Ask Another Laurel - How Not To Be Noticed. Part 2

Ask Another Laurel - How Not To Be Noticed.

by Caleb Reynolds

Part 2 - "People will stare. Make it worth their while."

The following was written for the AEthelmearc Gazette

This is part two of our thought exercise on how far back in time we could go and not be seen as an outsider. Our goal is to travel to a time and place and be able to wander around and ask questions without being picked out as a stranger.

First of all, I recently learned that the word "hello" as a greeting only dates back to 1824. It's a variation of the English word "hullo" which was used as a term of surprise. As in, "Hullo, what's this in my oatmeal?" Its transmorgromfication into a greeting might have based in part with the Spanish word "holla", which, at the time, was used as a cry for attention, as in "Holla! I'm trapped in the well! Lassie, can you hear me?" The OED also says that it might be derived from the German "holon", which was used like "Come here", often used to hail a ferryman, and then later a cab. So, if our plan was to show up at someone's door in the 15th Century and say, "Hello, may I look at your kitchen, please?", whomever would open the door would know, right from the first word, that we would be a weirdo stranger and that they should slam the door shut.

That being said, let us move on to part two of this exercise: what to wear. Because of the complexity of clothing, I will be splitting this portion into two parts (and even then I won't be able to cover everything).

I had mentioned towards the end of part one that we could dress up as a monk and hope that people will accept us and answer our weirdo questions. But, what type of monk? There were a variety and were color coated like the Power Rangers. Benedictines wore all black. Cistercian and Carthusian monks wore white; Franciscans, brown; Dominicans, black over white; and Carmelites, white over brown. However, unlike the Power Rangers, they didn't join their zoids together to form a giant robot to fight kaijus. Monks had territories and sometimes fought with one another for control of those territories. To start with, monk on monk violence is a lengthily subject in and of itself, so I will only touch on some of the highlights (or low lights, since monks were supposed to swear oaths to be kind and peaceful). 

Figure 1

There are plenty of records that the various orders did not cooperate with one another. Money and property were at stake and even though individual monks took oaths of poverty, abbeys and monasteries did not. At one end of the spectrum, there was smack talking. The 12th Century, Benedictine Abbot of Cluny, Peter the Venerable, said that the black of his Order's habits represented humility and the white of the competing Cistercian monks symbolized pride. His rival abbot, Bernard of Clairvaux, responded by writing that white stood for purity and virtue and black symbolized death and sin. 

On the other end there was the violence. In 1088, Benedictine and Franciscan monks got into a knock-down, drag-out, street fight in York over the ownership of certain churches. In 1422, during the funeral procession of France's Charles VI, a fight broke our between the monks of St. Dennis Abbey and the guild of salt-weighers over which group was to keep the funeral robes of the corpse. In the mid-13th Century, Franciscan monks led violent attacks on the Bury St. Edmunds Abbey, even laying siege to it. Bury St. Edmunds, the richest Benedictine abbey in Western Europe, was the hotbed of decades of violence, not only to other Orders, but to the citizens of the neighboring lands. In 1327, for instance, a group of monks, wearing armor under their habits, entered a local church and took several people hostage in response to the citizens of the town of Bury wanting greater self rule and a share of the profits the abbey was making off of the locals. The town retaliated by burning down part of the abbey. Bury St. Edmunds was not a unique abbey in Medieval Europe: hundreds of surviving court cases can be read relating to the abuses abbeys and monasteries brought to court. Many of them between the abbeys of the various Orders. The Cistercians had a reputation of chasing away entire villages, in out of the way locations, tearing down all of the houses and barns, and then building their own monastery before any authorities could show up. Then they would claim to have always been there. So, it might not be a good idea to pretend to be a monk. Violent monks could be an article all on it's own. Heck, the history of Bury St. Edmunds could be an entire book.

Figure 2

We could pretend to be a friar. No. That might be a bad idea as friars were not universally loved. In fact, friars had a well earned reputation of being philandering con men and there was so much violence against friars that the word "antifraternalism" was invented to describe the violence. But friars deserve their own article.

