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

Part 3. Identifying suitable modern leathers and cloth

What follows is an attempt to briefly outline the sorts of common leathers and textiles that have been made throughout history, those which would have been common place and accessible to ordinary working folk. Perhaps more importantly I'll also try to relate these to the sorts of things that are available to us today that will provide a good approximation of these period materials.

In today’s world we tend to think of leather as an expensive luxury item because of the amount of processing needed to turn the skin of a dead animal into a durable leather. Throughout history it would have required the same extensive processing it still requires today, it was however generally cheaper than woven textiles as these would have required spinning and weaving by hand and so were even more labour intensive. Most modern leathers are made of cattle hide, but throughout history sheep, goat, pig, horse, deer, seal, cat, dog and many other animals have been used. The smaller animals tend to produce thinner leathers more suitable for clothing whereas thicker cattle hide is often more suited to belts and shoes. However, it is worth noting that in the past most skins used to make leather were the by-products of butchery for meat. The most common skins would therefore be the ones being most commonly butcherred and we must also take into account the methods of butchery. Some animals like cattle are skinned before butcherring into joints of meat. Others like pigs may be butchered with the skin on producing cuts of meat still with the rind on and would therefore, not routinely produce skins for tanning. Consequently any animal that had to be butcherred in a special or non standard way to remove the skin would probably have produced a more expensive leather. However, it is possible that in the past all animals would have been skinned as a matter of routine irrespective of butchering preferences because leathers would have been much more important owing to the greater cost of woven cloth.

You will often hear re-enactors of many early periods of history telling you, that aside from shoes, there are no surviving artefacts on which to support the idea that any particular type of garment was made from leather. If your period of interest falls into the early periods researched more through archaeology than written history then this is not surprising as very little leather survives anywhere. Furthermore being so time consuming to manufacture leather would be endlessly recycled until no longer usable. The chances of any large thin leather garment surviving intact for centuries, even millennia is remote. Nevertheless in the few archaeological sites where organic materials remain there is often a strong chance of recovering small scraps of leathers. Often these may include little bits of seams or hems trimmed off when recycling and reusing bigger items for some other purpose. The fact that we can’t reliably say what was being made with all these little bits of leather we find hundreds of years later is no justification for not making garments out of leather. In any instance where people want hard wearing, cheap and weather proof clothing, leather was an ideal choice and so would probably have been more commonplace with rural workers in the country than in towns. No matter how far back you go into written sources references to a wide range of leather objects and garments can be found. Whilst written sources may give no information on cut or construction they can at least give a good indication of what was being made. So, Whilst the thought of leather underwear may now speak of some manner of sexual perversion, there is documentary evidence from the seventeenth century of it being used to make underclothes for orphans because it was the cheapest and most hardwearing material available. If it was the cheapest material available then, it was probably the cheapest material available for much of history before this as, if anything, leading up to this point advances in the technology of leather tanning lagged behind advances in spinning and weaving.

When buying leathers to make reproduction costume there are a few things to bear in mind. Throughout history most leathers were vegetable tanned often using oak bark. By the later medieval period there was a clear distinction between tanners dealing mainly in oak tanned cattle hides and whitawyers dealing in alum and oil tanned skins of the smaller animals to produce softer, finer, paler leathers for clothing. Most modern leathers are mechanically processed and chemically tanned using chrome or nickel salts. The behaviour of these nickel/chrome tanned leathers can be quite different from a craftsman’s point of view, particularly if you intended tooling any form of decoration onto it or doing a lot of hand stitching. The use of modern abrasives and mechanical polishing to remove much of the growth marks and grain pattern left having removed the hairs of a skin also results in a very smooth surface which although not impossible to achieve by hand in the past would have made such finely finished leathers the preserve of the very wealthy. Furthermore most modern animals, cattle in particular, are selectively bred to produce hornless varieties, or are dehorned when young so as to promote more rapid growth for faster meat production. This also results in much less injury to animals through fighting and skins with much less scar tissue or scratches. The use of plastic ear tags for identification instead of branding has also reduced the amount of "flaws" in most skins, such that what we now regard as poor low grade skins would probably, for much of history, have been the norm in terms of marks and irregularities. If you need to distinguish between veg tanned and metal tanned leathers then the smoothness of the surface can be a give away, though this technically has little to do with the tanning process and just reflects the routine practice of mechanically polishing nickel/chrome tanned leathers some what more aggressively than veg tanned which may easily be made with an equally smooth polished surface. Furthermore, much of the graining and texturing on modern leathers is actually created through polishing the skin smooth and then applying the texture with a heavy press or roller, so this is hardly a foolproof system. A better test is that good veg tanned leather usually soaks up water like a sponge bubbling furiously as it does so, whereas the metal tanned leather is much more water resistant.

