Period manners of dress

[Kenwrec Wulfe]

Something that I have been pondering a bit in recent months has lead me to this post.
With all of the various illustrations, paintings, line drawings and even the rare extant piece, we have the answers to a number of questions about how a certain period was in their manner of dress, or armour or whatnot.

What I am curious of is how far up and down the social ladder these depictions and examples climb, and how far up and down the age scale they climb. Comparing the young (12 yrs old) son of a wealthy merchant to a Village elder or a seasoned myrmidon to a young noble. Most of what we see in art does not depict that which was not of the wealthy. So given the value of clothing and cloth and armour, how long did it hang around as the styles changed?

Human nature is human nature and even if we use a rough comparrison to how things are today between rich and poor and young and old there is a wide range of what is worn and acceptable in society.

Did the styles of the wealthy hang around in the merchant class and then in the peasant class for a total of another 20 years? 50 years?

There would be differences in the materials that one could afford to use and quality would, of course, be different as well...but how long did a style of dress truly remain a part of medieval life? Were there ever periods of revival of a particular style? There are some styles of armour that mimicked a past style. Did the same follow for clothing? I think it has been shown fairly regularly that fashion followed armour and armour followed fashion enough that it was not an uncommon occurance....

Well...thanks for following that train of my thought....my apologies if the ride was a bumpy one.

[Mord]

I have often asked the same questions, Wulfe. Finding answers is not necessarily a simple matter.

Consider the source of your information, if you will; with representational (sometimes called pictorial) sources, I often start, once I know the provenance of the work (and so established its authenticity), by asking why was the source created and what is it trying to say.

For instance, if the work/source is a church fresco, what would the artist(s) and The Church think is important? If you find the answers to those and combine them with an understanding of local social hierarchy (sometime a very tricky business), you might discern what the fresco is trying to say and, sometimes just as important, what the work doesn't say. You also might end up with a real mess and no answers.

Mord.

[Roibeard MacNeill]

What I have found, especially from an art historical basis, is that in some instances garments worn by the peasantry were simpler versions of garments worn by nobility and higher merchant classes about a generation earlier. This can also vary greatly from region to region and country to country. Compare the clothing worn by the subjects of Pieter Brueghel's (Elder and Younger) works (late 16th century-early 17th) to garments worn by subjects 25-50 years prior and, aside from the embellishment (or lack thereof) the garments are very similar in style. When it comes to age variances we must keep in mind that children were not really looked upon as children but more like "little adults". This was true well into the Victorian Period. Garments for children were, and to an extent still are, smaller versions of what the adults wore. What must definitely be kept in mind through all of this is that exceptions existed.
From what I gather from several examples, extant garments and artistic renditions, is that the gap between what is vogue for the upper classes and when it becomes the style of the working class and poor gets shorter and shorter as time progresses until it nearly disappears and gets replaced by cultural variances. Although today there remains definite examples of economic variances between what is worn by the upper classes (exclusive name brand, haute couture) and what is worn by the lower classes (look alikes, cheaper materials)...although in several of these instances the only difference is the brand name.
Clear as mud, huh?
Bottom line is, as Sir Mord said, a good amount of the time you end up with completely convoluted information and nothing truly answered or explained.

[brewer]

What I am curious of is how far up and down the social ladder these depictions and examples climb, and how far up and down the age scale they climb. Comparing the young (12 yrs old) son of a wealthy merchant to a Village elder or a seasoned myrmidon to a young noble. Most of what we see in art does not depict that which was not of the wealthy. So given the value of clothing and cloth and armour, how long did it hang around as the styles changed?

Prepare for a huge cop-out:

It depends.

It depends on where and when. Roibeard mentioned Brueghel(s), and that's a wonderful example. If you look closely at either Brueghel's works, you'll find a mixture of social classes. On the lower classes, it looks as though they're wearing - ca. 1575 to 1625 - what they would have worn in late C15. That was an epiphany to me.

Later in C17, there was in many areas a thriving secondhand clothing trade; earlier, clothing was most often too precious to survive long enough to make it in toto to another wearer. In short, the rag-man got the remnants, not the secondhand man.

Human nature is human nature and even if we use a rough comparrison to how things are today between rich and poor and young and old there is a wide range of what is worn and acceptable in society.

This is a dangerous assumption to make. Human nature is not human nature, when social mores are viewed across a span of years. I refer you to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography, where you'll find an excellent description of historiography.

In the American 1950s, Fonzie's attire (remember Happy Days?) was socially unacceptable within the context of the greater society. In other words, the wearing of such attire was relatively rare.

Moreover, there are more factors than just societal pressure. Until C19, the raw materials of clothing were precious. This simple economic fact drove design, pressuring design to make most efficient use of materials. Importantly for this thread, the extant artwork might lead us to believe otherwise. Given that the artwork predominantly depicts upper-class (read: "wealthy") people, one must keep in mind the concept of conspicuous consumption.

So don't place any importance at all on what we think today. Our society is completely alien to ancient societies.

Did the styles of the wealthy hang around in the merchant class and then in the peasant class for a total of another 20 years? 50 years?

Again, it depends on so many factors (and locales) that it's impossible to define a discrete number.

There would be differences in the materials that one could afford to use and quality would, of course, be different as well...but how long did a style of dress truly remain a part of medieval life? Were there ever periods of revival of a particular style? There are some styles of armour that mimicked a past style. Did the same follow for clothing? I think it has been shown fairly regularly that fashion followed armour and armour followed fashion enough that it was not an uncommon occurance.

I cannot for the life of me think of a single point where styles came back into fashion.

The only thing I can say for certain is that fashion changed dynamically amongst the monied classes, and did not necessarily "trickle down" to the proletariat until well into C16. If you look at art from C15, for example, you can find depicted the proletariat at work. Their dress is significantly different from that worn by the bourgeoisie. In my opinion, it is simply because it is impossible to perform labor-intensive work in the high-fashion garments.

Sometime concurrent with the Reformation things began to change, and the lower classes began to ape their betters, fashion-wise. One can perform heavy labor in mid-C16 attire, for example, far better than one can in C15 joined hose, short doublet, and ridiculously pointy shoes.

Coincidentally, this is when we see a burgeoning secondhand clothing market.

[Alcyoneus]

The more money you had, the better materials you could afford.

Fine woven linen instead of coarse. Silk instead of cotton, for an example.

The more money you had, the better fitting it was. T tunics/St Louis tunic/chemise had wide application, and while they might be made of better materials for the rich, they were undertunics, rather than outer. I have a textbook on costume, and the author referred to these as camica, and while there are variations in how they might be made, she used the same term over a period of centuries.


From The Empress's Reconstructinghistory.com article on the St Louis tunic:

For those of you already developing a research bent (give yourself a pat on the back!), the following pattern is roughly based on the Kragelund Mose tunic, Bocksten Man's tunic, the Skjoldehamn tunic, the tunic of St. Louis, and the Pazyryk grave finds, among others. It is documentable to the 14th century but may be arguably as early as the 12th.




Pants are for peasants. At least as far as I can tell, for the late med/ren periods. I just don't see many except on base laborers.