However disliked monks were, they were part and parcel of Medieval life. One might think that it would be easy to get a modern habit, it's not like monk's habits have changed any in the last thousand years, right? 

Right?

They have. 

Modern habits (by which I mean the entire outfit: cowl, frock, and scapular) are either made of raw cotton or processed wool. In the middle ages, they were made from coarsely woven wool; meant to be scratchy and uncomfortable, although there are plenty of references to monks wearing fine linen under tunics to protect their delicate skins from the itchy wool. Modern habits also have pockets, since the modern world requires small things that have to be carried, such as car keys. Prior to around 1950, habits did not have pockets as the Rule of St. Benedict predated pockets in clothing. The church resisted allowing pockets to be added to habits after they became common in lay clothing, because monks, friars, and nuns (oh my) were not supposed to own anything. Items could be carried in a bag or satchel so that it, and its contents, could be handed off to someone else and not kept "secreted in one's clothing". In 2022, Elisabetta Bianchetti (of Manifatture Mario Bianchetti) redesigned the habits of the Franciscan friars of the Third Order Regular and added shirt pockets and, *gasp* sown-in-pleats.

As unpopular as monks and friars have been in various times and places, nuns appeared to have been better behaved and more respected by the general community. Nuns were better known for breaking their vows of chastity than for getting into fist fights; although there are exceptions, but that will have to wait for its own article, as nuns did not travel outside of their nunneries and pirories as often as did monks. However nuns' habits were also color coated, in similar fashion to monk's habits, but nuns deserve their own article.

What about normal people? Do we really know what people wore on a daily basis? I mean, really wore while out on the streets. We have plenty of paintings of people wearing fancy clothes, and plenty of paintings of normal people wearing normal clothing, particularly in very late period. Can we trust what ended up in a painting, woodcut, or a manuscript image? Look at the 11th Century: T-tunic or dress, hood and mantle, and a coif to cover one's hair. Simple for an average person. Right? I wear such outfits all of the time. How can one mess that up? Possibly very easy.

Figure 3

Let's look at a "recent" movie that went above and beyond showing how difficult it would be to visually fit in when you don't understand the little details. Let's look at the end of "Captain America: The First Avenger". If you haven't seen the movie, let me describe the scene in question. Steve Rogers, Captain America, wakes up in a hospital recovery room. The sound of a baseball game is playing in the background. He sits up and a female, army nurse enters the room and greets him. Steve figures out that something is wrong and wants to know exactly where he is. He says that the ball game was a recording because he was there at the game, but that is only part of story. 

Whoever did the costuming for this scene should have won an Oscar for the work put into making the nurse look almost correct. Captain America, who had been frozen in ice since WWII, would have seen that the woman before him wasn't an army nurse, or a WAAC, since, to him, he would have been around them very recently. This is a list of what the costuming people put together that only a handful of viewers would have noticed in the 55 seconds it was on the screen: Her hair was not pinned up according to regulations. She was not wearing any rank or insignia. Her skirt is the wrong color for the summer weight uniform. Her tie is not only the wrong color, but it is a man's tie and isn't tucked into the shirt. The shirt also is missing both breast pockets, if she were an army nurse (WACC uniform blouses did not have shirt pockets but were cut differently, did not have epaulets, and had a different collar and neck band thingy). She is wearing makeup, but it's not the same makeup that would have been worn in the 1940s. We don't get a clear shot of her legs or shoes, but I'm willing to bet a dollar that the costuming people gave her modern stockings and shoes. There are blog posts of people who do costuming for a living who talked about the waist band of the skirt was wrong, as were the cuffs on the shirt sleeves. Others point out that she was wearing the wrong type of bra, which would have given her a different.... look, which of course Captain America would have been too much of a gentleman to mention. I even read one post that went on about the knot used on the actress's tie not being the regulation knot for an army nurse of the Second World War.

Figure 4

I know Captain America is fiction, but it was such a good example on how the little details matter. If we were jump into our time machine and visit the 1940s, would we be able to do a better job of wearing the correct clothes so that we don't stick out like a sore thumb? We wouldn't want to be arrested as a spy because we weren't wearing the correct hat to go with our suit. What do we really know bout how clothes were worn during the middle ages? We have manuscript images and paintings; we even have surviving examples of complete outfits, but do we really know all of the little details that the average person would have grown up knowing. 

