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

Part 2. So what was commonly worn in the past?

It would be easy for me to waffle on and on and bore you with a wealth of trivia about this subject. Indeed I may have already done that in the first section. Though if you’re still reading this it suggests you’re interested in what I have to say. Given the vast time spans that different re-enactment groups cover I cannot hope to cover each in depth. Furthermore although the technology of spinning and weaving showed advances over the two thousand years prior to mechanisation, the cloth being produced by ever more advanced means showed little change. Consequently for this simplistic overview it is not really necessary to divide up the subject period by period, I merely aim to lay down a few basic guidelines governing how to choose suitable cloth for making period looking costume.

For much of the history of England there were three basic natural materials from which costume could be made from. The first of these are skins and leathers, the second is wool and the third is linen. Silk has been known about for a considerable while but up until recent times would have been an expensive import relying on foreign trade. Cotton was never such an expensive cloth but did not become commonplace until the introduction of large textile mills in the eighteenth century. To a lesser degree we must also consider other natural sources of fibres. Wool is traditionally sourced from sheep but there is also a long tradition of spinning goat hair and many other animal fibres could also be spun. Similarly the standard plant fibre for spinning is linen sourced from flax, but jute, hemp and nettle and many other plants could also be processed to extract fibres that can be spun. Nevertheless it is my intention to stick to the three most common, leather, wool and linen.

Fashion has always been a means of displaying wealth and status and in earlier periods of history much of a person’s wealth was carried on their back in the clothes they wore. Throughout history woven cloth has always been expensive and the use of lots of it to produce layered or full clothing has generally been considered a sign of wealth. The cost of the labour of sewing garments together was always of lesser concern to that of spinning and weaving the cloth, and so even if it meant stitching lots of small panels together, the production of long, flowing, sweeping full costume was well worth the small additional time or cost in order to make a more opulent item of clothing out of all the cloth you owned. Poorer folk would tend to wear less garments; less layers and less full clothing because they had access to less cloth. Regardless of cut or style, all clothes would have been well made to last as long as possible, seams and hems would be neatly finished inside to avoid fraying, and all clothes would have been neatly patched and repaired if torn or damaged. Only the very wealthy could afford to discard old clothing and this would not be wasted it would be passed onto to others of lower social status. Even the most worn and patched of clothing would be cut up to make rags for cleaning before the cloth was eventually discarded.

If you look back through old documents and stories the passing on and inheritance of old clothes was always common, even if they needed unpicking and re-sewing to fit the receiver. Though the existence of largely non monetary self sufficient rural economies, differing levels of income and up to two thousand years of inflation make any kind of price comparisons almost meaningless, by attributing a modern hourly wage to an estimation of the hours of labour needed to spin and weave enough cloth by hand to clothe any individual we reach a price that would run into the thousands of pounds. If we then consider that many more people in the past would be living a hand to mouth existence with very little “spare” time and without the luxury of disposable income that many of us enjoy today and the cost of a whole new outfit could well be the equivalent in terms of difficulty of us saving to buy a new car. Put in these terms it is easy to understand why clothes were valued, looked after, handed down and why people did not own anywhere near as many garments as we do today. Machine spinning and weaving, along with the artificial production of man made fibres has reduced the cost of cloth to almost nothing and made clothing a disposable item we replace at the whim of changing fashions, replacing items long before they are worn out.

The other means of demonstrating wealth was through dying cloth to colour it, consequently the higher the quality of the cloth or the garment the greater the chance it would have been dyed. Whilst there is no doubt that coloured cloth has been worn through out history by the wealthy, the extent to which ordinary folk would have been able to dye home spun/woven cloth is a topic of great debate amongst many historians, archaeologists and historical re-enactors. Modern dyes can cheaply achieve all manner of bright colours such that coloured cloth is now no more expensive than undyed cloth. Sadly this seems to have prejudiced modern aesthetics, and makes us treat bright colours as the norm making it difficult to appreciate just how special coloured cloth once was. Natural substantive or mordant fixed dyes such as woad and madder used throughout history to create red or blue cloth were generally expensive to produce or buy and lead to more subdued colours than modern dyes. Bright colours could be achieved with period dyes, but things such as kermes were so expensive they really were only available to the elite of society. Within the subject of bright colours I also wish to include bright white and pure black, both are exceptionally time consuming to achieve naturally. The terms black and white when used historically in connection with clothing probably refer to strongly pigmented dark grey/browns and pale cream/beige colours. Home grown plant and vegetable dyes that were easily or cheaply available to the rural populace, tended to produce subdued colours which quickly faded or washed out needing to be re-dyed regularly.

