Clothing Archive
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The Queen of Sicily’s Paris Shopping List, 1277
Posted on May 16, 2013 | No CommentsSarah-Grace Heller examines a letter sent by Charles I of Anjou, King of Sicily to one of his agents in Paris, where he provides a detailed order of textiles and clothing that he needed to have purchased. -
Acquiring, Flaunting and Destroying Silk In Late Anglo-Saxon England
Posted on May 4, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper will argue that vibrantly coloured silks and other elaborate textiles were ubiquitous in England in the late Anglo-Saxon period. -
What did the Renaissance man wear? Historian recreates outfit from the 16th century
Posted on May 1, 2013 | No CommentsIn the sixteenth century an accountant in the German city of Augsburg named Matthäus Schwarz was busy moving up the social circles, and he did it in part by knowing the latest fashions and dressing well. By 1541 he succeeded in becoming a member of the nobility. Now his efforts are being recreated in an experimental research project at the University of Cambridge. -
Best Clothes and Everyday Attire of Late Medieval Nuns
Posted on March 25, 2013 | No CommentsThe habit symbolises humility because it nulifies any difference of estate; it signifies the will to chastity because it disguises the feminine form of the body; and it displays outer obedience to divine com- mands by its timelessly simple cut and fabric of linen or wool. Given this sort of symbolism, fashion and nuns appear to be mutually exclusive themes. -
Fashion of Middle England and its Image in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales
Posted on February 24, 2013 | No CommentsFashion of Middle England and its Image in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Petra Štěpánková Bachelor Thesis, Masaryk University – Brno, Faculty of Education, Department of English Language and Literature, Brno (2012)... -
Life, Death, Fate and Female Embodiment: Weaving in Viking Age and Medieval Iceland
Posted on January 3, 2013 | No CommentsVideo of a lecture on medieval Icelandic textiles. -
Beyond fragments and shards: Children in medieval Bergen
Posted on December 10, 2012 | No CommentsBy analysing physical remains reflecting the games, behaviour and clothing of children (specifically toys and shoes) it has been possible to obtain new information and shed new light on the everyday life of children in medieval Bergen -
Technological Development in Late Saxon Textile Production: its relationship to an emerging market economy and changes in society
Posted on December 2, 2012 | No CommentsThe process of change from domestic textile production in early Anglo-Saxon England (5th - mid-7th century) to the more commercially based, organised industry of the late Saxon period (late 9th - 11th century) is a long and complex one. -
New research on how the Bayeux Tapestry was made
Posted on November 15, 2012 | No CommentsA University of Manchester researcher has thrown new light on how the world famous Bayeux Tapestry was made over 900 years ago. -
Female Dress in Cyprus during the Medieval Period
Posted on November 11, 2012 | No CommentsCyprus offers ample evidence for the way people dressed in medieval times. Such testimony is preserved in a variety of media: frescoes, icons, effigial slabs and manuscripts. -
Coptic Dress In Egypt: The Social Life Of Medieval Cloth
Posted on October 21, 2012 | No CommentsCoptic textiles in most collections present a very rich iconography, somewhat derived from classical traditions, which has also attracted the attention of art historians. Very little of their work, however, has made any headway in our understanding of the contemporaneous meanings of Coptic textile images and other decorations. -
Chaucer’s costume rhetoric in his portrait of the Prioress
Posted on October 10, 2012 | No CommentsNo critic has ever discussed costume signs in order to reveal to what extent the Prioress does or does not conform in her costume to the fourteenth century norm, with consideration given, simultaneously, to the historical records, literature and visual arts of the period that form and inform the signs from the many traditions Chaucer in corporates in his portrait of the Prioress. -
Cultural Identity and Dress: The Case of Late Byzantine Court Costume
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsAt the earliest stages of its development, ceremonial costume was often a more ornate and luxurious version of contemporary attire. It's use in a ritual context, however, resulted in its becoming imbued with a symbolic significance, a significance that epitomized the political and religious ideology of the state in general and the self perception of the ruling class in particular. -
Fashion and Self-Fashioning: Clothing Regulation in Renaissance Italy
Posted on October 4, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper analyzes sources produced between 1350 and 1600, ranging from sumptuary legislation to popular literature, in order to examine the social, moral and economic motivations of clothing regulation during this period -
Maculate Conceptions
Posted on September 30, 2012 | No CommentsFor the greater part of human history...disease has been understood in terms of its manifestations on the outside of the body. more than any other sign, t has been spots that have signified the onset of disease... -
Sometimes a Codpiece Is Just a Codpiece: The Meanings of Medieval Clothes
Posted on September 26, 2012 | No CommentsI am going to take you on a small tour of clothing production and of the many roles that clothing played in medieval life. -
Expressions of Power – Luxury textiles from early medieval northern Europe
Posted on September 17, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper focuses on luxury textiles from archaeological and non-archaeological contexts in north-western Europe. -
Irish Viking Age silks and their place in Hiberno-Norse society
Posted on September 17, 2012 | No CommentsThe silk remains from Viking Age Ireland open a window through which we glimpse their world in many of its different and intriguing aspects. -
Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High- and Late-Medieval England
Posted on September 2, 2012 | No CommentsMedieval European culture was obsessed with clothing. In Fashioning Change: The Trope of Clothing in High-and Late-Medieval England, Andrea Denny-Brown explores the central impact of clothing in medieval ideas about impermanence and the ethical stakes of human transience. -
“Semiotics of the Cloth”: Reading Medieval Norse Textile Traditions
Posted on July 29, 2012 | No CommentsReading textiles from medieval Norse society supplements written sources and also provides insight into the voice of the individual who created these textiles. -
Working women and guildsmen in the Flemish textile industries:Gender, labor and the European Marriage Pattern in an era of economic change
Posted on July 23, 2012 | No CommentsTraditionally the European marriage pattern(EMP) is considered as one of the key elements in the demographic history of Early Modern Europe, preparing Europe for the transition towards the Industrial Era. But recently, mediaevalists have also tried to claim its origins... -
“Well Cut through the Body:” Fitted Clothing in Twelfth·Century Europe
Posted on July 22, 2012 | No CommentsBefore we go any farther, we should investigate the very practical suggestion that tightly fitted clothing resulted from developments in "cutting and sewing technology." In the case of twelfth century Europe, however, it seems there was no real change in the tools of the trade; for example, iron shears, which might seem primitive, continued to be used by tailors into the late middle ages. -
More on medieval bras – new details on 15th century find
Posted on July 20, 2012 | No CommentsThe discovery of female undergarments from the 15th century is making international headlines. Now more details are being released by the University of Innsbruck. -
Medieval lingerie? Discovery in Austria reveals what really was worn under those tunics
Posted on July 17, 2012 | No CommentsA recent discovery in an Austrian castle has revealed that bras existed back in the 15th century. -
Sultans with Horns: The Political Significance of Headgear in the Mamluk Empire
Posted on July 15, 2012 | No CommentsThe aim of this article is to present the changing fashions of headgear of the ruling elite in the Mamluk Empire throughout their reign in Egypt and Syria, and to show how fashion and headgear functioned as markers of social differences in a medieval Islamic society