Do you wear a belt high on the belly or low on the hips? Do you fluff out the tunic over the belt all the way around the waist or would you pull it tight across the belly and tuck it behind you? Or vice versa? If you wear a hood, when would you pull it back off of your head? Before you walk into a building or after you step through the door? Or would you leave your head covered? When do you tip or remove your hat? Within speaking distance or within eyesight? Is it acceptable to adjust your clothing in the middle of the street or would you wait until you are out of sight before tucking and whatever? What would be an acceptable thing to scrape the muck off of your shoes? A door step? The side of a building? We have manuscript images of men with a particular style of dagger, you know which style I'm avoiding the name of, stuck in the front of one's belt: was that common, or rare? Was the image showing normal behavior or rude behavior, or were those images satire? What size of dagger would be seen as inappropriate? Could a woman wear a similar style dagger or would she have to stick to a different style of knife? And that's just the 11th Century? As styles changed to hoopalons, doublets, and bell-shaped dresses, so did the social norms. What size floppy sleeve was considered class appropriate? How big of a hat was considered socially acceptable? When does a codpiece become outright mockery? 

Then there is the question of class separation. We do have images of "peasants" with rolled down chausses working in the fields. The upper classes also wore chausses in the early middle ages, but was it socially acceptable for them to also roll them down and expose some knee? This is an important question as this level of class distinction was the norm in much later times. Read any of the literature of the 19th Century and you will find that descriptions of the clothing of the upper and lower classes are in sharp contrast. Working class people are described as wearing a shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the upper classes never leaving the house without shirt, tie or cravat, waistcoat, jacket, over coat and hat. Photographs from the later half of the 19th Century show this; look at random pictures of street scenes and you will be able to pick out the nobs from the working class stiffs. There was a character in one of Dickens' novels, might have been "Hard Times", who is given the opportunity for social advancement to work as an office clerk, but has to scrimp and borrow money to buy the necessary clothing required to work in an office (a vest, coat, proper pants, tie, hat).

I found some wonderful rabbit holes about Japanese clothing, which I will leave to others to run down. The first is that kimonos were put together differently for samurai than for other people. This was due to the greater mobility needed to wield a sword. The other was that hakama, the pants that are worn over kimonos, were also designed differently for the different classes, with the number of pleats being designated for each class. Three pleats were the standard for the farming classes (nobakama). They were also cut tighter to the body, saving fabric, and with shorter legs to better avoid mud and other things while working. Normal hakama were made with five pleats and were worn by the middle classes, merchants and craftspeople. Umanori hakama were reserved for the warrior classes, and they had seven pleats, set in an asymmetric pattern and representing the seven virtues of Bushido. There are other styles of hakama, which I won't get into, as well as the style of belt, or obi, which could be an article all on it's own. Even something as simple as a kimono and hakama can have reams of subtle details that we, who did not grow up surround by them, would not be able to easily pick up.

The scene in "Pride and Prejudice" where Fitzwilliam Darcy strips down to his shirt on a hot, summer day was scandalous when the book was published in 1813. The upper classes simply did not do that in public. In fact, it was almost a meme in that the upper classes would endure hot, uncomfortable, layers of clothing to set themselves apart from the lower classes. Read anything about the dress requirements of military officers up through WWII, particularly from British and French sources: "Dignity in dress; dignity in rank." Upper class women, in more recent time periods, were required to wear even more uncomfortable layers than their male counterparts: Crinoline, corsets, bustles, under dress, over dress, shawls, all pleated, buttoned, pinned, and laced according to the fashion of the time. Go back a few more centuries and we see farthingales and doublets, each might have detachable sleeves, which would have to be coordinated and arraigned just so. To appear in public with drooping sleeves, or an improperly laced dress, or (gasp), an off-centered ruff, would tell the world that no matter how rich you appear to be, you either can't afford any servants to help you dress, or the ones you have are incompetent and no one in your household respects you enough to make sure that you are dressed properly. (Ask me how often my friends have to re-center my coronet). 

