A Historical re-enactors basic guide to materials for costuming.

Part 1. Interpreting the available evidence

Historical re-enactment has become a popular and widespread hobby with groups portraying life from almost every conceivable period of history from the Roman onwards (there are even one or two individuals recreating periods as early as the Neolithic). Within such groups there are people whose interests span a wide variety of topics from military history and battle re-enactment to social and domestic crafts, period music and cookery. However, irrespective of any individual’s particular period or subject of interest, all historical re-enactors need costume and as such it perhaps the only topic that every re-enactor could claim to have at least a passing interest in. I could not possibly hope to cover the entire history of clothing and fashion in a brief guide here. It will be up to each individual and group to pursue their own research into the cut and construction of costume in their period of interest. However, what I do wish to briefly discuss here is the types and colours of textiles from which we choose to make reproduction clothing, something which seems to let down many attempts at period costume.

The days of re-enactors making highly ornate reproduction clothing from gaudily coloured nylon, polyester and other man made fibres are hopefully long gone, and there does now seem to be much greater emphasis on natural products more appropriate to earlier periods of history. Nevertheless there are a wide variety of natural products available and the serious re-enactor should be looking to utilise all the available research to more closely match their costume to specific fibre types, thread counts, weave patterns, weights and colours of material common from specific periods of history.

When making a single reproduction item of clothing for museum display or other specific "one off" project the exact cloth types, weights, weaves, colours, cut and construction are all specified by the evidence and research we are presented with. However when we, collectively as re-enactors, look to make reproduction costume for us within our respective re-enactment groups we are faced with a common problem; personal vanity. Most re-enactors would freely admit to enjoying dressing up at the weekends, very few like to dress down. In view of this we must be careful regarding what we choose to reproduce such that our costume is actually representative of the characters we wish to portray. Whilst most re-enactment groups claim to set out to give a flavour of what everyday life was like at a particular point in history, the majority of re-enactors all want to stand out from their peers. Consequently even if costume is well researched, and beautifully recreated lavishing much time, effort and money on getting the fine details right, most choose to research the cut and construction of the higher status clothing of the wealthy elite of society.

Few research or reproduce lower status everyday clothing, and fewer still seem to give as much attention to researching the cloth from which they choose to make reproduction clothing. Furthermore as many people new to re-enactment start simply by copying the costume of the other re-enactors around them, without fully understanding what they are copying, this has lead to an ever increasing abundance of poorly reproduced high status clothing across most periods of re-enactment. Very few people, especially the general public who visit shows, seem to realise that the clothes being worn may well have been high status in the past. What is commonly portrayed by the clothing of many re-enactment societies, albeit unintentionally, are small niche or elite groups, and the expensive clothes worn may not be appropriate for the more menial nature of the characters or subjects being presented. Those re-enactors who do truly try to portray the commonplace and everyday clothing of the majority of the populace tend to be the ones who stand out as being rare and unusual. We therefore need to encourage and help more re-enactors, and most particularly those new to the hobby or a particular society or group to actually research and recreate ordinary everyday costume such that it does appear commonplace within any group, and by inference, that which is rare and high status does actually start to stand out as being special, rather than being the norm.

I therefore wish to begin with a very brief overview of the types of evidence available for the types of clothing worn by ordinary folk throughout history and how we can interpret this. Obviously each piece of evidence must be assessed on its own merits, and the type and quantity of evidence available will differ from period to period with more recent periods of history generally being richer in available evidence. Nevertheless research can be broken into a few main types; Study of period documents and written sources, study of period illustrations, artwork, paintings, carving or sculpture and finally study of surviving costume or textile, whether these are heirlooms passed down through the generations or the products of archaeological excavations. We must also distinguish between primary evidence, (real evidence from the period we can actually study ourselves) and the potentially less reliable or biased secondary evidence (reports of other people's study of the evidence). There can be a wide gulf between these two extremes and what we normally have to deal with is a grey area in the middle. Good academics should report facts and present evidence in such a way as you can form your own opinions of it, rather than simple stating their own views. What we normally have to contend with is a selective reporting of just a few facts, done to support any individual's particular point of view or opinion. In every case we must take care in how we use any evidence as, by and large most available evidence will tend to be biased in favour of special more high status clothing. As such, evidence cannot often be reproduced directly, but needs to be interpreted to infer what the ordinary populace may well have once worn.

