# Question about clothes



## Epaminondas (Feb 13, 2012)

I find myself having difficulty describing what characters are wearing. I know armor fairly well but very little about what regular clothes would be called. What would a knight wear when riding for weeks? (no fear of battle so no need for hot armor). 
What does a wealthy noble wear? I'm wondering specifically for a typical high fantasy/ western European time period. I can see in my head what I want them to be wearing but don't know what it was called.


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## Xanados (Feb 13, 2012)

Medieval Clothing
All you need to know.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Feb 13, 2012)

And honestly, don't obsess. A mention here or there about someone's cloak, boots, trousers, doublet, vest, or whatever is more than enough, _unless it has some bearing on the plot or character_, or is being used to illustrate contrast. If you're following a group of peasants for several chapters, and then a nobleman comes into view, it makes sense to give a short paragraph describing the finery he wears. But you don't need to talk about each peasant's simple wool clothing every time another peasant shows up. They're all peasants! We get it!


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## Graham Irwin (Feb 13, 2012)

Benjamin is right. 

Some of the fantasy my girlfriend reads has pages and pages spent on clothing. I understand it can speak a lot about character and culture, but I leave it out of my writing altogether. I'll use color and item, such as 'purple robe', but that's it. Okay, maybe sometimes it's tattered. 

Again, Benjamin is right. Only describe it so far as you need it in your story.


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## Jess A (Feb 13, 2012)

Yes, you don't want to go overboard, but such references are important and I for one like to know more than I am going to write down. 

Even if giving a brief mention of clothing, you want to make sure that you are using the right word in the right context for the correct person(s) etc. 

Researching for books in my view is a little like making a film. You film a lot (learn a lot), but you might only use ten seconds from a whole heap of footage.


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## Epaminondas (Feb 13, 2012)

Thanks guys, and great website Xanados. Yeah, like storm cloud said I just wanted to use the right descriptor. Even though they are perfectly acceptable words I hate being limited to "shirt" or "breaches" which just sound too modern to my ear.

thanks again guys


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## Ravana (Feb 14, 2012)

As with most such topics, avoiding the wrong word is probably a bigger concern than using exactly the right one. It may not matter whether you refer to something as a "houppelande" or merely describe it… but if you talk of someone running in one, or washing dishes, _someone_ out there's gonna know you screwed up. Likewise the lady who sits to table wearing an elegant chemise. Or even a man who does. Or any landsknecht described as wearing anything rational for the battlefield whatsoever. (And before anybody says anything, I've _done_ pike drills in puffs and slashes, thank you.)

When in doubt, everyone wears tunics.


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## SeverinR (Feb 14, 2012)

Ravana said:


> As with most such topics, avoiding the wrong word is probably a bigger concern than using exactly the right one. It may not matter whether you refer to something as a "houppelande" or merely describe it… but if you talk of someone running in one, or washing dishes, _someone_ out there's gonna know you screwed up. Likewise the lady who sits to table wearing an elegant chemise. Or even a man who does. Or any landsknecht described as wearing anything rational for the battlefield whatsoever. (And before anybody says anything, I've _done_ pike drills in puffs and slashes, thank you.)
> 
> When in doubt, everyone wears tunics.



Hoobah!
I agree.

No peasants in poodle skirts, No turtlenecks on tunics.


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## Ravana (Feb 15, 2012)

Heh. When I joined, most ladies' first "garb" was their prom dress.…

Of course, when I joined, carpet armor was still the norm for beginning fighters. How far we've come.