A baker can be excused of walking through the street with a single tunic, and with their sleeves rolled up and their chausses rolled down. They are working, and it's hot in the bakery. Farm workers stripped to the waist as they rushed to get the harvest in was such a common sight that that image became a manuscript meme; it was part and parcel of farm life. Women tucking their skirts into their belts as they clean or do laundry was accepted for the lower classes, although frowned upon if too much leg was exposed (see saucy wench characters at any renaissance faire). But would that sort of behavior be acceptable from the upper classes? The poor might not care, but if you were trying to pass yourself off as a lord or lady, and you unbuttoned your cotehardie because you were getting a bit warm, would the nobs you were trying to fit in with stare at you and wonder what your problem was? The higher up the social ladder you went, the more layers of clothing, and social norms, there were to separate the classes. Remember, the upper classes had entire outfits to wear while they mulled over what clothing to wear for the day. Lucy Worsley did a documentary on the history of upper class clothing for the BBC, a number of years ago. In the segment she did about the Regency Period, she was dressed to the nines in the most fashionable of men's clothing of the time, which included not one, but two cravats. When she complained that she could barely move her head, she was told something along the lines of "that's the price of being rich."

What about colors? We know from manuscript images and from accounts of the production and sale of dyes that the middle ages were a lot brighter and more colorful than depicted in movies and TV shows. But what colors would you wear? What colors would let you blend in and which ones will make you stand out like a sore thumb. Certainly the people at the bottom of the food chain would only have one or two sets of clothes to wear, so having access to a rainbow of garb would out of the reach of most people. But, anyone can decorate their plain garb with some brightly colored ribbons. But, again, which colors. Wearing the wrong colors in Constantinople, particularly around the hippodrome, could get you killed. Wearing the colors of some household's rival could get you accosted in the streets. Were some colors restricted by the season or by the upper classes? Were there bad color combinations, bad enough that you would stand out in a crowd? Mixing stripes and plaids? Would wearing plaid to the court of Edward Longshanks be a bad thing? Were plaids a distinctly Scottish thing in the late 13th century? (BTW: the whole story of clad plaids can be an article by itself, if anyone wants a research topic.) Can anyone reading this article explain to me why we shouldn't wear white after Labor Day?

I have recently stumbled into an interesting rabbit hole about black silk. In the early 16th Century, certain cities in Italy had sumptuary laws restricting the wearing of silk that had been dyed bright colors, indeed, any color other than black. "In order to preserve the distance between the nobility and the nouveaux riches, who could not afford to dress in silk, one of the the recurrent edicts prohibited non-aristocrats from wearing silk of any color except black. Production of dark fabrics must have increased, and the search for quality been stimulated by the demands of this wealthy clientele. The new fabrics that arrived on the market attracted the aristocracy North of the Alps by their originality; these members of the nobility probably knew nothing of the discriminatory significance that black fabrics had acquired in the country of origin." (Piponnier and Mane, "Dress In The Middle Ages")

Visitors to cities such as Genoa, Venice, and Florence, would have seen more wealthy people wearing black silk than colored silk and assumed that the desired fashion was black silk. This was at the same time that a new dye was created that produced a deep, rich, long lasting black. This started a major export trade of both the new dye, and pre-dyed silk, North to the rest of Europe. The rich enjoyed their new black silk, and the social ranks below them started to adopt black wool clothing in a age-old story of trying to copy one's superiors. The taste of black clothing (Europe's second Goth age) can be see throughout Europe for the next century, but was adopted most of all in Spain and in the Netherlands. Look through the works of Rembrandt. Most of the portraits he made of the wealthy Dutch elites show richly patterned, black clothing with tasteful white lace. Dutch wealth wasn't shown as shiny or colorful jewelry, but in the quality of the fabric and lace. The newly unified Spain also adopted the new dark fashion, only they used the starkness of the black silk and wool as a backdrop to highlight the gold, silver, and gems that they adorned themselves with. Black became the de facto uniform color for household servants, in the 19th Century, because of new, cheap, artificial dyes, but in the SCA time period, black was the color of wealth. 