Different people in different re-enactment groups or societies will tell you all manner of different things about the prevalence of dyed cloth in their own particular period of interest. For every strongly argued opinion you hear there will be an equally strongly argued counter view. You must form your own opinions based not just upon the evidence any individual presents to you, but on a more widespread understanding of how applicable or relevant that evidence may be in terms of making a widespread generalisation. Also bear in mind the various sumptuary laws which were in place for much of English history. These governed the types and colours of clothing people of different rank and status could and couldn't wear, and although only the lowest of social clases were forcibly restricted to undyed, naturally pigmented cloth, these people did make up a very large proportion of the population. If wishing to use coloured cloth when portraying the ordinary folk that would make up the majority of the population, I would suggest you stick to subdued colours; Most probably drab yellows or earthy red/orange/browns. Blues tended to be more time consuming/expensive and contrary to common opinion true greens were generally difficult to achieve and had to be created by overdying blue with yellow, consequently most cheap greens were actually just greenish shades of yellow. Obviously you must research the colours that were avaialble in your specific period of interest but I would wish to strongly argue the case for a far greater use of un-dyed and naturally pigmented cloth amongst all re-enactment groups and periods of history.

I have discussed in the first part of this guide how the majority of evidence available to us is likely to be biased in favour of the wealthy. As such although you may easily be able to find lots of evidence of brightly coloured clothing in your period of interest it doesn’t mean everybody was wearing it. Evidence to support what colour clothing the ordinary labourers and artisan classes of the past wore is almost nonexistent, but if you exclude all high status examples from your research what little is left points to a much drabber picture. Indeed if you look back to the old Viking sagas people are often described as notable for wearing coloured clothing, even if the colour itself is not mentioned. This could easily be taken to mean that any colour was exceptional. If we look to the late Tudor period there is a an expression “country grey” used to describe the clothing worn by rural folk (which at this time would be about 90% of the population) This didn’t mean a constant, even dyed grey as we now think of it, instead it referred to the mottled natural beige, creams, russets and browns of naturally pigmented wools, linens and leathers. Even if you go back to living memory and rural England around the time of Wold War One, the vast majority of clothing worn in the countryside was natural subdued colours. This is despite more brightly coloured “modern” fabrics being fashionable in the cities where the wealthy elite of society have always needed to appear successful in order to prosper.

I would further support my argument for the majority of re-enactors wearing very little coloured clothing on the basis of sheep production over the last two thousand years of history. Although England has been noted for its trade in wool and cloth throughout almost all of its history, the large scale exporting of wool for which England was to become famous did not fully develop as a professional industry until around the 13th century. So whilst we now think of sheep as being white, woolly creatures farmed for their soft, fluffy fleeces, traditionally sheep were a meet/dairy animal. Although, breeds of soft haired white sheep were introduced by the Romans, native breeds of sheep tend to be more hardy and resilient wiry haired animals with smaller darker fleeces. Consequently although evidence can be found for flocks of white sheep throughout English history, these animals, farmed primarily for their better fleeces, would, for much of English history be less numerous than the more hardy breeds farmed for meet and dairy production. Indeed there is some evidence to suggest that the numbers of white sheep in England declined after the departure of the Romans. Numbers only started to increase again from the thirteenth century with the increasing demand for high quality white wool brought about by the wide spread commercialisation of weaving. This change in emphasis of sheep farming from meat and dairy to wool is reflected in the increasing ages at which sheep were being slaughtered as shown in the numerous animal bones excavated from archaeological sites around the country.

Most rural families would probably keep a few of the smaller darker coloured native sheep for milk and meat, the wool although a useful by-product would not be of primary concern. Women and probably children and older men would spend much of their time spinning this and weaving it at home for making their family clothing. As mentioned earlier it was not until about the thirteenth century that significant numbers of men moved into weaving as a full time occupation. It was these professional weavers that were supplying the high quality cloth for trade and export. From this point on we can trace a notable increase in the price of sheep with soft white wool capable of making the best cloth both in terms of fineness and it's suitability for dying. Such pressure would undoubtedly have lead to a gradual change in farming practices and the types of animals being reared, but it should be noted that it would be a good while longer before such professionally woven cloth would be used as a matter of routine by the ordinary populace. Most rural folk would probably continue to spin and weave their own cloth at home from the cheaper fleeces of the more resilient and easily farmed sheep they would keep as much as dairy animals as for their wool.

It only takes a small percentage of naturally occurring pigment in the wool of a sheep for the thread spun from it to take on a brownish grey or beige colour. Given the weak nature of most early dyes available, such thread or cloth would not over-dye very well and would lead to even more muddy looking colours. There is very little evidence from the archaeological record of such naturally pigmented wool being dyed, though simply patterned cloth woven from threads of differing degrees of natural pigmentation was seemingly common. Linen the other common textile is regarded to be more difficult to produce and more difficult to dye. Furthermore it has been shown to be used predominantly for undergarments, bed sheets and other items of cloth that would need regular laundering. Given how poorly dyes take on linen without special pre-treatments and mordants, how quickly early vegetable dyes faded or washed out and how little of such undergarments would be on view when worn, there is little reason to envisage people wanting to colour linens. Even with all the bias of available evidence pointing to the use of coloured wool amongst the wealthy there is still very little evidence of dyed linens being used prior to the industrial revolution and particularly the invention of modern synthetic dyes. Most commonly linen would simply be allowed to fade from its natural pale greyish brown to a creamy white through wear and washing, or occasionally the process may be accelerated by bleaching to produce a whiter cloth, though this would still be far from the white we can now achieve with chemical whiteners and modern detergents.

