Johnston R.A. All Things Medieval: An Encyclopedia of the Medieval World

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Style in the 11th and 12th Centuries

The centuries that established England’s Norman kingdom and launched

the Crusades were the beginning of fashion in Europe. Clothing had been

traditional and practical before this, and fashions had changed very slowly—

clothing a century old did not appear odd. During the 12th century, fash-

ion began to change every decade or so among the upper classes.

At court, dress for both men and women was embroidered and decorated

with tassels, feathers, and pearls. Everyone who could afford it, from the

king to a craftsman, lined his robe or cloak with fur for winter. Imported silk

now included not only single-color but also patterned silk. Imported silk

brocades and damasks are shown in paintings of queens’ rich robes. In gen-

eral, clothing tended to be made of many ample layers of cloth cut in simple

patterns.

The basic garment for a man was a tunic, a long-sleeved dress that came

to the knees. It was called a cote or cotte when it came to the knees and a

robe when it fell to the ﬂ oor. Poorer men wore shorter cotes because they

could afford less fabric and because it allowed their legs more freedom to

The poor in any time dressed simply and their fashions did not change as quickly.

Their clothing was practical, plain, and more sparing of cloth yardage. Tunics rarely

reached below the knee, and sleeves were no wider than they had to be. Garments

were mended, turned, and remade when they ﬁ nally wore out. Instead of wearing

expensive hose, peasants often bound their legs with rags. They preferred to wear

bright colors, since dyes did not add much expense. Only the true paupers wore black

and gray. (Paul Lacroix, Moeurs, Usage et Costumes au Moyen Age et a l’Epoque de la

Renaissance, 1878)

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move. Aristocratic men wore short cotes when they needed to ride, but, on

state occasions, they wore longer robes because it showed their status. Long

robes cost more, and they suggested the wearer did not need to walk any-

where unless he wanted to. The cote or robe was always belted with a girdle

(belt). For most of this period, a man’s girdle buckled tightly around his

waist so his tunic created folds above and below it.

A garment worn over this basic cote or robe was the surcote, or overcoat.

Nobles wore combinations of these garments with the changing fashions.

Around the mid-1100s, some nobles had garments with dagges cut in them;

these were like large fringe in which the fabric had been cut and hemmed

so ﬁ ngers or leaves of cloth hung from the edges of sleeves or at the bottom

of the surcote. Since their surcotes were usually made of fulled woolen

cloth, the fabric did not fray.

Only nobles were permitted to wear a mantle, which was a large draped

cloak. The mantle was fastened by a chain, strap, hook, or button, either in

front or at the shoulder. It was not easy to manage, since it tended to fall off

or get in the way, so wearing it well was a mark of high culture. Mantles

might be fur lined, embroidered, or adorned with jewels. Kings customarily

gave the mantle they were wearing to a minstrel whose skill pleased them

very much or to a messenger who brought extremely good news. (The re-

cipient was not permitted to wear it, but he could keep or sell it.)

Men’s legs below the knee were often covered with the forerunner of

socks. These tubes of fabric (possibly knitted) did not have a foot shape on

the end. They needed garters to hold them at the knee. It was practical to

cover the leg between knee and ankle to protect the skin from brambles.

The poorest men wrapped strips of cloth, or even straps of braided straw,

around their legs.

During the 12th century, men began wearing hose. Hose was not knit-

ted, but the fabric was cut on the bias so it had some ﬂ ex. Hose were narrow

leggings that were not connected to each other. Each leg was put on sepa-

rately and came to the top of the thigh. Since the cloth was already cut on the

bias, the diagonal continued past the top of the thigh up to the hip. At the

hip, there was a loop for a belt to pass through. This was how the hose

stayed up. Some hose had full feet, and some did not. Some hose had a stir-

rup strap under the foot but no heel or toe.

Women wore long robes, always to the feet. Aristocratic women’s robes

were longer than the ﬂ oor, and, in some fashions, the gowns formed trains

at the back. Women lifted their skirt when they walked, showing a shorter

underskirt that only came to the ankle. Fashions during this period changed,

although much more slowly than modern fashions do. In the 11th century,

a woman’s robe was often laced at the back to show her ﬁ gure. She usually

wore a girdle, and, if she was wealthy, the girdle displayed silk, gold, or em-

broidery. For most of this period, the girdle was wrapped tightly around

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the waist; toward the end of the period, the girdle draped loosely, and its

fastening hung down a woman’s abdomen in a V shape.

