I don’t think you all realize just quite how cold stone houses were back then, and the lack of heat/insulation meant that you wore your warmth. Wool was practical because it kept you warm even when wet. And shoes were a luxury in alot of ways back then.
Why do you think there were rag men back in the day? Using rags meant you could make felt, which made hats or other warm clothing. People re-cycled like crazy because they had nothing. It was a terrible time to live, even if you were rich.
The video shows people getting dressed, but I bet you that these women never changed out of those clothes very often at all, or unles they really needed to wash it. And back then, since there was no deodorant or toothpaste or sanitation, the world smelled like shit all the time. Except after a cleansing rain maybe.
Stone or wood, without central heating, you need lots of layers except for a few brief months in the summer.
And yes, ordinary people patched their clothes and wore them until they were completely worn out. Cloth didn’t cost money (since it was made by the household’s women) but it cost staggering amounts of time, and every scrap you could make over and above what your family needed you could sell. Most people had three sets of clothes, maximum. One for every day, one for special occasions if you could afford it, and (only if you had the means), one spare.
People did wash their clothes, and except for hermits they also washed themselves, but nowhere near as often as we do today. Hot water for washing was a luxury. Washing cloth wore it out faster, so you washed it when it was obviously dirty and not before.
For the nobility, it was quite different. See my previous comment for more on that.
Just how much of a difference the Little Ice Age made in any given place is debated. Different places experienced different changes. Besides lakebed cores or tree rings that give clues to long term trends, we can point to specific places where certain temperature sensitive crops stopped or started being grown at certain times, and we can point to things like records of sea ice (eg, Viking/Norse sailors enjoyed ice free sailing in the summer in the 1000’s in places that in the 1500’s you’d always encounter ice floes year round).
But I don’t think it made all that much of a difference in terms of how many layers people needed to keep warm.
No, if one wanted the encumbering prestige of fashion, there were certainly more elaborate clothes. This program covers an outfit circa 1434-- so a bit later than “14th century”
personally, I don’t care for the host’s fashion sense, but the sewing is fascinating.
Depends on the place and time. In general, sumptuary laws were imposed by the Church to restrain “extravagance” and promote humility, or by the State in order to prevent social mobility. In all cases they were difficult or impossible to enforce, and fashion was the same as today, in that people with low self esteem will ape the appearance of those they think better than themselves.
Men wear neckties today because the Sun King had a goiter on his neck.
IANAW, but it seems to me that it’s simpler and more comfortable than 21st century office clothing, what with underwear, bra, stockings, skirt or close-fitting trousers, buttoned blouse, jacket, heels, et al. Hairstyles may be simpler or much more complicated. Makeup requires a fair chunk of time.
When my wife wants to be comfortable in the evening, she puts on a nightgown and housecoat, resulting in an outfit not terribly different from 14th century daywear.
Sumptuary laws also drove fashion innovations. If wearing elaborately embroidered fabric was outlawed but lace (which is embroidery without a fabric base) was not specifically prohibited, suddenly everyone who could afford it started wearing lace.
Fabric was a huge part of the economy, it took a huge amount of time to separate plant or animal fibres, spin them into thread, and then weave thread into cloth. Plus dying and sewing the finished cloth. A garment contained embodied in it more labour per pound than many other things in the economy of the time. So naturally it became the focus of conspicuous consumption and showing off one’s wealth.
Absolutely. The end of the dark ages coincides with a cooler, rainier climate cycle that lasted for about 5 centuries. There are lots (too many to risk Googling!) of agricultural failures (ergot fungus) and epidemics (Bubonic plague, rickets) that blew up due to the general malnutrition and, well, misery.
Maybe this is part of the reason women joined convents. Was just reading today that abbess Hildgard von Bingen (11th C., during the above-cited Medieval Warm Period) dressed her nuns in simple white kirtles & golden fillets while they marched in procession into the chapel, singing her beautiful psychedelic music. When another abbess complained that she was cultivating vanity in the women, she replied that virgins could not be corrupted by vanity.
Yeah, those social signifiers of status were important to impractical clothing - buttons where the wearer can’t reach them (or are designed for someone facing the wearer), etc. I think about that in terms of modern clothing grooming and, for example, those signs that separate the housed from the homeless, for example.