However, perhaps the biggest difference between modern and period leathers is in the colours. Almost all modern leathers are supplied dyed, sometimes in bright colours. Although naturally dyed leathers would have been available to the more affluent of the past, un-dyed vegetable-tanned leather is obviously preferable to us as re-enactors and well worth seeking out as it can still be found for sensible prices. Nevertheless, bear in mind that almost all vegetable tanned leather now availalble is tanned using a concentrated extract of chestnut to give very rapid tanning. True oak bark tanning is very slow, is now very rare and consequently expensive. Oak tanned leather takes on a pale yellow/brown hue, whilst chestnut tanned leather takes on a very pale reddish/pink hue. Oil/alum tawed leathers tend to be very pale cream colours and can be almost white, however whilst they can still be sourced today expect to pay very high prices for them as they tend only to be used by specialist book binders. Many seemingly un-dyed leathers now available are actually dyed these colours to achieve a more uniform or natural colouration.

When portraying ordinary folks clothing from the past we should probably be looking for leathers with quite pale natural flesh/skin tones or very pale yellow/brown colouration depending upon the animal the skin came from and the process involved in tanning it. The dark red/brown colours we tend to think of as traditional leather colours aren't actually part of the tanning process but come about through subsequent waxing or oiling to waterproof it. This can be seen in the adjacent picture which shows the dramatic darkening brought about by oiling modern veg tanned leather. Though you can buy un-dyed veg tanned leathers which are waxed and polished to achieve this colour it is far more probable that any affordable leathers that look like this will be nickel/chrome tanned leathers dyed rich red/browns to simulate a more antique look. Besides waxing and oiling leathers is quick cheap and easy to do yourself at home so there's little point in paying to have it done elsewhere. Consequently don't look for such dark shiny brown veg tanned leathers, don't look for the very shiny and polished chrome tanned leathers, and certainly don’t buy or use the thick black leathers now used by motorcyclists for making protective jackets or trousers.

Leather is obviously a natural material so no two skins are going to be the same. They are typically priced by the square foot. Cattle hides may be up to about 10mm thick in places but are typically sold at 3-4mm thick and whole hides may easily exceed 50sq.ft. These are the sorts of things to use for belts and shoes, and you may well be using them for scabbards and sheaths and other craft projects. Cattle skins may also be available as thinner "splits" where the grain side is separated from the flesh side, thereby producing double the square footage by turning one thick skin into two thinner ones. Goat skin, sheep skin and pig skin are the other easily sourced leathers still available today. All are likely to be available in skins about 5-15sq.ft. with goat skins generally being the smallest of these three types. Goat skin is typically regarded as one of the best quality skins you can buy, it has a soft feel and a supple drape hanging nicely despite being quite thick, sometimes up to 2mm thick. Sheep or lamb skin tends to be a thinner leather but is just as supple. Pigskin is most commonly avaialable as a split, so whilst pig skin has a very characteristic and recognisable grain pattern from the removal of the bristly hairs the cheaper suede finished half of the split will not have this. Nevertheless pig skin suede splits are some of the cheapest leathers available and are very thin (less than 1mm) lightweight skins that also drape nicely.