 

Most people didn't have a choice when it came to color: you wore whatever colors you could afford or were given to you. Fabric was expensive and most of the population of Europe didn't have enough money to own an entire closet of clothing. Perhaps a change or two of under garments, a tunic, hood and hose. Maybe a nice tunic or dress for church that was gifted to them by the local noble or through church alms. Medieval Europe didn't have any JoAnne Fabrics where anyone could walk in and buy as much cheap blizzard-fleece fabric as one could ask for. (What? Too soon?) Fabric, and the time to turn it into clothing, was a luxury of sorts. We see employment records straight through to the Edwardian era where annual wages included a "new suit" or the like. This wasn't the uniform or livery required for an apprentice or for a household servant; no, this was a new outfit that that person could wear on their days off. You didn't want the world to know that you can't take care of your servants; making sure that they had nice clothes that they could wear out in the world showed off how wealthy and generous you were; that you don't employ riff raff, only the best people.

Figure 5

Clothing was often mentioned in wills, after all, you can't take it with you. Servants and family members often had specific items of clothing left to them in people's wills. The 1462 will of Joan Buckland states, "...all my other gowns and kirtles, that they be given to my women servants dweling with me and my departure. Also to the woman that is by me at the time of my departing... one gown furred with mink." Joan Mudeford's will of 1484 leaves clothing and fabric: "...I bequeath to Joan Edmundis, my servant, one entire cloth. ... Item, to the Abbot of Adillney, one entire best cloth of blue colour ... …..Item, to Joan Mudeforde, my daughter, my best gown a tunic called “Kyrtyll,” and my best barred girdle, and my best rosary."

"June 27th 1554. David Moris of Mynhed, My body to be buried where as pleaseth my company. To Nicholas Thomas  botswayne in the mynyon my barbara purse. ~To Thomas Corbet my Rapyre. To John Myrie my chest and my writing boke. To Fraunces Savyor my blacke fustion dublet a payer of blewe briches and a clooke. To Sander Lambard a Cassake and a payer of briches. To Lawghwilles wief a pece of paynted clthe. To John Beysars wife of Bristowe the bygger pece of Beme clothe and thother pece to my sister."

New, and hand-me-down, clothing was often a perk of working for royal and noble house holds. Not only was it a bond between the the noble family and their retinue, but it ensured that their people were properly dressed and fit to be seen as companions and servants to the uppermost of the upper crust. In May 1306, Edward Longshanks knighted 267 men in Westminster, including Prince Edward and the notorious Piers Galveston, at what was known as the Feast of the Swans. The king purchased eighty rolls of scarlet and other colored cloth, 2500 yards of linen and 5000 yards of canvas for new clothing for the new knights. As women's fashion kept changing, the expectation to keep up with it made sure that there were plenty of "old" gowns and dresses available to be taken apart and turned into "new" outfits, many of which would be for ladies-in-waiting: the nob got a new dress, her ladies-in-waiting remade the old dresses for themselves. The ladies-in-waiting might re-gift their "old" gowns to servants lower down on the pecking order. Expensive items like fur or pearls would be removed to suit the social status of the giftee.

Clothing was also handed down within families; it still is today. The eldest child out-grows an outfit, it gets handed down to the next child. If there are no other children to receive the clothing (you've run out of siblings or cousins), then the clothes could be sold or traded at one of the many second-hand markets. Clothing could be picked apart and re-sewn for a better fit, or taken apart and remade into an entirely new outfit. Old fashions could be zhuzhed up with new trim or buttons. Francoise Piponnier and Perrine Mane in their book, "Dress in the Middle Ages", write that such secondhand merchants were closely monitored to make sure that improper clothing wasn't sold to the wrong people; more on that in part three of this series.