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## Caged Maiden (Feb 15, 2012)

Ah clothing..... my  obsession.  In my real life I am completely mad about clothing, undertaking any challenge to recreate.  In writing, however, I am the opposite, using clothing only as a secondary description.  If an article is important, say a king's robe, I mention it, but rarely do I even describe a color if it is not pertinent.  In one scene I described a woman convalescing as wearing a man's shirt of soft linen and men's knickers.....
it didn't matter to me whether the reader pictured the shirt as button-front or pull-over, or the knickers as thigh, knee, or ankle-length.  All that mattered for the scene was that she was laying around healing, in borrowed underwear.  You could employ a similar tactic, deciding how important the clothing is, and only describing what's necessary.
Also, a doublet, let's say, meant different things at different times, and was worn differently by a man and woman.  There are many great books out there which help the thousands of historical costumers like me, and many websites which show historical portraits and actual surviving garments if you are inclined to study more in-depth.


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## Devor (Feb 15, 2012)

I'm normally in favor of the extra research, but really, readers wouldn't follow a lot of the distinctions anyways.  And if most people are wearing pretty similar garments, you'd never need to mention them.  In my opinion, just focus any descriptions on the stains and the jewelry, with _maybe_ a reference to color or fabric.

I will say, though, that I remember reading that a thick apron or a similar cover-garment was a lot more common among working folks than it is today because people did harsher work and clothes were harder to acquire.  Someone else might know when.


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## Butterfly (Feb 16, 2012)

Don't know about the apron.

I do know though that red was the cheapest clothes dye and made from cochineal, and purple was the most expensive. If I'm right, it was something to do with making the dye stick to the clothes - allum was used for this in order to survive a few washes. 'Tyrian purple' came from the mucous (I think) of sea snails, and was very expensive, thus the colour became a status symbol.

Thus, red was worn by everyone and purple was reserved for royalty.


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## Ravana (Feb 16, 2012)

Depends on the time period: cochineal is a New World resource. And I doubt it was significantly cheaper: as with most red dyes from Eurasia, it was made from insects—not exactly a bulk resource. I imagine its popularity in Europe was due to the fact that it was a source the Spanish controlled, rather than having to be imported from Asia. At any rate, prior to the discovery of the Americas, most reds were almost as rare and expensive as purple (though the murex snail also yielded a red… which was just as costly as its purple). The main exception was red from the plant madder—which, however, produced a weaker and less resilient color, barring a complex process of fixing it that involved eight additional ingredients. Even that had to be imported, though the distances weren't as great (Turkey, Egypt, as well as places farther east and south). Off-reds could also be produced from some berries: these would be far less expensive, but also far less "red": darker or lighter, as the case may be.

The less expensive colors were yellow, blue, and green (which required blending yellow and blue), along with browns. 

True black was, in essence, impossible: the closest that could be achieved was extremely dark brown-blue, until importation of logwood from the New World began.


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## Drakhov (Feb 16, 2012)

Deep blues and purples were made from indigo, which came from India so would have been very expensive, and like Ravana said red dye would have been expensive also. Before the discovery of the New World, red dye came from the areas around the Mediterranean, but cochineal gave a more vivid colour. Both come from the dried carapaces of beetles.

There's an interesting debate about the origin of the term Lincoln Green (supposedly the colour of the clothes worn by Robin Hood and his men).

The legend was popularized in the 18th century, and it's believed by some that there was some misinterpretation. 

Lincoln was a famous textile town in the Middle Ages, and _greyne / graine_ was the name of the red dye that came from the Mediterranean. So Lincoln Greyne was actually red cloth - however as Robin and his outlaws lived in the forest there was a belief that they probably wore green clothes as camouflage, so Lincoln Greyne became Lincoln Green.

Saying that, the other argument is that Lincoln Green _was _actually green, made by combining woad (blue dye you might associate with the body art of Celt and Gaul warriors) and weld, a yellow vegetable dye.

I don't know about anybody else, but being waylaid in a forest by a bunch of guys wearing bright red tights would certainly be unnerving to me.


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## Butterfly (Feb 16, 2012)

Ravana - Apparently, there is a type of cochineal beetle also found in Europe, and its dye was exported from Poland and Lithuania. The dye was commonly known as St John's Blood, and it was traded throughout Europe during the 15th and 16th centuries by mainly Jewish merchants. The Mexican cochineal took over from it a little later. 