If you buy your leathers from large commercial dealers trading to the public you can expect a good choice of nickel/chrome tanned leathers at cheap prices but may have only a minimal selection of veg tanned hides for which you may have to pay upwards of £3-4 per sq.ft. and three to five times that for oil/alum tawed skins if they have them. Traders at re-enactment fairs dealing in leathers may have less selection but even if selling nickel chrome tanned leathers may have a better choice of skins died natural looking colours. They may also be able to sell you part hides if you only want small quantities and may be able to keep their prices to around £1 per sq.ft. even for veg tanned hides. As with all things in life the cheapest way of sourcing anything is to buy direct from the manufacturer providing you have need of the largish minimum quantities they may stipulate you must buy as a trade customer. Whilst living near Northampton I got to know the folk at my local tannery quite well, and as they got used to my somewhat odd requests I would often be given their rejects and the odd hides that were pock marked scarred or which did not dye evenly. Such things rejected by modern upholsterers were ideal for re-enactment as most of what I wanted could be cut around the worst scarring and a bit of texturing added to the overall look of most reproduction leather projects. It is difficult to suggest how much leather you may need for any particular garment since styles of clothing changed so much through out history. However for a typical doublet, something close fitting, long sleeved and with a minimal skirt or small tabs below the waist you may need a hide of about 20sq.ft. or perhaps two hides of about 12-15sq.ft. where wastage may be higher. As such it is unlikely that it should cost you more than £60 to get enough veg-tanned leathers to make such a garment and it is probable it will cost you less than half this. Modern chrome tanned and highly polished leathers may be much cheaper still but to my eye rarely look right.

When it comes to buying woollen cloth this is certainly the area where there is the biggest choice and the most problems. The first point to note is that whilst we may think of wool as being fibres from a sheep, many modern traders use the word as a generic term for cloth. If you want pure wool look for labels like “pure wool” or “100% wool”, generic wool is often wool blends based largely on acrylic or polyester. This can make the cloth appear a bit too shiny and it certainly makes a big difference in terms of safety. Historical re-enactors spend a lot of time around open fires and/or gunpowder. When man made fibres catch fire they melt and burn quickly causing a lot of harm to the people wearing them, natural fibres smoulder more slowly, and can often be put out before you suffer serious burns and are scarred for life. As a matter of routine I test scraps of all my cloth before making it into garments. Quickly touch a lighted match to an off cut of the textile. If the cloth won't ignite easily, smells of burnt hair, burns slowly or the flame peters out as soon as the match is removed it is probable it has a very high wool content. If it ignites quickly burns brightly and the flame continues to burn when you take away the match then it probably has a high percentage of man made fibres in it. Other natural fibres such as linen tend to burn a little more easily but not so readily as man made fibres. Perhaps the best way to tell the difference between man made and natural fibres is to study the residue. Manmade fibres tend to melt to form blobs of black plastic gunge rather than a fine powdery ash. If it looks like natural fibre and isn’t going to be a fire hazard then I’m happy to use it, absolute scientific identification of fibre types is rarely demanded by any re-enactment society.

There are three basic points to consider that differentiate different types of woollen cloth from one another. 1)The type or pattern of weave, that is how the weft thread is passed over or under the vertically stretched warp threads as it is passed side to side when weaving. 2) The weave count, that is how closely spaced the threads are, measured by counting the number of warp or weft threads in a 1cm wide strip of cloth. 3) The final point of note is the colour of the cloth, whether that be natural pigmentation in the warp or weft threads or an artifically applied dye. Loosely speaking, and I do mean loosely so check out the specifics for you period of interest, prior to the large scale commercialisation of weaving by men around the 13th century warp and weft threads were spun differently to give strong warp threads (those vertically placed in the loom) and fluffy weft (those which are actually woven in and out of the warp to form a cloth) This practice continued with domestic spinning and weaving long after the 13th century but the top quality professionally woven cloth used much finer spun threads for both warp and weft to get a better quality smoother more even cloth.

Since warp and weft were spun differently, often from fibres from different sheep or different parts of the same fleece they often looked different with differing textures and amounts of natural pigmentation. Consequently cloth woven from these threads took on a kind of basic pattern of subtly alternating hues based upon the type of weave. The simplest pattern of weaving used throughout history and still the most dominant weave pattern today is the simple tabby weave (a 1-1 weave where the weft passes over one warp thread then under one warp repeating across the cloth) Though surviving examples of cloth are rare from early periods of history this type of cloth has been found in use in most periods and cultures simply because it is the easiest to make. The use of subtly different shades of warp and weft produces a basic rustic type of cloth still being produced today under the name of Donegal tweed or sometimes salt’n’pepper tweed.

