Women in armor, 15th century, first quarter

I didn’t forget about this project! But it’s been a busy year, and there is SO MUCH material from the 15th century. I can’t even figure out how to organize and group these– by subject? By armor type?

I had originally wanted to do a cool Pride month post about some women-who-love-women in armor, but that’s going to require more research. The first quarter of the 15th century may, too, but here’s a non-representative sample of some highlights I’ve examined recently.

Nine female worthies, from the 1404 Le Chevalier errant by Thomas de Saluces

Everyone’s well-dressed at the armor party! It’s tempting to expect that medieval writers might choose nine virtuous ladies when they wanted a counterpart to nine worthy men, but the evidence tells us otherwise. Which nine women they were tended to vary, and one version was described as “a group of rather bizarre heroines,” but since they’re the counterparts to nine war heroes famous for conquest and decimation, it’s clear that virtue is not the aim of this chivalric pantheon.

If fifteenth century writers thought women should only be retiring or passive in their virtue, they certainly weren’t encouraging that by presenting modest and dainty role models. Content warning: there’s a big ol’ bucket of blood behind the jump.

1490s overdress

Back to 1490s again.  Time to examine first principles of my goals and actually decide what I’m doing.

So.

• I want to make an overdress of some sort.
• I like the idea and look of fur-lined sleeves.
• I don’t really want to make a fitted bodice or a pleated skirt.
• I want it to show off my gamurra.
• I’d like it to be easy to put on, with a full front opening if possible.
• Ideally, I want to be able to fight in it, should I choose to, so it should have good arm and shoulder mobility and not get caught on stuff too easily.
• I don’t want to completely overheat if I wear it indoors; doing the fur as trim or as a partial lining may help with that as long as the shortcut doesn’t show on the outside.
• If it’s going to be fur-lined (or just trimmed), it should probably not have open sides like a giornea.  That seems wrong.
• I want it to be based on a garment shown in a document from the right time period.  If that garment is gold brocade with brown/tan and black leopard fur and worn over red, so much the better, because that’s how mine’s going to be and it’s good to back that up with documentation.

With all that said, I’m pretty sure I can’t have all of those things.  Here are my candidates for dresses from period pictures.

1320s Dress: Possible patterns

Today’s installment of 1320s dress research is a collection of online tutorials, free patterns (printable, scalable, cutting diagrams with measurements, et c), draping instructions/advice, reconstructed garments with dressmaking diaries (in-process photos and notes about lessons learned) or research information, commercial patterns, and a couple of shops offering ready-made options.  All about 14th century cotehardies, cottes, kirtles, and other terms for long-skirted dresses fitted in the torso.

For Walpurgis, I think it will be right to have a fitted dress underneath, and a less fitted surcoat, but most of these cover suitable variations on the shape or silhouette of the dress, close enough that the exact fittedness should be easy to adjust.  I’ll (probably, sometime) do up a separate post noting what details the Walpurgis dress should have based on the source material.

No pictures today; there’s a bajillion links, and pictures are fussy.

1320s dress

And now, something else completely different: in which I research a costume that isn’t for me.  (Update: I’m not sure the images linked to bigger versions before; I believe I have now fixed that.)

Royal Armouries MS I.33, also called the Walpurgis Fechtbuch, is the oldest extant European treatise on combat.  The thing that really makes it memorable, however, is the page shown here, in which a woman, called Walpurgis (on the left in both pairs), is learning swordfighting from the priest who seems to be the master of the book.

So… if one wanted to dress like Walpurgis, where to begin?

The manuscript is from Germany in the 1320s.  Unfortunately, that’s far enough back that it’s not as easy to focus on a specific decade, but in this case I’ve already got a leg up in having a specific image to start from, rather than a person or event.  So I can say off the bat, based on Walpurgis’s shoulders and sleeves being different colors, that I need to find out about long-sleeved underdresses (cottes) and sleeveless but not sideless surcoats (or surcottes).  They’ll have full-length skirts; Walpurgis is sporting a lovely calf-length look because, like the priest, she has tucked her skirts up into her belt to keep them away from her feet.  (Fun fact: tucking robes up for swordfighting may be why Robin Hood’s clerical friend was called Friar Tuck.)