Then there is the quality of fabric. The quality of the fabric would indicate the social status of the wearer. The higher up the food chain, the more access to better quality clothing. Take my garb, for example. Most of what I wear to events is made from 100% linen from The Fabric Store: the 5.3 ounce variety. Let us just talk about the fabric: how good quality is it? Good enough for an actual late 11th Century, Norman Baron? Would it be seen as too good for an actual Norman lord, or not good enough? Would the nobs scoff at me for slumming it or would they wonder if I stole the tunic from a Duke or Earl? The trim on some of my tunics would definitely stand out with their mechanical precision. If our goal is to blend in, it wouldn't be a good idea to wear something that would attract the attention of the Fashion Police, particularly, as I discussed in Part 1, I wouldn't be able to communicate with the locals in a convincing way. "Whaire did you get zis devilish trim and why did you put een on zis chéap linén?" "Er, mon crayon est gros et jaune."

Hats, veils, hoods, belts, jewelry, badges, gloves, cloaks, capes, shoes, all of these things can be dictated by social classes and professions in ways that no one ever wrote down, because it was part and parcel of daily life. The people who lived in those past times would instinctively know how to wear their clothing and accessories "properly" and would be able to tell, just by how another person was dresses, where each person stood on the social ladder. Knowledge of these minute things would allow us to fake it and fit in with one group of people or another. At least long enough for us to ask some questions or to learn the lost secrets of the past. Unfortunately, there is so much that we just don't know, and don't have a lifetime of observations, that no matter how careful we would be, and how much planning we would do, our clothing would most likely stand out as if we would to show up to a funeral wearing a powder-blue tuxedo. 

We do have plenty of manuscript images and paintings of head wear, but there is only so much we can glean from them. We have to make some assumptions based on those images. We do miss out on complete context because people, during those times, didn't bother to write down the nitty-gritty details. Many written sources are complaints about the latest of fashions, rather than details about why a hat is worn in a particular way. As a modern example, let me take a moment to talk about baseball caps. Up until about 15 years ago, how someone would wear a baseball cap would clearly indicate if someone was working class or upper class depending on if the person curved the brim or left it flat. (this was, of course, before pre-shaped cap brims and limited edition collector caps with flat brims). When I was in the army, I could tell the difference between an officer and an enlisted soldier, at a distance, by how the brim of the field cap was shaped. I served in the Army as an MP and I had a field hat that was starched and shaped to look perfect for high-profile guard duties (much like how officers prepared their hats), and my other field hats were crumpled from being shoved into a pocket. 

People who wore baseball caps while working outdoors would shape the brim to help shield their eyes from the sun. This shaping was done by the wearer as the needed more or less sun coverage. Management, working indoors, never needed to learn how to shape the brim so their caps always sat awkwardly on their heads at company picnics. Cowboy hats are also a sign of social distinction. The perfectly shaped hat of the upper classes was a status symbol, made to look impressive while worn on the heads as well as sitting on a shelf or a desk, while the working hat of an actual ranch hand was hand shaped to fit snugly on the head to shield the face from wind wind, rain, and sun. 

So, a good question would be this; would there be a similar class distinction for people wearing bycocket hats ("chapeau a bec" in French)? The "Robin Hood" or "Peter Pan" hat. This is a hat worn by both men and women, often while riding, hunting, or hawking. There are certainly other medieval hats, but the bycocket is a very recognizable hat from the late middle ages. Based on manuscript images, the hat was more commonly worn by women in the 14th Century and the style drifted to mostly men in the 15th Century. Images show that the hat was worn by both the upper and lower classes, based on the depicted clothing. Eleanor Von Atzinger's "The Bycocket: A Study of Felted Headwear" list statistics of manuscript images breaking down who wore the hats (more males than females and animals combined), where they were worn (more outdoors than indoors) and even the colors (26% depicted are red). 

Figure 6

Looking at images, women tended to wear the bycocket over a hood or veil, although there are plenty of images of women wearing just the hat atop the hair, while men are more often depicted either wearing the hat without a coif, or with a hood pulled up over the hat. When would one know how to wear one? Under what circumstances would a woman wear just the hat? Was it age related, or based on marital status? Was it expected that woman would remove their hats in the same fashion that men were expected to, or did women pin their hats to their veils or hair knowing that they weren't expected to tip their hats to social superiors? 

