty much gone by then.

Thoughts?

Mac

[Mac]

About when does joined hose make its first debut?

I don't think anyone knows for sure. The short answer is probably "sooner than we were lead to believe" or "as soon as men's outer garments got short enough to warrant them".

I would be very surprised if this fellow was not wearing joined hosen



Mac

I just ran across this blog post by Charlot J. http://wp.bymymeasure.com/803/split-and ... th-century The complaint by Chaucer's Parson is quite relevant to this issue. It's difficult to draw any other conclusion than that the Fashionistas of his day were wearing joined hosen with some sort of codpiece.

Mac

[Mac]

Work continues at the "Braies Research Institute of Jeffersonville". Today, I turned my attention to the Lengburg pants. They are too late form me, but I felt as though I needed to come to a better understanding of them. In particular, the part where they have no shaping or tailoring of any sort to form the pouch.

Well, there's nothin' to it but to do it.



I think I came pretty close. This is my second try. The first was to get a sense of scale, and then I worked toward capturing the proportions. Note; the adjuster on the (wearer's) left front corner. The real one appears to have this as well. This adjuster is critical for "balancing" the the front and back. Once the garment fits, the end of the tape can be cut off like on the real one.

The braies fit surprisingly well, but in a very low slung way that feels like it's going to slide off the butt. That's how they are in the pics, and I guess it just takes a bit of getting used to . I'm not sure I can post the pictures of me wearing this thing. Suffice to say I look like an older and fatter Albrecht D., with a very authentic case of plumber's-crack.



If the strings are pulled up farther up onto the hips, things feel more secure, but one seldom sees them that way in art.

Mac

[Mac]

So....

I'm reopening this thread (again) because I have been working (again) on braies.

The first thing I'd like to post is the most recent version of what I am calling "Type I" braies. These are the long braies of the 13 and early 14th centuries. Just to put us all on the same page here, I am releasing my Type I Braies page into the wild. Id had previously been a secrete board. I will be revealing the other "Braies Type" boards soon, but even then, there will certainly be some shuffling of the contents as I sort the types out.

I had not made any braies of this type until last week, and this is the fourth attempt. I am reasonably satisfied that it fits more or less like the examples in the period images. Allowing for the fact that I am using muslin rather than linen, and am presenting a physical object, rather than an artists idealized gestalt, I think the wrinkles and lines pretty show that I am on the right track.





Since I was taking these pics by myself, the gathers in the belt casing have not been carefully distributed in the back.

Here is what they look like with the legs tied up below the knees.



And, here is what we get when I tie the legs up the the belt like the guys in the Maciejowski Bible.





Mac

[Zanetto]

Mac,
How wide are these braies when laid out flat? They appear to be pretty wide at the waist.

Rob

[Mac]

Mac,
How wide are these braies when laid out flat? They appear to be pretty wide at the waist.

Rob

I'd have to measure, but it's approximately 66 inches. There are 6 openings in the casing at a nominal 11" spacing.

The braies don't exactly lay out flat. This is one of the places where I departed from the received wisdom, and used curved crotch seams. You can see them in the pics, but I will present more information on the cut later.

Mac

[Mac]

Rob,

The waist is made up of the narrow end of two leg panels, plus twice the width of the crotch panel. Each of those is 17", as cut. They each loose 5/8" at both sides for the seams. That makes the effective width of each of them 15 3/4". Thus, the whole waist is something like 63". That's more or less consistent with what I get when stretch it out against a yard stick.

Mac

[Mac]

It turns out that you can sort of lay it out flat a couple of ways if you are willing to fold things a bit.

This way it looks a lot like those rude pewter badges.




It also gives the 1:2:1 ratio of leg to crotch to leg that we see in this marginalium of a short legged version of these braies. None of this is coincidence. I have been working under the presumption that these cartoony representations of unoccupied braies must have validity to properly resonate with their intended audiences.




By unfolding one of the legs, you can see the shape of the crotch seam.




Here, you can see that it won't really lay out flat without some folding.



My first attempt used straight seams to join the leg to the crotch. This produced the classic inverted "U" shape that features in some reconstructions. It was just a sort of "T-tunic" for the bum. While it was strictly speaking "wearable", it was not comfortable, and the wrinkles were not like the ones in period images. If anyone is interested, I can get pics of that one for comparison.