So.  I know what she’s wearing, but it would be nice to have more pictures, especially showing the torso area where all the complicated sewing will happen.  And anyway, look at that priest’s arms; would you trust this artist on fine details of fashion?

As it happens, I’m in luck: there is a manuscript from the first quarter of the 14th century which is about German writers of love songs.

The Codex Manesse has lots of pictures, many featuring women in sleeveless surcoats and long-sleeved dresses of contrasting colors.  Here’s one of a woman with similar fashion sense to Walpurgis: she’s added a headdress that is actually a fillet or gebende and not at all called a “pie-crust hat”, but she has the same sleeveless overdress and long, curly hair.

There are a bunch of examples of this style in the Codex, showing the fashion in different postures, in motion, and so on. There is also some variation in the arm-hole size in the sleeveless surcoats.

Also let’s just look at a lot of pages because this has to be the most adorable medieval manuscript ever.  Sure, war bunnies on snails are cute, but… look at these couples! (Click through for more pages, and a selection of reconstructed dresses and useful links.)

1490s Fur

Yes, more 1490s.  And more sleeves!  I’m planning an over-garment for my 1490s dress.

I’ll make this one quicker than the last post.

I love these sleeves (left), but this garment won’t quite do.  I don’t want to make a whole second dress (shaped bodice, pleated skirt, et c) and I don’t want to make it black (inappropriate to the memory of Caterina Sforza).

What other options are there for leopard fur trim around the year 1500?

This big-sleeve style (right) is, I think, after 1520 (as is the picture at left), so really too late for my project (which is 1490s but could reasonably stretch to 1510).

So… what leopard options are earlier?

1490s Sleeves

I wrote a bunch of this in January, then, apparently, forgot all about it.  This is not the 1490s fashion draft post I thought I had waiting!  Anyway, some sleeve talk.

This project consumed a lot more of my time and attention than I expected, although some of that actually went to starting a new job.  (Also, the dress was not the only project I was doing for the same deadline!  I’ll post some of the writing I did as part of the same project at some point too.)

But, for now, here are a collection of portraits whose sleeves I studied to determine the proper way of closing detached, open sleeves in and around the 1490s in Italy, plus some side commentary about necklaces.  Note that this is not a representative sample of common styles, or of the full range of sleeve options, just a selection of portraits that could teach me what I needed to know.  Except the weird back of shoulder shape.  I didn’t figure that one out.

Directoire Scarlet Ribbons

A style from about 1797 to 1800, sometimes held to be referential to the Reign of Terror (along with women wearing their hair short).  Make of it what you will, here are some women wearing white dresses trimmed with red (or close enough) ribbons.  The fashion may appear outside those years– I found these looking for a different 1798 plate.

You can read a bit more about the “croisures a la victime” at this archived page (the page is still up, but its code is broken).  The writer relates the “X across the back” style to the “bal des victimes” fad, but I don’t know whether other arrangements of red ribbons, in X shapes or otherwise, are equally significant.

Dresses similar to strawberry dress, 1800-1810

Decorated borders and hems on dresses are pretty prevalent throughout the Regency period.  This dress with strawberries is super-fabulous; here it is with its peers, which are dresses from about 1804-7 with a wide border at the hem consisting of a repeating fruit or floral motif in crewel or polychrome embroidery which extends in a single stripe up to the waistband, while the rest of the dress is of a plain, solid color (usually white) with no sprigging,striping, et c.

Diagonals:

French, ca. 1805, cotton with wool embroidery, now held at the Met.  Hem border goes all the way around; waist and cuffs have smaller matching motif. From the Cora Ginsburg auction catalog: “CREWEL EMBROIDERED DRESS, French, ca. 1805, This gown is believed to have belonged to the Comtesse de Pontèves-Bargème, née Marie Antoinette de Paul (1787–1854) who married Louis Balthasar Alexandre, Comte de Pontèves-Bargème (1781–1868) on April 16, 1804. One of the oldest noble families of Provence, the Pontèves-Bargème resided in the Château d’Ansouis from the twelfth century onward.” http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/170705