Women of the 12th century also wore a corset made of leather, stiffened

with wood or bone, that laced up the front. Their robes were laced close to

the body to show their ﬁ gures. An inner tunic, usually white, was called a

camise or chemise in French, or smock in English. A noble lady might wear

a corset next to her skin, and then a sleeveless white linen chemise; a col-

ored, long-sleeved underdress of lightweight wool; and last a heavy, deco-

rated robe with long, full sleeves over all, with a full skirt ending in a train.

Following the First Crusade, some new fashions came to France and En-

gland. A new kind of robe, the bliaut, was made of very light silk fabric. It

was wide and ﬂ owing in its skirt and sleeves but stitched and ironed into

pleats at the top to make it ﬁ t well. Over it, ladies wore a tight vest called a

corsage or a wide belt of fabric laced at the back. The effect was brightly col-

ored, highly decorated, graceful, and exotic. A new kind of surcote arrived,

too—the Persian coat. It was a loose overrobe with wide sleeves, and it fas-

tened with only one clasp at the waist. Instead of being part of an outﬁ t,

it could be put on when the room grew chilly. Its name in French, peliçon,

became the English word pelisse, later used for any women’s coat put on

this way.

Style in the 13th, 14th, and 15th Centuries

The fashions for both men and women in the 13th century were conser-

vative compared to the centuries that followed. In general, they paired an

inner tunic or gown with tight long sleeves with a surcote. Surcotes could be

lined with fur and worn in cold weather. They were made with or without

hoods or sleeves. All were brightly colored and heavily decorated.

One man’s form of the surcote was a gardcorp, a hoodless coat with long,

full sleeves that were gathered or smocked at the shoulder. This type of

sleeve usually had a slit to allow the wearer to put his arms out and let the

heavy sleeves hang down. Wearing his heavy sleeves empty would give his

arms better dexterity, and it would be cooler. The sleeves were large enough

to cover arms and hands, too, when they were worn in full form. Men who

worked, such as merchants and physicians, favored practical designs like

this, but such surcotes also were worn by the nobility.

A popular 13th-century form of surcote, for both men and women, was

the cyclas, which was often open at the sides. The cyclas was made of very

rich fabric; its cut was simple, but the decorative fabric showed off the

wearer’s rank. Paintings suggest the cyclas could be made from imported

silk brocade and damask and heavily embroidered silk. Among women the

cyclas developed into a sideless dress. The sideless gown was lightly at-

tached, front to back, at the hips and shoulders, but otherwise it was entirely

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open. When women wore the cyclas or the sideless gown, they took care to

raise it as they walked because they wanted to show the quality of the gown

under it. It was considered graceful and reﬁ ned to hold one’s skirt up a few

inches.

There was a new fashion for cutting the edges of a garment to fancy

shapes, called cointise or quintise. Quinteuse in French meant “fanciful.” At

ﬁ rst, quintise hemlines might only be cut in a wave or gentle zigzag. Gradu-

ally, they developed fancier leaf and feather shapes. As troubadours came

into their zenith, they gravitated toward fancy quintise shapes, which we

now think of as part of a classic medieval jester look.

Beginning in the 14th century, fashions began to change rapidly. Court

clothing displayed more than one style, often comprising extremes of short

and long robes. Tournaments and heraldry also inﬂ uenced fashions. It was

the age of the parti-colored outﬁ t; for the ﬁ rst time, all pieces of the surcote,

tunic, and hose were coordinated to create a uniﬁ ed effect.

The new men’s cotehardie surcote was very short and stiff to the point

that its tightness around the hips impeded walking. Cotehardies might

come down around the thighs like a short tunic or might end at the hips, in

which case they were called courtepys. At the same time, the men’s houpe-

land had extreme lengths: long, full sleeves that might hang to the ground

Late 14th-century dress for both men

and women reached to elaborate

extremes. For the upper classes, clothing

was about display of wealth and social

standing. Coats were either very short,

barely covering the waist of hose, or

very long, reaching to the feet to show

off the wearer’s wealth. Outer sleeves

were often slashed to show off under

sleeves. They were either full or very

narrow; narrow sleeves required rows of

buttons, a new luxury. Most people

wore hats most of the time; they could

be tall, wide, or wound with several

yards of fabric. (Paul Lacroix, Moeurs,

Usage et Costumes au Moyen Age et a

l’Epoque de la Renaissance, 1878)

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and a long, full skirt that swept the ﬂ oor. For riding a horse, there were

shorter houpelands that only came to the knee.