Given the strong interest in military and battle re-enactment I suppose at this point I must mention coloured uniforms. Throughout history there have long been efforts made by formalised armies to standardise on important pieces of armour or weaponry, indeed the Romans excelled at managing to mass produce such equipment. However it is comparatively recently that such an emphasis was also placed on basic clothing. The majority of Romans probably wore a white tunic not because it was a special military issue but because most people of the time would wear a simple linen tunic. Furthermore it should be noted that from the demise of the Roman army to the formation of the new model army during the civil war in the 1600’s, the majority of any army would normally be comprised of several smaller militia or retinues raised by local leaders or nobles. Their costume, weaponry and armour would most probably be what ever they happened to own as an individual. Distinctions between different cultures or peoples living at any one time such as the Saxons, Normans and Vikings would be difficult to identify through the dress of the common soldiery. It is perhaps only their chiefs, leaders or warlords that could afford high status clothing that may show some cultural differences in decorative attire. Even during the English civil war the majority of fighting troops were still drawn from smaller militias or privately raised bodies of men who would fight in their ordinary clothing. A few wealthy generals may have tried to provide their own troops with a coat of dyed wool to help identify them in battle though this was expensive and not all that common despite it's prevalence among re-enactors. However each general or leader regardless of political or religious affiliations would dress themselves in as expensive a costume as they could afford so as to stand out and be recognised. The stereotypical distinction between the extravagantly dressed cavaliers and the soberly dressed roundheads is pure fiction. Royalists and Parliamentarians both dressed well if they could afford to do so. Furthermore much of the clothing of the common soldiery described as being grey would not have been dyed a uniform grey but would have been the mottled drab colours of the naturally pigmented wools they would have been wearing anyway. In the heat of battle there was often little to distinguish between the dress of your own troops and those of the enemy. Uniform in the sense of something that was dyed to be truly “uniform” from one soldier to the next did not really become common place until the Napoleonic conflicts.

Perhaps the one aspect of coloured clothing that is greatly under-represented amongst re-enactors is that of coloured embroidery and decorative needle work. England has long had a tradition for fine needle work and though styles changed a lot through time, examples from all periods of history can be found. The creation of such designs would require very little of the expensive dyes or white wools which are needed in order to produce clear colours from these dyes. Furthermore being used in such small quantities even silk threads may have been occasionally affordable to folk of more modest means. Nevertheless what we must try to distinguish is whether there would be any significant differences between the types of needle work applied to large wall hangings or religious artefacts from which much of our evidence comes and secular everyday clothing which may have been kept simpler if it was known it would be subject to greater wear. Whilst we as busy modern people may consider such decoration to be excessively labour intensive to apply, we must remember that in the past the production of any item of clothing was very labour intensive, people would own very few clothes and a few extra hours just to enliven one garment with a little coloured stitching, perhaps around the collar or cuffs or maybe along the seams was probably negligible compared to the time taken to spin thread, weave cloth and hand sew together any particular garment. No doubt the most extensively embroidered and colourful garments would have been the preserve of the very wealthy and may have been reserved for ceremonial use, but it seems probable that many more ordinary folk may have owned costume with a little coloured decoration, even if the garments themselves were not coloured.

Based upon the evidence we have for textiles and cloth from the last two thousand years of history, along with evidence we have for the raw materials this cloth would be made from and the techniques used to manufacture it we can draw certain conclusions. I feel confident to state that very few rural folk, people who would make up the majority of the populace for much of England’s history, would have easy access to the raw materials needed to produce brightly coloured cloth. Furthermore I do not believe they would have any great incentive to spend a great deal of their resources and time on making such coloured cloth. It is for these reasons that the clothing of the wealthy merchants, clergy and nobility is so often described as being notable for it’s opulence in terms of colour, quality and quantity of cloth used in it’s construction.

A final point to note before moving on to sourcing materials for making reproduction costume is that it may not be appropriate for the ordinary folk we wish to portray to be wearing new clothes made to the latest fashions of the period portrayed. Clothing could well be second hand and may be more than one generation old. An important part of recreating the look and feel of everyday life may well be in the ways we subtly distress our clothing to make it look lived in and worn, though those who've been involved with re-enactment for twenty or thirty years may find their costume acquires such a look naturally. Unless playing a beggar for comedic value beware of overdoing this as all clothes would be highly valued and looked after. Nevertheless also bear in mind that getting new clothes was not the everyday occurrence that it now is. For much of history ordinary people were known and recognised by the set of clothes they owned. Whilst underwear and simple linens may have needed repair and replacement more frequently than outer garments, somebody getting a complete new outfit could well have been the talking point of the village and something of great note in a small community. If we are truly to give an authentic portrayal of any early period of history, new clothing should probably stand out as being special almost as much as elaborately coloured or decorated high status costume.