Prior to the Norman conquest, England seemed to show a strong tradition for a variety of complicated patterns of weaving known as twills. Here the weft would pass over or under more than one warp thread at a time, if each row of weaving was offset from the previous, then diagonal stripes could be created from the differently pigmented warp and weft. 2-2 twill is perhaps the simplest twill giving long diagonal stripes through the weave in a simple pattern now often referred to as Shetland weave. However, twills were commonly used as broken twills so as to change the direction of the diagonal stripes. Through clever changes in the way the weft was woven over or under the warp, little chevrons, larger herringbone or complicated diamond patterns can be created. Such herringbone patterns are still popular for many modern business suits though the threads in these cloths tend to be dyed uniform greys rather than being naturally pigmented. The early Normans seemed to particularly favour a 2-1 twill where the warp would be predominantly visible on one side of the cloth and the weft on the other giving the two sides of the cloth a very different appearance. However, by the late 14th century the wide spread use of twills seems to have fallen from favour and the basic tabby weave becomes standard. Neverthless, in Scotland the tradition of weaving plaids continued the idea of decorating textiles by weaving a pattern into the cloth at the time of manufacture using differently coloured threads, rather than dying the cloth a single colour after it had been woven. For those interested in re-enacting early periods all manner of complicated twills continue to be made to this day where they tend to fall under the generic term “tweeds”, you'll just need to identify those that are most suitable for your needs. For those interested in later periods of history it became increasingly common to buy cloth from professional weavers so fine tabby weaves became more common. Since these were often died "in the cloth" to a single colour, chosing cloth that replicates the colours of natural dyes may be more important than matching special weave patterns, even so, much cloth would still remain undied and so naturally pigmneted cloth may still be better for the lower orders of society..

Linens are generally a simpler thing to source than wools. The textiles mills of Ireland and to a lesser degree elsewhere are still producing pure linen cloth and selling this in a natural un-bleached and un-dyed state. With a few exceptions linen was almost always woven with a simple tabby weave though the threads were generally finer than those of wool. The main thing to consider with linens is the colour. Linen fibres show less natural variation than wool, generally being a dark beige/grey often described as having a slight hint of silvery green. However the processing of these during spinning and cloth making can result in products with a considerable spread of finished colours ranging from mottled darker grey/browns through to very pale cream or beige. Bleaching or excessive washing can lighten these to produce bright whites and many linens are now dyed natural colours to achieve a uniformity of colour. It is hard to find any reliable evidence as to exactly what shades of linen were most common in the past all we can say is that the evidence supports the use of lots of undyed and unbleached linens. So stick with the off-white. pale grey shades rather than the brightest of whites which are now available.

There is a common perception amongst many of the public that our early ancestors were unsophisticated and that early textiles must therefore have been coarsely woven but this does not seem to have been the case. Much of the distinction between cloths was not based upon weave pattern or colour but on weight and fineness of weave. I don’t wish to go into all the numerous different names used throughout history for different types of cloth, much has been written about this before and if you truly want to learn to distinguish between plunkets, russets, sergies, friezes, kersies, dozens and kendals and all manner of other textiles I suggest you seek out specialist publications on the subject specific to your period of interest.

Woollen cloths were produced in a wide variety of qualities from the cheapest wrappings and sacking to the finest quality clothing. Thread counts have been shown to range from as little as three or four threads per cm. to well over twenty threads per cm. In heavily fulled and fluffy textiles it is often impossible to count the threads or identify the weave patterns. It was normal for warp and weft counts to be roughly similar though the number of thinner warp threads was normally a fraction in excess of the thicker fluffier weft threads and in certain speciality ribbed cloths known as reps there could easily be twice as many warp threads as wefts. For those really interested in textiles you can start looking not just at the thread counts but at the particular types of fibre that the threads have been spun from, the breeds of sheep they have come from, the way in which these threads have been combed, the direction in which they have been spun or even how differnt threads have been plyed together to make thicker stronger threads. However although interesting, all this tends to be taking things further than most re-enactors would wish to go. As a general rule for most periods of history a home spun and woven woollen cloth as produced by ordinary folk in rural communities would be a simple tabby weave with a thread count of around 8-12 threads per cm. When new the weave would be clearly recognisable rather than being heavily fulled and fluffy, though later cloth was more likley to be fulled to a fluffy matted finsih than earler cloths. Age and excessive wear will inevitable felt a woollen cloth also. The threads of the weave would probably be a bit hairy rather than tightly spun from smooth fibres, and any patterning would most likely be based upon differing amounts of natural pigmentation in the warp and weft rather than through artificial dying. Linens tended to show a greater variation in the thread counts owing to the possibility of spinning finer threads. Counts ranged from the coarsest cloth at little more than five or six threads per cm. through to the finest examples being over 30 threads per cm. Though for those wishing to portray ordinary folks clothing I suggest something around 12-18 threads per cm. Such specifications on weave pattern and thread counts may seem a demanding list of requirements to be met by a modern cloth but the practicalities of what makes a good cloth have changed little with time and so there are lots of modern textiles out there that fit these descriptions and perseverance will find something suitable to fit even the tightest budget.

