See how well you know fashion history!
The Experience of Growing Up in Medieval Society
July 10, 2015 By
This session (#508) was one of several at Leeds devoted to exploring childhood in the Middle Ages. Our presenters talked about the stereotypes of adolescence, and what the coroner’s rolls revealed about the deaths (and lives) of medieval children.
10 Fun Fashion Facts from the Middle Ages
June 28, 2015 By
Here are ten fascinating fashion facts for your enjoyment (I’ve saved my favourites for last).
Fashion Old and New: Weaving and Tailoring in the Early Medieval and Early Modern Period
June 9, 2015 By
Fashion fan? Interested in medieval and early modern textiles? Then this was your session. 2 papers from opposite ends of the spectrum: Early Medieval weaving and Early Modern Tailoring.
Dyes, Diets and Deodorants: Venetian Beauty Secrets Revealed
June 8, 2015 By
If you think it’s hard to keep up a beauty regime now, wait until you see what lengths the Venetians went to in order to be beautiful!
A Young Man’s Progress – The First Book of Fashion
April 5, 2015 By
A Young Man’s Progress is art work by London photographer Maisie Broadhead and fashion designer Isabella Newell in collaboration with Cambridge cultural historian Ulinka Rublack.
Move over Milan! Late Medieval and Renaissance Fashion in Venice
January 3, 2015 By
Milan may be Italy’s current fashion capital, but Venice had an important role to play in the development of the Italian fashion and textile industry since the late middle ages and renaissance period.
The Fashion Police in 16th-century Italy
October 2, 2014 By
Patrolling the streets and squares of the bustling city as arbiters of the level of ostentation that was deemed appropriate, the sumptuary magistrates were quite simply the Fashion Police.
Medieval Fashion Trends
July 6, 2014 By
How did fashion change during the Middle Ages? Using images from medieval manuscripts, we can track some of the changes in fashion over the centuries. The styles of dress and clothing would see new trends emerge, ranging from long-toed shoes to plunging necklines.
Dutch medieval bone and antler combs
March 18, 2014 By
Bone and antler combs are common finds in medieval northern europe. Two major types occur in the netherlands: the composite comb, usually made of antler, and the longbone comb.
Estreitement bende: Marie de France’s Guigemar and the erotics of tight dress
January 8, 2014 By
This article examines the change in women’s fashion that occurred during the 12th century. Garments went from loose and flowing to tightly fitted, featuring belts and laces. The author examines this cultural change through the romance stories complied in the “Lais” of Marie de France, specifically one featuring the character of Guigemar.
How to pleat a shirt in the 15th century
January 4, 2014 By
Based on the shirt fragments from the 15th century found at Lengberg Castle in East-Tyrol this paper describes the methods with which these shirts have been pleated, what type of stiches have been used for sewing and how the trimming strips were fashioned. Seventeen textile fragments could be identified as parts of shirts, fourteen of which feature either partially or totally pleated areas. Two sleeves with textile buttons and button holes, two sleeves with button holes, one sleeve with a textile button, one neckline and five fragments being either sleeve or collar are pleated on their entire width. One shirt each is pleated partially on the front, one of them with a preserved textile button. One sleeveless shirt is pleated at the shoulder.
‘Grandissima Gratia’: The Power of Italian Renaissance Shoes as Intimate Wear
December 22, 2013 By
In the Renaissance fashion system gender identification and expressions of power through shoes were instead primarily based on varying degrees of their invisibility.
Art on the edge: hair and hands in Renaissance Italy
December 12, 2013 By
This paper argues that items designed for the bodily extremities such as hair-coverings, hats, fans and other accessories were valued for the ease with which they could be changed and adapted to express a range of different meanings: political, social and individual.
Two dozen and more Silkwomen of Fifteenth-Century London
October 24, 2013 By
This article attempts to record systematically all the silkwomen of London who were daughters or wives of London mercers between 1400 and 1499.
Medieval Shoes
October 16, 2013 By
Who set the trends for medieval shoe styles – politics, power, economics and climate.
Transvestite Knights: Men and Women Cross-dressing in Medieval Literature
September 29, 2013 By
In this thesis, I will look at mainly French and German texts from the 12th to the 15th centuries which deal with the subject of cross-dressers in the decidedly masculine domain of the knight. There are many tales of cross-dressing, particularly of women, but the concept of men dressing as women while jousting, and women dressing as knights, brings up several questions about the clothes, what it meant to be male and female, and how cross-dressing could be viewed on the tournament field.
Make-Up as Understructure: Renaissance Cosmetics as Renaissance Self-Fashioning
August 1, 2013 By
Cosmetics – like fashion in general – clearly seem to have experienced a notable expansion in their use toward the end of the medieval period.
The Queen of Sicily’s Paris Shopping List, 1277
May 16, 2013 By
Sarah-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.
What did the Renaissance man wear? Historian recreates outfit from the 16th century
May 1, 2013 By
In 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
March 25, 2013 By
The 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
February 24, 2013 By
Fashion 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) Abstract This thesis deals with the main features of fashion in medieval England and focuses particularly on the second half of the fourteenth century. It […]
Scandinavian late Viking Age art styles as a part of the visual display of warriors in 11th-century Estonia
February 24, 2013 By
Artefacts decorated in Scandinavian Late Viking Age art styles have been known for a long time in the Estonian archaeological material, and were first published as early as 1914 by Max Ebert; a more comprehensive overview was given in 1929 by Birger Nerman. The finds include silver-plated and sometimes partially gilded weapons, as well as belt and scabbard fittings, plaques, and only a few pieces of jewellery.
Coptic Dress In Egypt: The Social Life Of Medieval Cloth
October 21, 2012 By
Coptic 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
October 10, 2012 By
No 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.
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