Mac

[Mac]

Here is a detail from my notebook, showing the cutting diagram for the most recent Type I reconstruction.



--The seam allowance is 5/8".
--The belt slots are 1 1/2" tall.
--The casing is cut in one with the panels, and is turned to the outside.
--The leg hems were not measured out, but just turned as I sewed on the machine. They probably are between 1/2" and 5/8".
--The inseams were sewn closed for about 12".

Mac

[LeoVIIIIV]

Looks great Mac. Would like to see the comparison of the straight seamed version for comparison if you wouldn't mind.
What made the straight seamed version uncomfortable?
Thanks

[Mac]

Looks great Mac.

Thanks!

Would like to see the comparison of the straight seamed version for comparison if you wouldn't mind.
What made the straight seamed version uncomfortable?
Thanks

I managed to get a couple of photos before my camera batteries went flat.

This is the MK1.0. It's cut with straight seams. The wrinkle pattern is not bad in general, but those diagonal lines outlining the crotch don't look right. It's just not producing that "crotch parachute" look in the front. That might be improved by making the fall longer, but I don't think it will do away with the diagonals.





The back looks OK when I just stand there, but...



... a problem arises as soon as a leg is brought forward. The straight seam suddenly gets tight and presses uncomfortably into the buttock. We can also see here how that tension tends to rotate the inseam around to the back. This makes these braies uncomfortable to even walk in, let alone to bend over in.




I got immediate improvement as soon as I introduced the curved crotch seam. That got better and better as I took deeper cuts. The curved seam does several things...

--It makes the seam stretchier
--It makes for a longer seam, which will accommodate a bigger crotch panel.
--It introduces a saddle shape. (I have taken against the word "anticlastic")
--It takes the seam off the bulgiest part of the butt.
--It lets the inseam sag in a way that suggests what the contemporary artists are seeing.

Now.. It might be possible to improve the situation in the Mk1 by deepening the fall, like I suggested above. I suspect, though, that that will just make the tight-seam-thing even worse, and I'm not inclined to pursue it. If anyone else wants to try that, I look forward to seeing the results. The more people we can get working on these problems the more likely we are to find the answers.


Mac

[Mac]

While we are letting the TypeI braies percolate a bit, lets talk about the ones I am designating asType II. These are the braies of the mid to late 14th C. They were probably used by less fashionable folk well into the first quarter of the 15th.

I worked on these a bit back in '16, but did not like the results. A couple of weeks ago, I started over with a different idea about patterning. I used cardboard to make up a sort of "chap" to simulate one of the leg panels. This works a lot better than using patterning paper, because simply poked me in the places I needed to cut away, rather than tearing there. Also, of course, I'm an armorer... and this was just like a closed cuisse.

The pattern I came up with produced this pair. I have one leg folded up like I did with the Type I, and the other one is laid out so you can see the cut.



Here is what it look like on me.





They fit OK, but there are a couple of places I want to change.

These wrinkles are not characteristic of the period images. They can removed by pulling the fabric this way.



These wrinkles can probably not be eliminated entirely, but they can be minimized by pulling the fabric up.



In fact, I'd like the back to come up higher in general, to get the belt up where it will bear weight better. The problem is that the crotch is just not deep enough to allow that. I could add material to the upper back, but I think I will do better to take material away from the crotch.



The places in front and back where the crotch starts to bind are here... and here.



This is the leg pattern for the MK3.0. The places I have marked are where I need to remove material for MK3.1



I've traced the old pattern out on fresh paper, and marked the areas I am going to change. It's mostly deepening the crotch, but I have also lowered the upper front a bit. This is because I think that's more or less in the right place already, and I want it to stay there as everything else comes up higher. The other thing I have done is to remove some width at the top of the pouch to try to eliminate those diagonal wrinkles.



I'll start cutting and sewing tonight, but probably won't have anything to show till tomorrow afternoon.

Mac

[Mac]

I got the revised Type II sewn up this afternoon. There was some improvement of the points I was addressing, but not as much as I had hoped. The new pair is a bit higher in back, and that makes the belt feel more secure, but I still have wrinkles to attend to. I'm going to apply some more of the same changes and see if I can get something I like better.