"What about the use of pointed hats by women? From what has emerged from iconography and previous studies, it seems that this hat was worn by women in very specific circumstances. The only analysis in a costume history text that I have been able to find is that of R.L. Pisetzky (History of Costume in Italy, vol. II, 1964-69, p. 118) who, regarding women's headdresses, says:

“Often over the hood, when it is not lined with fur, and also over other hairstyles, women, like men, when traveling or riding, wear the heavy hat with raised brims.”" Anna Attiliani, "Medieval Tacuinum: The bycocket in women's garb".

 

We can assume that a man might pull their hood up over their hat if it were windy or cold. We can assume that the wealthy would decorate their hats with trim, fur, or pearls, while the poor would either have plain hats, or decorated with pilgrim badges or ribbons. The wealthy would also have access to more expensive material to make their hats from, while the poor would be stuck with felted wool. 

Would someone wear the hat "backwards"? With the point pointing backwards? I have seen plenty of people in the SCA wearing the hat backwards, but I can't seem to find any period images of anyone doing so. I can think of circumstances where someone might not want the brim blocking light, but didn't want to take the hat off of their head. Would this be an acceptable thing for someone to do? There are plenty of people who wear baseball caps backwards, today, to the derision of certain people. 

What about the fashion of wearing a scrunched up hood as a hat? Known as a chaperon, this started out in life as an alternative way of wearing liripipe style hood, but turned into it's own distinct head-cover by the 16th Century, becoming more turban than re-purposed hood. “Nowhere is change more apparent for both sexes than in headdresses. A short shoulder-cape with hood, the chaperon, continued to be fashionable and the liripipe or taper grew and grew until, by about 1420, it sometimes reached the ground and, to avoid tripping over it, the wearer frequently tucked it into his belt or wrapped it round his neck.” (Madge Garland and J. Anderson Black , "A History of Fashion")

Figure 7

"The liripipe is somewhat vestigial at this point in time, but aided in the wrapping of the garment. The ca. 1445 chaperon in figure 3 was created by wrapping its liripipe around the brim at the end of the process and folding it in; later chaperons may have lost the liripipe and original hood structure entirely. The ca. 1525 chaperons in figure 4 have firmly rolled brims from which the rest of the fabric cascades out and down, and one man accessorized his with a brooch." (Kenna Libes "Fashion History")

At what social level did this become off limits? Was it permissible for rich people to wear them and ridiculous for poor to? Would it be the equivalent of someone, today, wearing a stovepipe hat and overalls? We must understand that people of the middle ages were far more adept at knowing their place in society and the place of those around them. They would know when someone was faking it by picking up on clues that, I feel, would be too subtle for us to pick up on. Our modern society doesn't work in the same way; blue jeans and t-shirt are worn by all classes of our world. 50-60 years ago, they were the stock "uniform" of kids and the working class. Now we have people wearing $500 jeans and designer t-shirts, so we have developed other observations to determine the rich from the working poor. Torn jeans used to mean either you were poor or had a blue-collar job that tore up your clothes. Today, people pay a premium for pre-torn blue jeans.

Remember, the goal for this experiment is to be able to not stand out if we were to have a time machine. If we show up dressed like an actor from "The Tudors", "The Vikings", or "Ironclad" would people think we were stupid? Or that we had stolen everything like a fashion magpie? Or would they think that we were there to drum up business for a play? The subject of hats could be an article all on it's own, as could hoods, cloaks and other accessories, and I've spent too much time researching, writing, and editing this one. Part three will be about the dark side of clothing.

 Image credits:

Figure 1: Image of monks; Wikipedia Commons.

Figure 2: Yates Thompson MS 13 f.174r; British Library. 

Figure 3: Bocksten Man clothing - WIkipedia Commons. 

Figure 4: Screen capture from "Captain America: First Avenger" and images from The "Women's Army Corps, 1945-1978" by Bettie J. Morden

Figure 5: Dyers Immersing Bolt of Cloth in Vat of Dye Placed Over a Fire, 15th Century

Figure 6: Detail of Saint Helena from Agnolo Gaddi's frescos at the Basilica of Santa Croce, 1380, Wikipedia Commons

Figure 7: Quentin Massys (Flemish, 1466–1530). The Tax Collectors, ca. 1525.