What Your Very Cool Medieval Character is Wearing
What a character wears, especially before the Industrial Revolution, can tell you a lot about that character. But we are at a loss when it comes to the medieval wardrobe. Not many examples have survived, and portraits can be confusing. If you are writing some character from that era, here are a few options for them.
Herigaut
The precursor to the massive robe thing, the houppelande, the heriguat is a charming type of coat with loose, slitted sleeves that you could take your arms out of, letting your fancy long sleeves dangle behind you. Sometimes the sleeve heads were gathered for extra poof.
This was a dude thing from the 1200’s and 1300’s that you rarely see on women, though its related garments in the 1300 through 1400’s were popular with both sexes. Your Grammerly app is not going to recognize this word, by the way. It will think you are saying hairy or something equally silly.
Sideless Surcoat
This one raised some eyebrows: a sleeveless overdress where the armholes go from the shoulders to the hips. I wish I had discovered this earlier because my characters live just a hair earlier then when it would be very common for nobility: mid-1200’s and 1300’s. It would be worn over a standard cotte-style dress and could have a fur lining on the armholes. It was still being used ceremonially in the 1400’s, though it had gone out of fashion.
A little context: Guys wore surcoats starting in the 1100’s, but the fashion was all about wearing their family crest. Women started wearing the surcoat in the 1200’s but the deep armhole trend didn’t take until the 1300’s and was a women’s fashion.
Bliaut
This is the classic ‘medieval’ dress in some ways. It’s got the big, flowy, squarish sleeves that are fitted at the upper arm but go wild past the elbow, and most versions flow to the floor. Both sexes wore it, though the guy version was frequently shorter, less fitted, and had a flared skirt. (And I feel a little weird saying that a guy was wearing a bliaut, since it is so firmly in my mind as a dress. It’s the Tiffany problem, I guess, plus my own personal hangups.)
They were popular in the 1100’s and into the 1200’s, though it depended on where you lived. Germans wore them with single belts, Brits wore them tight, and French folks wore a double belt with them. It’s all about the locality. They tended to be more fitted at the top for women, and they were more common in places influenced by France.
Tabard
This was the men’s work uniform, often carrying coat of arms or heraldic symbols in order to identify who the person worked for. They sometimes had sleeves, but the classic tabard was four panels, two in front and two in back, that kind of just hung from the shoulders and were slit at the sides. They went over mail or cottes, the shirts.
These hit the peak of popularity in the 1400’s and 1500’s.
Kirtle
A kirtle is the dress that would be fitted to the upper body. They were on trend for a while, so they changed shape over time. In the 1400’s, they were tight and extremely fitted to the point where they were the support garment. By then, they were also laced closed the way you tie your shoes along the sides or front and had a distinct skirt portion sewn onto the bodice bit. They disappeared by the 1600’s, when women started wearing tops and bottoms.
The early kirtles, which were looser, were also worn by men, though they tend to then get called cottehardies. (They have the same ‘it sounds wrong’ problem that I have with bliauts, I guess.)
Conclusion:
I feel a bit like the costuber who did a full, decade-by-decade breakdown of fashion in the 1800’s to stop people from referring to vague ‘1800’s style dress.’ Once more, Chris Wickham was right that 1000 years is a long time and the world is a big place, and the ‘medieval dress’ isn’t specific enough. Fashion changed slowly compared to later eras, but it did change.
It also is a reminder that men and women wearing something similar doesn’t immediately translate into greater equality of the sexes. It has a whole lot more to do with the need to conserve expensive cloth and passing trends.
And you should look at examples from museums and other places when trying to imagine your characters’ clothes. It makes things better.