On Wed, 8 Feb 2006 [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > I haven't done much research before the 1400s so I can't talk about > anything before then, however in the _Museum of London: Clothing and > Textiles_ book it shows fabric buttons on the sleeves of the gothic > fitted dresses (usually referred to as cotehardies in the SCA). The > book has enough instructions for how to make the fabric buttons, that > I have done so based simply on that book. Somewhere I read that metal > buttons could/were used on the front of the over-dresses (but I can't > come up with an extant example off the top of my head) but that the > buttons were so expensive that sometimes people would not attach the > metal buttons but instead lace the buttons onto the dress via holes > such as for lacing up the front of the dress. Unfortunately I can't > remember _where_ I read this so I have no idea how reliable the source > is. The _Museum of London_ book also shows hand-made eyelets for > lacing down the front closure of the gothic fitted dress. I'm sure > Robin has many more sources for this period then I do :-)
Maybe not, but I'll elaborate where I can ;-) First, I think it's important to distinguish layers here. Buttoning down the front of a dress seems to be typical only of the outer layer (the layer that might actually have been called a cotehardie in French) but not the inner layer (the fitted supportive dress, which could be worn alone or with an overdress). Laced fronts seem pretty much universal on the supportive (inner or single) layer. Sometimes the lacing is visible in images; sometimes it is not, which could simply mean that the artists did not conventionally render it, not that it was necessarily invisible to the eye. (I have never seen evidence of a back lacing of the supportive dress; if anyone ever finds such evidence, I'd like to see it.) Next, you need to distinguish time and place. Buttons down the front of overdresses seem to be common only in certain periods and regions -- I have this sense of seeing them much more often in English sources than French, for instance, and more often in the earlier versions of the fitted overdresses (say, to 1390 or so) than in the later ones. There also seems to be a regional/temporal variance in preference for whether to use buttons to fit the sleeves, and how many/how far up the arm. You can see a few buttons at the wrist or partway up the forearm quite early in the 14th c., with the upper half of the sleeve not fitted; then later you see the buttons go up past the elbow, making the entire sleeve fitted. Sometimes there are no visible buttons, suggesting that lacing or sewing-in was used to tighten the sleeves to the arm; in fact, buttons on the sleeve seem relatively rare after 1400 or so, but the sleeves remain extremely tight. The next distinction to make is class. The buttons you use would reflect the money you have to spend. The fabric buttons in the MOL's "Textiles and Clothing" book have gotten so much attention that some people don't realize that there's a much larger sample set of surviving buttons of other materials: metal, bone, horn (I think). Many examples of these are reproduced in the MOL's "Dress Accessories" book. I'd have to look up the various options, but I would expect wood to have been equally likely. Also, bear in mind that we don't know what kinds of garments the fabric buttons (or, for that matter, the laced eyelets) from the MOL book came from -- it is probably more likely that they are from a lower-class tunic than from a middle- or upper-class fitted dress, and equally likely to be from a man's garment as a woman's. If you've got an upper-class dress, you might want to think twice before doing fabric buttons. In particular, I don't think I'd choose fabric buttons for the front of a buttoned fitted overdress, which is an expensive garment; anyone wearing it could have afforded metal or another material. Bottom line: To determine whether and how to use buttons, lacing, etc., figure out what place, time, style, and class you're focusing on, and look specifically at sources that are the closest possible match. Remember that even in one style (in this case the fitted dress of 1350-1450) there are numerous variations in such things as bust height, skirt width, and neckline depth, as well as button/lacing use; ideally you would use a combination of features that are all consistent with a single period/place/class, not mixed-and-matched over a hundred-year stretch. (People of the period would no doubt have been as aware of these differences as we are of things like modern hemline length or waist height or shoulder size, which all vary over the years in modern fashions.) Oh, about those buttons attached through eyelet holes: This was apparently a means of attaching the buttons in some garments. The buttons were not sewn to the cloth, but were put through eyelets and then threaded through a ribbon on the inside. As far as I know the other part of the garment had conventional buttonholes, and was buttoned up as usual. It's suggested that this made it easier to remove the buttons for washing or for transfer to another garment (or to sell or give away). In any case, it does seem this would be a way of reducing wear to the cloth, and a logical move from the existing technology of lacing (which goes back at least to the 12th c.) to buttons. > Hooks and eyes were used extensively in the dresses Janet Arnold > studied in the late 1500s, and I seem to remember a picture from the > late-1400s early-1500s showing hook and eyes at the neck. The image was of a famous court fool, I believe, but I forget who and when. > P.S. I do not know when buttons + loops were used -- all button > references here are to buttons and buttonholes. I have never seen any evidence for them in the Middle Ages, though a lot of people seem to assume them as a default. I have no idea why. --Robin _______________________________________________ h-costume mailing list [email protected] http://mail.indra.com/mailman/listinfo/h-costume