With respect to early written documentary evidence, the further back in time our period of interest the more biased in favour of the wealthy this is likely to be as the more a good education and basic literacy was a privilege of wealth. Furthermore it is a natural tendency of human nature to wish to remember or record that which is somehow special or unusual. As such, when dealing with early written sources which specifically mention clothes or textiles, then there is a high probability the clothes have been mentioned because they are somehow different from normal convention. So, although a somewhat dubious approach to research, you could almost argue that the less frequently a garment, type or colour of cloth is mentioned the more commonplace and ordinary it might have been. Inventories or trade documents pertaining to cloth or costume may be a little more informative as they would not have been recorded for novelties sake, but may again be biased in favour of the wealthy who would have been most likely to need such records. Only by about the eighteenth century do we start to find large enough numbers of wills and inventories from more ordinary folk that enable us to form a reliable overview of how everyday folk dressed. However, even here the inclusion of descriptive adjectives in such inventories is rare and it seems probable that unless very rigorously applied to everything in the inventory, the specific mention of colour, pattern or other features of clothing will have been made to highlight the expensive or unusual items.

One further point worthy of mention is the changing meaning of commonplace words through history. Simply seeing it written down in a period document is no proof of anything until you can prove the words had the same meaning to those who wrote them as they do today. Two classic examples would be the words “cotton” and “scarlet”. Cottoning was a process used to produce a cheap fluffy woollen textile. Indeed there is some evidence to support the idea that the Europeans named the cotton plant after the fluffy fibres of this type of common woollen cloth. Therefore prior to the eighteenth century goods described as made of cotton are most probably a cheap wool rather than cotton as we now know it. However, as cotton fibres were being used in textiles long before this we do need to take care not to arbitrarily dismiss the possibility of calicoe or fustian based textiles being used. Scarlet is a term we now use to describe a bright red colour. However, the origins of the word are in a very fine high quality wool. Such was the quality of this wool it was only used by the wealthiest who could afford to die it with the most expensive dyes such as kermes red. So whilst scarlet could in theory be any colour, the fact much of it was dyed bright red lead to an eventual change in meaning of this word. There are, of course, other examples of changing meanings of words used to describe textiles.

When dealing with period pictorial records which show clothes and costume very early art styles can be very interpretive giving little detail, whilst artists may have frequently documented events or people of which they may have had little first hand knowledge. Consequently their primary goal seems mainly to have been to produce pretty decoration rather than accurate references. Colours used frequently bear no resemblance to reality and many images show fantastical creations that could never have been real. The earliest illutstrations, often those in religious manuscripts are often a succession of copies of even earlier pictures embellished and "improved Upon" by each monk who copied them. Nor must we ignore the propaganda value of many early images which may have intentionally distorted the truth for a whole range of now incomprehensible or forgotten reasons. Furthermore as it is human nature to document the unusual and the significant rather than the mundane and ordinary, as such most images will be biased towards the notable events of higher status individuals and it is rare to find images that can be reliably identified as ordinary folk going about their everyday business. It tends to be the clergy, nobility or warriors/military leaders that are most frequently illustrated in any kind of records, and in later periods it is again the wealthy who were able to afford to have their portraits painted. As dress has always been an important way of defining social status and class it seems almost inevitable that the majority of people shown in any illustrations would be portrayed dressed in their best clothes, rather than something ordinary (assuming they were wealthy enough to own more than one outfit). We’ve only to look at modern photographs to draw a comparison. The majority of photographs on any family mantle shelf are going to be taken at special events such as christenings, weddings, graduation or other presentational ceremonies; all special gatherings where people are inclined to dress up to look their best, and often in clothing that is quite radically different from everyday dress. Consequently we must be careful not to assume that something is low status or ordinary just because it was frequently recorded or looks drab to the modern eye. Clothes we now perceive as bland may still have been recorded in the past because they were something different, special or important to the people shown wearing them.

