Hi H-Costume,
You may remember a few months back that I was in pursuit of a legendary
statement about how ugly real medieval clothes were said to be by folks
teaching early SCAers how to dress.
The East Kingdom Historian was kind enough to give me a copy of:
*********************
"A Handbook of the Current Middle Ages" 1968, for Baycon -- this was the
only demo at that time.
Some excerpts from the clothing section, which is about six pages long:
Please note that my tailoring instructions are not completely authentic.
If this offends you, there are many texts available for more accurate
patterns. A truly authentic dress is likely to appear clumsy to the
modern eye.
Old bedspreads, especially the sort with scalloped edges, frequently
make fine dresses. The ones with scalloped edges make hemming
unnecessary and so save time in sewing.
Knit fabrics hang nicely in dresses, but tend to lose their shapes in
banners.
**********************
Now, please note that one of the areas which has seen a HUGE amount of
study in the past dozen years of the SCA has been in clothing. I'm not
trying to make rude fun of the writer, or the early SCA folks here, but
it is interesting to see what was advised in those early days. Whatever
the method, the pictures I've seen from those times (mostly courtesy of
the West Kingdom History Project website) are charming and medieval-looking.
As far as I know, there were not any "texts available for more accurate
patterns" despite what the writer had said -- at least, not by our 21st
century standards -- but if some of you who were doing historical sewing
in the 60s knew of any, please do post!
The amazing detail in the Museum of London books only came out some
dozen years ago, propagated by devoted folks like Mistress Tangwystl
(Heather Rose Jones) and Robin Netherton, and with it, an astonishing
realization by the archeological community that there were re-enactment
hobbyists who might want to buy their journals.
And then hobbyists draping fabric and trying to figure out the fabric
tech of the Middle Ages -- not assuming that a set-in sleeve was of
course what you did for a tunic, and so on. (Note that the writer of
this section does say that darts and set-in sleeves are "recent"
inventions, but the included patterns include them anyway.)
A last detail: the writer calls a sideless surcoat a "cotehardie." These
days, that's what we call the fitted gown which goes under a woman's
sideless surcoat, unless we're being really precise, and then we
clothing-wonks call it a Gothic Fitted Dress.
<http://www.netherton.net/robin/> (There was another site with
pictures, but it's offline at the moment.)
--
Cynthia Virtue and/or Cynthia du Pre Argent
"Such virtue hath my pen...." -Shakespeare, Sonnet 81
"I knew this wasn't _my_ pen!" --Cynthia Virtue
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