Both these garments had tight, high collars that enclosed the neck. Some

houpelands were worn with an inner tunic that had such a high frilled collar

that it appears to be the forerunner of the Elizabethan lace ruff. Both cote-

hardie and houpeland were heavily embroidered and worn with jeweled

belts. During the same period, there was a fashion for wearing belts with

small bells hung every few inches.

The cotehardie made hose even more important, since it barely covered

a man’s upper legs. It had to be worn with a short inner jacket that had holes

along its bottom edge. Full hose had ties called points along the top edges,

and these were threaded into the holes and tied. This was called trussing

the points. Hose at this time had foot pieces attached, and some hose may

have been knitted. While hose were usually still separate legs, the very short

courtepy made modest coverage an issue. Some tailors began joining hose

into one piece with a full back and a codpiece.

The short cotehardie’s showcasing of hose brought in the parti-colored

fashion. Men wore one leg in a light color and one leg in a dark color. At its

extreme, the parti-color fashion extended to the cotehardie’s partition into

contrasting colors and even the tunic’s sleeves in contrast. Sometimes the

wearer kept all the dark on one side and all the light on the other. In other

cases, the wearer alternated light and dark on legs, body, and arms so the ef-

fect was of a walking chessboard. Long robes, too, were divided vertically

into contrasting colors.

The 14th century also brought men wide, almost inconveniently large

mantles. While previous mantles had been cut as a semicircle, the new man-

tles were full circles with one split going from outer circumference to center

neck-hole. Some had only a neck hole and had to be pulled over the head.

They were a great amount of fabric to manage.

During the 14th century, there was a big change in women’s fashions.

One development was the train, a skirt so long in back that either the wearer

or a servant girl had to hold it up when she walked. At ﬁ rst these were usually

part of a peliçon, a surcote that was open at the front and could be put on

like a coat; it was usually lined with fur. Sideless gowns, ﬁ rst developed in the

13th century, now had very long, generous, ﬂ owing skirts.

Red was the favorite color for gowns. Paintings show noble ladies in red

going to church, riding, and sitting at home all through the century. There

was no sense among ladies that it was an embarrassment to wear the same

dress as others; they are shown often in nearly identical red dresses.

In previous centuries, women’s dresses had always covered their skin so

only their hands and faces were showing. In the late 14th century, women

began to wear dresses that left their neck and shoulders bare, although the

dresses were always long sleeved. This new cotehardie gown, also called a

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kirtle, had a tight-ﬁ tting bodice and a very full skirt. It had long sleeves that

ﬁ tted close to the arm with rows of small buttons. As the age of tournaments

entered its peak, women’s cotehardies could be designed in parti-color or

with the heraldic symbols of her family embroidered in quarters on her dress.

Alternately, another style of dress—the pellande—covered the wearer gen-

erously up to the neck. Both styles were fashionable at the same time and can

be seen in the same paintings. It was new for women to have two very dif-

ferent styles to choose from, and there were also some alternatives in hair

and hats. Although older women still wore wimples, younger women wore

only hats or hairnets with an uncovered neck. Noble women had not shown

so much skin since Roman times.

Both men and women wore tippets. Tippets were long ribbons of fabric

or fur. They hung from the elbow, and it is difﬁ cult to tell from pictures

whether they were separate accessories looped around the elbow or sewn

onto the sleeves. Tippets were at least a foot long, and some fashionable

tippet wearers had ribbons ﬂ uttering almost to the ground.

Buttons were invented ﬁ rst as decorations in the 13th century, and by

the 14th century, they were in full use as fasteners. Buttons saved fabric

while fastening clothing, especially sleeves, closer to the body. They were

sometimes made of tin, pewter, or brass and attached to the garment with-

out stitching. A buttonhole was made on each side of the garment, and the

button itself was stuck into one of the holes and was held by a lace or cord on

the other side through its shank. Buttons could also be pieces of gathered

fabric, tightly wrapped with thread to make the shank of the button. With

buttons came buttonholes and the methods of stitching around the round

or slit holes and reinforcing a garment’s buttonhole edge with a woven band

of ribbon.

Buttons also helped attach separate sleeves to a tunic, permitting less

washing and wear, since sleeves were likely to get dirty and unpresentable.

One tunic with two sets of detachable sleeves saved fabric and expense over

two whole tunics with sewn-in sleeves. A legend of Saint Catherine of Siena

tells how she gave away to a beggar a suit of clothes, including detachable

sleeves from a different tunic from the one originally given. These sleeves

may have been similar enough to be somewhat interchangeable. Perhaps

sleeves did not have to match the color of the tunic or gown. Detachable

sleeves, like gloves and veils, could be given as favors at tournaments.