Mac

[Mac]

I made some more changes, and sewed another prototype of the Type II braies today.

Here is a pic of the most recent pattern, over the top of the one I used to make the one I showed the other day. The main difference is to have cut away about an inch of material around the crotch seam.



This has reduced, but not entirely eliminated the wrinkles I was trying to get rid of. The new braies are a bit looser in the crotch, and have a slightly greater range of comfortable motion.



The other change I made was to use shaped pieces for the casings, rather than straight ones. These are fussier to cut, but easier to pin and sew into place.

This is what all of the pattern pieces look like.



I'm reasonably satisfied with the Type II... at least for the moment. I'm going to work on another type and let it sit for a while.

Mac

[Mac]

I've just made the Type III board public, and I invite comments. It may be the case that what I have there is really more than one construction. It's really difficult to know, since the artists almost never give us any clues about seams.

In the past, I have reconstructed these as a two piece garment with side seams and a seam across the crotch. Now, I see that some of them resemble the Type II, except that they have a drawstring instead of a belt. This is very reasonable. As the doublet (or other garment) takes over the responsibility of supporting the hosen, the need for a belt goes away. A drawstring is more convenient, since is can be left in the braies when they are washed. By contrast, a belt must be removed and replaced.

If some of these braies resemble the Type II, and my reconstruction of that type is right, then some of these must be constructed along the same lines. On the other hand, if my earlier reconstructions of the Type IIIs has any validity, then there are at least tow ways to make garments which I am assigning to the same type. This upsets my inner taxonomist.

Mac

[Mac]

I am releasing all of the secrete boards of my typology into the wild so that we can discuss them.

Click here for the Type I board.


Click here for theType II board.



Click here for theType III board.


Click here for theType IV board.



Click here for theType V board.


Click here for theType VI board.


Mac

[Mac]

Today, I'd like to talk about the work on Type IV braies that happened a couple of weeks ago.

The thing I am calling Type IV existed it two forms.

The first, had legs...





...and the second did not.




Both have a lens shaped crotch panel; and luckily for us, some artists have even shown us the seam lines. The tell tales of this type are the horizontal wrinkles in the hips that terminate against a smooth "package". There are no gathers or puckers associated with the drawstring.

My first several attempts at the type with legs were pretty unfruitful. Then, I tried using cardboard to help with the patterning of the leg panels. That yielded a wearable pair that more or less works.



I intend to come back to this later and make some changes, but I thought I'd work on the legless version while I contemplated what to do.

The pattern looks like this.



I did not have much luck with the legless version until I remembered some correspondence I had with John Vernier back in '07. John had sent me a sketch of a pattern he had been working on some years earlier.

After scratching my head a bit, I understood that he intended for the lower points A and B to be joined in a sort of vestigial leg.



That was nothing like what I expected, but I thought I'd give it a try anyway. I scaled the drawing up by 3, because that got me about the right waist measurement, and made one up. I was surprised and delighted to find that the prototype more or less worked! I went on to make a couple of small changes, and ended up with a thing that worked pretty well. The moral of the story is that John V is a genius.

Here is my version of John's pattern for legless Type IV braies....



...and the prototype.



I hope to incorporate some of John's insights into my next version of the legged type. That will be a bit later.

The Type IV is clearly a continuation of an earlier idea about how to make braies. The rectangular crotch panel of the Types I and II give way to the shaped panel of these much more closely fitted garments.

This Type is probably more common than we can tell. I have recently moved a couple of images from other boards to the Type IV board because they have the right wrinkle patterns, even if the seams are not visible.

Mac

[Sean Powell]

It turns out that you can sort of lay it out flat a couple of ways if you are willing to fold things a bit.

This way it looks a lot like those rude pewter badges.



Mac

Potentially dumb question but the artist has gone through the trouble of depicting folds in the center region but a diagonal cross-hatching in the leg region. We know that the hosen were bias-cut. Is there any chance that the artist is depicting what the customer likely already knows: that the braise leg should ALSO be bias cut?

And would that change the way the material wrinkles or the seems pucker into the ass cheeks?

Sean