Surviving costume or textiles are obviously the most reliable source of evidence on which to base reconstructions as they can be studied in the greatest detail and leave least scope for differing interpretation. We do, however, need to ask why they have survived. People save things because they are somehow expensive or special. As such the majority of early costumes that can be found in museums have survived because they were rarely worn. They were something expensive saved as best for special occasions. Consequently four hundred year old wedding outfits of the nobility may survive more frequently than two hundred year old work clothes of peasants. If our period of interest is sufficiently early that we are dependant upon archaeological finds for our evidence of clothing, it is rare for complete garments to survive. Consequently we may only get little scraps of textile remaining which tell us little about the cut and construction of individual garments. Whilst at face value it might be assumed that such chance finds are more likely to represent the everyday than the rare we must again ask ourselves how such scraps of textile have come to survive and pass into museums collections. The specific ground conditions needed to preserve textiles are rare and much of what we know about early textiles comes from mineral preserved remains found in conjunction with metal brooches, buckles and other dress accessories. This therefore immediately biases our understanding of textiles in favour of those members of society wealthy enough to afford metal dress accessories. We also need to ask where the majority of archaeological finds are recovered from? A large percentage of recovered textiles come from burials, as such we need to be asking about the burial practices of our period of interest and if it is probable that the people we are interested in were being buried in specially made or best clothing. Comparisons of textiles recovered from burials and settlement sites often differ quite notably. Furthermore the majority of excavations tend to take place in towns and cities. Up until the industrial revolution in the 1700’s the vast majority of the population lived worked and died in the countryside rarely travelling more than a few miles from home. The towns, small as they were, tended to be places where the wealthy traded or lived, so any evidence gathered from such places may again be biased in favour of the elite of society. Consequently we must ask if finds recovered from city burials really tell us anything useful about the way the majority of rural folk would dress on a day to day basis?

Whilst much of the available evidence may itself be biased in favour of expensive or special costume and textiles, the biggest thing we have to be careful of is the way others interpret this evidence and present it to us. We must never blindly base our costume on that of other re-enactors. For much like the game of “Chinese whispers” every time something is copied little errors or changes creep in and the end result may be far from what it should be. We should always try to base our own costume, where ever possible, upon primary research by going back to study the evidence first hand. Though for those who do not enjoy this aspect of the hobby it may be satisfactory to find others in your group who have a reputation for doing a lot of research and who actually know what they are talking about, and then act simply on their advice or instruction, seeking reassurance from how they justify their views.

Nevertheless, it is rare for most hobbyists to be able to study primary sources of evidence directly, most have to make do with published books, reports and photographs describing other people's research. I consider myself fortunate to have spent a small part of my life working for various conservation laboratories, archaeological trusts, museums and archives where I have been able to study several examples of early costume or textile myself. Here I was able to work alongside some of the notable authors of this published material, discussing the information that doesn’t make it into printed reports. So for those who do enjoy the more academic aspects of research I just want to finish this first section by putting forward a few cautionary points to bear in mind when judging published information.

Remember negative findings don’t generate interest; they don’t generate further funding and therefore rarely make it to external publication. Consequently only the most interesting and unusual evidence tends to make it into the sorts of publications that are easily accessible to the general public. Despite the most disciplined and rigorous academic intentions of those who print the reference books and papers we read, we need to learn to read between the lines. Much of the hard data we should be interested in tends to linger in unpublished files in dusty filing cabinets, being summarised by one or two easily overlooked lines at the beginning of a lengthy publication. For example a simple sentence at the start of a document such as “…of the forty one graves excavated only two had any grave goods.” could be easily lost in a paper giving a detailed description of the finds of just those two graves. What this could potentially mean is that the whole document represents the most interesting and potentially unusual five percent of that site or community rather than the majority of it. This five percent is then going to be the bit that other academics get to read about, remember, quote and reference in their own papers. Years later when we as the general public finally get to pick up a glossy book to read about these and similar finds from other sites it is unlikely that any mention is made of the fact they were all potentially unusual finds that most people probably didn’t own. They just imprint themselves into the public’s minds as being what “specialists” and “experts” always talk about and as such what may once have been common.