Cloth is sold by a variety of means and the most normal is by length, either by the metre or the yard. Modern machine made cloth is typically about 150cm (60”) wide but can vary. Also bear in mind that if the cloth we are purchasing is made on traditional looms or may even be hand woven they could be narrower down to as little as 60cm (24” wide). The narrower the cloth the greater the length we may need and the greater the wastage may be. However do bear in mind the old phrase “cutting ones clothes to suit ones cloth”. Modern cloth is cheap so if pattern pieces don’t fit a short length of cloth, we tend to buy more and accept a higher degree of wastage. Throughout many early periods of history it was common, even among the clothes of the wealthy to find the odd irregular seam across a particular panel of a garment, where off cuts of textile have been sewn together to create a new piece of cloth big enough to cut out another piece of the pattern. Such an approach has been known by many names but the old Tudor term of “cutting your clothes from cabbage” is one that I always find amusing.

The amount of cloth needed for any particular garment is obviously going to be determined by the style of that garment. It may be possible to construct small garments from as little as one metre of 150cm wide cloth. Tunics and shirts may need two or three metres depending upon style whilst longer fuller dresses or robes may need four to six metres. Remember also that if clothing in your period of interest was lined or even stiffened with interlining you may need two or three times this quantity of fabric. People in your group will advise you on the amount of cloth needed for any particular style of garment. Pure wools and linens have a high retail price if bought from high street haberdashery shops, often around £25-45 per metre. As such you could easily spend several hundred pounds putting together a basic costume of just two or three simple garments. Man made and mixed fibre textiles tend to be much cheaper but are much less appropriate. However, very few re-enactors ever pay such high prices for natural fibre cloth. High street retailers charge a premium price for keeping in a good quantity of cloth so as to be able to guarantee a supply. When they get down to the last few metres on the roll they will tend to remove it from their standard product lines and sell off the last remnants at a discount price.

There are many specialist traders catering for re-enactors who will source such roll ends and remnants, selling them on at living history fairs for about £5-10 per metre, often with a far better selection of "period looking" fabrics than you would find elsewhere. Pure wools and linens at these prices represent a good deal but do check you are getting pure wool and linen as many of the textiles for sale at these fairs are man made or mixed fibre equivalents. Such traders may also occasionally commission the production of a batch of reproduction cloth based upon a known period find. Such cloth will by necessity be very expensive, especially if it is hand woven, but it is worth the occasional treat if you plan to put a lot of effort into making a particular item of clothing. However, the cheapest option in terms of finding fabrics is to put in the effort yourself and start visiting the textile mills and discount retailers, looking for the roll ends and bargains that such specialist traders may also be trying to find to take to living history markets. In this case you may find oddments of pure wools and linens that work out as little as £2-3 per metre, the best I ever managed was 10m of pure black wool for just £3, that’s just 30p a metre. I don’t know what I’m going to do with pure black, it’s a bit too high status even for my later periods of interest, but it seemed too cheap to leave behind. That’s the thing with sourcing bargains you have to pick up what’s available and store it until you have need of it or can swap it for something more useful. It’s very rare that you can go out looking for something specific and happen to find it going cheap that day. Consequently most re-enactors soon end up with at least one large cupboard or room full of part bolts and roll ends of all manner of cloth types that "...will be useful for something at some point in the future!"