With the Madder, a wild variety - Rubia Peregrina - grows around the Mediterranean and further west as far as Portugal. It was also used to make the same dye you are referring to.

Drakhov - Interesting about the Lincoln green.


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## Ravana (Feb 17, 2012)

Drakhov said:


> Lincoln was a famous textile town in the Middle Ages, and _greyne / graine_ was the name of the red dye that came from the Mediterranean. So Lincoln Greyne was actually red cloth - however as Robin and his outlaws lived in the forest there was a belief that they probably wore green clothes as camouflage, so Lincoln Greyne became Lincoln Green.
> 
> Saying that, the other argument is that Lincoln Green _was _actually green, made by combining woad (blue dye you might associate with the body art of Celt and Gaul warriors) and weld, a yellow vegetable dye.



It appears that this may be a retroactive confusion—Lincoln produced cloth in both green and scarlet (as well as other colors), the latter dyed with imported _graine_ (the French term for kermes):



> In 1182 the Sheriff of Lincoln bought Scarlet at 6s 8d/ell, Green and Blanchet both at 3s/ell and Gray at approximately 1s 8d/ell.



(I was fortunate enough to locate online the book page whence the Wiki reference came: it is accurate. For anyone who wants to see it:

medieval lincoln - Google Books

Unfortunately, the book preview won't let me copy the image itself. Bummer. Can't think why they'd want to do that.…  )

With the "Scarlet" being more than twice as expensive as the "Green" (and almost four times as much as "Gray") I think it's safe to assume that the latter probably was green, and was made as stated: woad overdyed with weld… both of which were plentiful in the region. Word searches on lexicography sites appear to confirm this… and another color associated with its northern England place of manufacture, "Kendal green," definitely was green. I also don't see any indications of any English references that might indicate that "Lincoln green" was _ever_ used in historical texts to refer to a red color. (Apart from that one unsourced mention on Wikipedia; tracking it down through the Wiktionary discussion page, it appears that the person making the claim misinterpreted his source, which says: "Corfe is rightly associated [with] marble, Lincoln with scarlet cloth.…" It does _not_ say—there or anywhere else in the book—that "Lincoln green" was scarlet. It _does_ mention that Lincolnshire was one of the major producers of woad.)

Interesting aside: the phrase "dyed in the grain" appears to have originated from references to cloth dyed in kermes ("in the grayne"), which, courtesy of yet another linguistic confusion—of the more normal, forward-moving diachronic variety—became synonymous with "high-quality fabric" of any sort. 

I stand corrected on the kermes: it did indeed come from sources in the Mediterranean as well as farther east. And, yes, it appears that Poland also produced cochineal, something I'd never encountered before. (Possibly the term "cochineal" wasn't applied to it during pre-modern times: the OED online has it originating in the late 16th century. At any rate, they exported a red made from ground scale insects, no matter what it was called.) So thank you. Rep points all around. 

And, yes, madder too has a wider distribution than I'd initially thought—much of Europe, in fact, including Britain—though the quality of its results might be inferred from the continued trade in vastly more expensive dye sources. 

•

Here's another reference I came across… slightly dated, but available online in its entirety. The immense glossary alone would make a good reference book.

Costume in England (Open Library)

Check out what he says in the glossary on p. 526 about "purple." No wonder people get confused.…


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## Drakhov (Feb 17, 2012)

Actually i got the Lincoln Green / Greyne reference  here 

reference is at 8:30


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## SeverinR (Feb 17, 2012)

Like black, I believe the darker the color the more expensive and less common. Because darker means repeated dying of a cloth.
So I assume common man wore soft colors( off white dipped once or twice in dye.)

Also pure white was almost impossible.  (Because any color in the mix would tint the white.) Also pure white would be hardest to keep white. (no modern cleaners)

My favorite Hunter green would have cost quite a bit to get that dark, if even possible.


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