It is often said that there are lies, damn lies and statistics. Statistical data presented in all good faith by one person can be easily misinterpreted or misrepresented by another. A fact easily illustrated by one example found in an archaeological report I was reading recently. This paper was discussing the dying of cloth in which it stated that "…more than two thirds of the archaeological woven textiles tested proved to be coloured”. Many people may then take such a statement at face value and use it to imply that the majority of cloth from this period of history was dyed. Take the trouble to wade through all the statistics upon which this conclusion was based and a different picture emerges. Due to the delicacy of many of the textile remains and the nature of the test it was not possible to exhaustively test every textile from the site. However, whilst hardly any of the linens and a significant proportion of the woollens could not be tested, a much higher proprtion of the silks could be. What the raw data showed was that approximately one quarter of all the samples tested were silks and silk ribbons, of which all but one was dyed. Do we conclude that a thousand years ago a quarter of the popluation were wearing coloured silk ribbons? Or is it more probable that the site (within what was the wealthiest trading port in the country at the time) is a wealthy area not representative of normal everday life, and the sample tested was further biased in favour of the costlier textiles? Furthermore several of the samples described as coloured were actually listed as being naturally pigmented, so would have been mottled shades of dark brown or grey. If we chose, we can present the very same statsictical data in a different yet equally true manner, we can justifiably form a very different conclusion. We could claim that from a site we have strong reason to believe is of a very high status, less than half the woven woollen cloth tested showed signs of being deliberately dyed to change it's colour.

As I said earlier, we need to encourage more re-enactors to recreate ordinary costume such that it does appear commonplace within any group or society. Sadly for most early periods of interest to historical re-enactors there is little definitive evidence that can be reliably used to recreate the clothing or textiles of the everyday man about town, (or in such a rural country should that be the man in the field?). We must work with scraps of evidence from our particular period of interest and interpret these as best we can, using higher status examples along with earlier or later periods as a means of charting an evolution of ideas or styles through our own time frame. Such an approach will always be subjective and open to debate but it is through debating different interpretations of the available evidence that our understanding will improve.

Despite concentrating upon textiles I suppose I must briefly finish this section by mentioning dress accessories like jewellery, belts, buckles, buttons, brooches and pins. Such little fittings are an obvious way of displaying wealth and status with many decorative gold, silver bronze and brass example surviving through history. The high quantity of such items that survive and the routine nature with which simpler pieces can be dug out of the ground by metal detectorists may leads us to believe that metal fittings were always common place. Before we jump to this conclusion we must first ask ourselves about other alternatives.

The practical functions carried out by all these decorative, or simpler metal dress fittings could be carried out equally well by carved wood and bone examples or by knotted cord or leather thong. These simpler alternatives would stand little chance of surviving through to the present day, and if deteriorated may not be easily identified or recognised even if found. Such simple items could have been cheaply made at home by the people who needed them and would not need to have been bought from specialist craftsmen. The high number of metal objects seen in museums and private collections probably reflects much more on their far greater chance of survival and ease of recovery than on the fact they may once have been common. We need to think about how many more we would be finding if everybody in the past had worn them? So, when portraying ordinary folk from earlier time periods I would strongly question the use of any decorative metal accessories, sticking mainly to wood, bone or leather and keeping any metal fittings small and plain in cheaper metals like iron...but we all like the pretty shiny things don’t we?

Although we can only work with the evidence we have, we must not take it at face value and simply reproduce all that has survived to the modern day. We need to interpret this evidence thinking not just of what has survived for us to study but more importantly on all that may have been lost along the way. Just remember that for every individual whose lives we can say a little about based upon an odd written record, period illustration, archaeological find or surviving artefact, there will be thousands more who died anonymously leaving no discernable impact on the modern world and no record of their existence. It is the anonymous masses that are most likely to be representative of what was once commonplace and ordinary; it is these people we should be aiming to find out more about when judging what little evidence is available to us to form an understanding of the past. As much of a cliché as it may sound "An absence of evidence should in no way be interpreted as evidence of an absence". Nor should a scarcity of evidence force us to treat one single piece of evidence as being representative of something that was once wide spread and commonplace. What follows is my interpretation of the subject of everyday and commonplace textiles up until the introduction of machine woven cloth. I have deliberately avoided focusing on any particular period or citing detailed references as this is to be a fairly generic overview, and references from one specific period taken out of context and applied to another can lead to confusion. By necessity much of this is interpretive so feel free to disagree with me. It is merely offered as a basic reference to help others interpret their own research into their own periods. Something that may cause pause for thought and help all re-enactors interested in trying to make better costume. Those who wish to make an impression on their peers not through the elaborate or decorative nature of their costume but through being more authentic and true to what may well have once been commonplace.