Fantasy Wardrobe: Fabrics
We often call clothes silk when they are satin, velvet where they are velveteen or we have no clue what we’re on about. So today let’s look at fabrics.
Laying down the law
Many renaissance/mediaeval societies governed over who could wear what. By adding these laws you had a layer of depth to your world.
Women and men could only be dressed n clothes benefiting their position
Female servants or their daughters could not wear veils costing more than twelve pence
Knightly families could not wear cloth of gold or sable fur or velvets
The wife or daughter of a labourer were not to wear clothes beyond a certain price or a girdle garnished with silver
Cloth of gold and purple silk only worn by the royal family. This goes for ermine.
The importation of silk and lace foreigners was prohibited when the kingdom produced those textiles.
Peasant Clothing (Beggars to Merchant classes)
Wool: This was the staple of much of the clothes owned by peasants. It was in supply and it wasn’t as costly as most fabrics when undyed. It was also warm.
Linen: Forget about softness. Peasant linen was made of coarser weaves and flax. It was heavier than noble linen.
Cotton: A lightweight fabric used in hotter climates. It was softer than the linen and airier.
Fustian: heavy cloth woven from cotton, for menswear.
Leather: Leather was used for boots and shoes rather than killer jackets.
Nobility & Royalty
Cloth of Gold: Cloth made from woven threads of gold (very expensive)
Cloth of silver: cloth made from woven silver strands (very expensive)
Samite: a rich silk fabric woven with gold and silver threads
Tulle: A netting sort of material
Brocade: rich silk fabric with raised patterns sewn on it.
Cambresine: fine, lightweight linen
Cambric: thin white cotton or linen
Cypress: gauze made of cotton or silk
Damask: like brocade but the patterns are flat
Delaine : light wool/mixed wool and cotton
Lawn: sheer plain-woven cotton or linen
Sarsenet: fine and soft silk
Sateen: glossy cotton or wool
Satin: closely woven silk, shiny
Taffeta: Thickly woven silk
Velvet : piled fabric of silk, cotton or synthetic material
Velvetine: cotton with silk pile
Saxony: fine, delicate woollen fabric
Alençon Lace: intricate floral lace with three-dimensional corded detail sewn onto a fine tulle backing
Chantilly Lace: lightest of lace
Charmeuse: smooth, flowing, silk, cotton,
Chiffon: sheer and lightweight fabric
Crepe de Chine: thicker, lightly textured silk
Dupioni: crisp lusturous silk
Organza: sheer and lightweight fabric of very fine weave silk
Georgette: sheer fabric of silk
Guipure Lace: heavier lace
Designs
Embroidery: Patterns sewn on the fabric by thread
Appliqué: decorative fabric, often lace or floral motifs, sewn onto the main material
Embellishment: details such as beads, crystals, sequins, pearls
Trim: a line of material or fur that finishes off a hem or cuff.
Piping: a cord lining the fabric creating a ribbed look.
Colours
Here are the colours that you will catch your people wearing. Keep in mind that dyes had to be sourced and could be very expensive.
Peasant: brown, red or gray.
Nobility: Gold, silver, crimson or scarlet, deep indigo blue, violet colors and even deep black and pure white colors
Royalty: Purple
Furs
Mink: Soft and lightweight, silkly and glossy furs
Fox: Long, lustrous, colourful and easy to dye.
Ermine: White fur streaked with black (ONLY FOR ROYALTY)
Sable: long, luxurious, dense but light.
Wolf: thick, tough, warm but has a bad smell
Vair: fur from a red squirrel really only used for trimming.
You are-very wrong about some of this.
First. All linen is made of flax. That’s what it IS. Processed fibers from the stalks of flax. Linen is also incredibly soft, even at really heavy weights, because processing it into the fibers removes most of the stiffness, and spinning it takes care of the rest.
Second. Brocade is made by weaving a base weft for securing the cloth, then a supplemental warp to actually make the pattern. It’s usually not embroidered, because it’s already got an expensive pattern to it.
Third. Damask is a type of brocade, yes, but it’s double-sided brocade, whereas traditional brocade only has the pattern on one side. Still no real textural differences because, see above, the patterns are woven in.
Fourth. White fabric is SUPER GODDAMN COMMON when you have a lot of white wool. Peasants wear a lot of undyed wool, and are not nearly as unwashed as you think. Undyed linen is a nice pale tan though, I’ll give you that.
Fifth. Ermine is, actually, a specific animal. It’s the winter coat of a stoat, a little weasel. Very cute critters.