Undergarments of the 13th, 14th, and 15th centuries did not change

much. Men wore baggy bloomers tucked into the same belt that held their

hose. The bloomers tied above the knees or tucked into stockings. They were

often called breeches, but the name meant an undergarment, not outer

pants. Men also wore an undershirt, called simply the shirt. It was generally

made of linen and had long sleeves. It fell past the waist. Women wore a linen

chemise or smock; we don’t know if they wore any kind of underpants.

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In the 15th century, travel and commerce increased. As Europe’s popu-

lation recovered from the famines and plagues of the previous century,

fashions began to travel more quickly among the aristocratic courts. The ex-

panding cloth industry in Italy made it easy for Italian and French women

to wear patterned silks of beautiful, intricate design. Italian hats and the Bur-

gundian fashion for padding clothing traveled to backwater England. Men

padded their shoulders and chests; women padded their stomachs. Cloth-

ing was varied, colorful, and rapidly changing.

Men at 15th-century courts wore surcotes and cotehardies with long bell

sleeves and quintise or dagged edges. Parti-colored fashions might now go

diagonal, and belts with bells might also be tied diagonally across the chest.

Sleeves might also be shaped like great bags with auxiliary (more practical)

armslits. These puffed sleeves might also be worn with padding to make the

shoulders carry their weight. As the century went on, puffed shoulders,

chests, and sleeves grew more exaggerated.

Short tunics, developed from the previous age’s courtepy, were looser and

might be worn with a belt so the short skirt ﬂ ared around the hips or worn

unbelted but coming only to the top of the hip. In contrast, by the middle

of the 15th century, a very long, narrow robe came into fashion in France. It

had ﬁ tted, padded shoulders, but it was otherwise close ﬁ tting, sometimes

with pleats.

For the rest of the 15th century, men’s garments used the same motifs

and developed new, often-exaggerated styles. Shoulders were puffed and

padded in long robes and short robes. The journade, a short but wide coat,

was like a cut-off houpeland that exposed hose as much as the older courtepy.

Hat styles, too, were widely different and exaggerated, either ﬂ oppy and

bright or tall and dark.

Women in the 15th century adopted the men’s houpeland and continued

to wear surcotes and mantles. Their necks were still bare, and, in some

styles, so were their shoulders. The houpeland for women had a collar that

lay open like a modern suit’s collar, a high belt, and long, wide, trimmed

sleeves. Aristocratic women were adorned with rich brocades, cloth of gold,

and embroidered designs. At the same time, the alternate style of the cote-

hardie, or kirtle, continued to have its open neckline. Ladies of this period

might envelope themselves in yards of cloth or expose neck and shoulders

in a simple gown.

A peculiar 15th-century style for women was to pad their stomachs under

their gowns with a stomacher. The stomacher made the women look preg-

nant, but it was just an ideal of beauty at that time. Paintings show noble

ladies, the paragons of beauty, with extended abdomens, tiny breasts, and

dramatically receding hairlines.

There was a slight development toward the modern concept of pockets,

built-in carriers in clothing. Medieval people had always carried things they

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needed hanging from a girdle or inside a bag on the girdle, and this bag was

their pocket. In the 15th century, women’s surcotes were designed with

slits so the bag could be hung on the inside, not visible, but the wearer could

reach in to remove things from the pocket bag.

The late Middle Ages also brought about the concept of clothing as work

uniforms. In both France and England, nobles who took part in ruling the

country began wearing a particular type of robe. English lords wore it when

they sat in Parliament. The peers’ robes often had systems of marking stripes

to indicate rank. At lower levels, servants in lords’ households and members

of guilds wore livery, a colored uniform. In a guild, wearing livery was a

privilege only full members could claim. In a lord’s household, it was a means

of supplying clothing to servants so they didn’t wear mismatched or old-

fashioned clothing while working. The household chose a set of colors and

a design that matched the family’s coat of arms. The livery included a badge

with a simpliﬁ ed coat of arms. At the lowest level of society, poor almsmen

often wore robes to signify that they belonged to a particular hospital or

depended on a charity. The donor left money to clothe a certain number of

people in a chosen color, such as black or red. Hospital workers also wore

these colors. For the ﬁ rst time, color was used to deﬁ ne roles in secular society.

See also: Cloth, Clothing Accessories, Embroidery, Hair, Hats, Jewelry,

Shoes.