Perhaps the last thing I will mention with regard buying cheap remnant or roll ends is places that sell by weight. If you’ve never bought cloth by weight before and can’t actually measure what you’ve found, it can be a bit disconcerting to try work out how much cloth you might actually be getting. Is a bundle of 2kg enough cloth to do something useful with, and at what price does it become cheap? Obviously the length of cloth you get for a specific weight is dependant upon the width of the cloth and the density of the cloth. Assuming a standard width of 150cm heavy coat weights of wool weigh around 600-900g/m. Medium clothing weight wools around 350-600g/m whilst the finest lightest weight wools may weigh around 200-350g/m. Linen cloth tends to be thinner than wool but is generally more densely woven. As such light weight linens may look much finer than lightweight wools despite weighing roughly the same per metre. Unless looking to make tents, ships sails or other heavy weight items most clothing weights of linen are likely to be around 200-400g/m Consequently light weight cloth priced at around £12/kg is probably quite cheap at an equivalent of about £3-5/m whilst thicker heavier cloth at the same price may work out at about £6-10/m

Having discussed natural materials for making reproduction costume, it is worth briefly mentioning one or two points that may be of use to those new to costume making. It may seem obvious when written down but it's easier to trim a little bit off cloth than to add a little on. So when cutting out pattern pieces, provide for a generous seam allowance. If a garment has a complicated shape that is going to be difficult to tailor exactly, then start with a polyester bed sheet or other fabric you can get cheaply and a have a trial run. A practice run like this known as a "tuile" will enable you to refine the pattern to fit you and show how much you do need to be leaving for seam allowances, avoiding expensive mistakes on pure wool or linen cloth. A generous seam allowance also makes finishing the raw edges off inside much easier, making garments more durable and less likely to fray or fall apart at the seams. We've all learnt the hard way and had clothes split or fall apart the fist time they were washed because we left raw edges of fabric inside where we thought they wouldn't be seen.

Natural fibres may shrink, stretch or generally change shape the first few times they get wet. It is sensible prior to cutting out any costume to wash and dry all your wools and linens at least once, to minimise any change in shape that may happen later when finished garments are washed or simply get wet in the rain. It is therefore a wise precaution to buy a little more cloth than you think you might need, maybe an extra half metre or so if it’s available. Take care when buying very short roll ends, they may be cheap, but if they shrink even a little when first washed they may end up too small for what you intended. Buying a little extra fabric and pre washing it before cutting out should hopefully stop carefully tailored, snug fitting clothes ending up too small, or as can more easily happen with differential shrinkage of layers of linings, inner stiffening and outers, the whole garment pulling itself dreadfully out of shape.

Washing your cloth before cutting out can also be used to remove various chemical treatments applied to the cloth helping soften and possibly fade it, should you feel this desirable. Worth considering is what you use to wash your costume on a day to day basis. Modern detergents, used with machine washing tend to include all manner of bleaches and fluoressors and artificial whiteners to produce dazzling whites. Having gone to the trouble of choosing subdued, naturally coloured or pigmented materials, and perhaps having distressed these a little to introduce elements of dirt and staining, it is best to hand wash linens with a simple bar of soap in warm water so as to preserve the natural colours of your textiles. Wools are often best dry cleaned but where possible, if not too dirty, simply turning woollen garments inside out and hanging them outside to freshen up and reduce the smell of wood smoke can often be all that is needed. Ordinary working folk of the past certainly wouldn't be laundering the majority of their costume on such a regular basis as we now consider desirable. Only underwear made of more durable linens was washed regularly.

Well that’s covered enough basics to hopefully give you some idea about the sorts of materials you should be looking for. Whilst the fashions for the wealthy and elite often change rapidly based upon personal taste, the costume and textiles used by the ordinary folk would change much more slowly. Such clothing would be much less subject to changes in fashion, being governed far more by what was practical, what they already owned and what they could easily make themselves. It is for this reason I feel I can write generically about almost two thousand years of clothing. It is obviously important for each individual to do their own research into the period and people they are aiming to portray but I hope this overview of the subject provides some sort of framework in which to place your own research and some sort of context in which to interpret the inevitably patchy and limited information available for what ordinary people were wearing long before we were born.