Sixth. As someone with several wolf pelts, mine actually have less of a smell than any of the sheepskins I’ve been around.
ALSO.
Seventh. Cotton referred to a weave or surface of cloth, and not its fiber in early accounts. The cotton plant, itself, does not grow well in cooler climates and so wasn’t commonly use or available in Northern Europe until about the 17th century, at which time it was normally blended with linen when used in garment fabrics. Eighth. The idea that peasants were restricted to browns, reds, and grays as dye is incorrect. Muted colors were deemed more appropriate for peasants (to reflect the humbleness God had chosen for them and to avoid the mortal sin of pride), and included faded, pale shades of a number of colors if you could source it. Blue was actually a perfectly acceptable color for several classes because of its religious associations.
The search term for regulations like this is “Sumptuary Law” - a law or laws governing consumption of food, drink and goods.
It wasn’t just to keep people in their social place, but frequently to help local industry - wearing woollen clothes made here, not cotton clothes imported from there, drinking Scotch whisky not French brandy, and so on.
Hemp produced a fabric which was made in the same way as linen (retting etc. - look it up). I have a couple of hemp shirts by Patagonia; they’re coarser than the fine Irish damask linenware I inherited from my Mum, but are by no means crude peasant garments.
This is hemp.
So is this.
Linen can be made with a weave so tight that, once the fibres expand from their initial soaking, it will hold water (as proved with the fine Irish damask linenware mentioned above) while other weaves are so light they’re translucent.
Check out the way it’s represented in Ancient Egyptian art..
…or indeed a good-quality Irish linen handkerchief.
This is linen.
So is this.
That’s linen damask, like the tablecloths and pillowcases left me by Mum. Its 1950s laundry instructions are “boil wash, then hot iron while damp”. This was when “boil wash” meant just that, not merely the hottest setting on the machine. Linen is sturdy stuff, and so is hemp.
Once woven it was bleached in the sun and with enough good weather would end up white; this bleaching-green was near where I grew up, AFAIK still in use in the 1950s. There’s even more linen laid out off in the distance. @dduane says the strips could be mistaken for poly-tunnels.
Because the linen was laid out in the open for several days at a time, it needed a watchman to keep animals away and prevent theft, and a place for him to stay, rather like this:
“Linens” (plural) meant under-garments. Besides next-the-skin underwear as we know it now - drawers, braies, shifts, chemises - shirts and blouses also qualified as “linens”. Washing simply made and hard-wearing “linens” was easier than doing it to heavier, more elaborate outerwear which needed disassembled - sleeves, braid, lace, buttons and all - before washing could begin.
Blue was a common colour - it came from woad and had been used for thousands of years.
“The Complete Book of Herbs” by Lesley Bremness is a useful book from our reference shelves, and has a chart of 50 dye-herbs, their basic colours, and how those colours could vary, depending on what mordant was used to fix the colour in the fabric and even on what fabric was being dyed.
Just two examples show these changes: woollen cloth dyed with heather tips and alum came out yellow, but young heather branches, alum and a pinch of iron filings produced green. Onion skins and alum gave orange wool, onion skins and copper filings in white vinegar gave brassy yellow wool and tan silk.
Here’s an example of three dye-plants each used with three different mordants.
Alum is the most common mordant in the chart, and explains why the Medici control of newly-discovered alum deposits in Italy made them so rich. Before then Europe’s alum had to be bought, reluctantly and with much grinding of teeth, from the Ottoman Turks.
Here are a couple of samplers showing colours from natural dyes:
All these colours were more muted than modern chemical dyes, but not that much more, though they faded faster. Wealthy people who could afford stronger dyes and frequent re-dying would have been more intensely colourful than pastel-hued lower orders, not forgetting the sumptuary laws - remember them? - meant to keep them from looking like their betters. A peasant or yeoman who could get away with bright colours might have other bright ideas too…
However, while History might not have been as vivid as marginalia and full-page Book of Hours illuminations suggests (inks and paints aren’t out in the daylight)…
…it certainly wasn’t as monochromatically muddy as Hollywood would have you believe.
That trend started AFAIK with “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”, and was happily embraced because “everyone knows” historical people were dirty - also stupid, superstitious, deceitful and cruel.
You know, the way modern people aren’t.
Don’t forget the business of coconut shells, either.
(Which was IRL a bit more subtle than just banging them together. I saw a brief filler documentary long ago showing how the coconut-shells were in fact thumped against trays filled with - or actual slabs of - appropriate surface: gravel, cobbles, grass, sand and so on. But that’s another post.)
