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The women of later Anglo-Saxon England, outside of East Kent, mostly wore an ensemble of multiple layered tunics. These women were particularly well known for their embroidery and may have decorated their clothing with silk and wool embroidery or woven bands.
Women wore their hair high upon their heads, in large plumes. To create tall extreme hair, rolls of horse hair, tow, or wool were used to raise up the front of the hair. The front of the hair was then frizzed out, or arranged in roll curls and set horizontally on the head. Women turned their hair up in the back often in a knot.
Ashelford, Jane: The Art of Dress: Clothing and Society 1500–1914, Abrams, 1996. ISBN 0-8109-6317-5; Baumgarten, Linda: What Clothes Reveal: The Language of Clothing in Colonial and Federal America, Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0-300-09580-5; Black, J. Anderson and Madge Garland: A History of Fashion, Morrow, 1975. ISBN 0-688-02893-4
Shoes for men and women were flat, and often slashed and fastened with a strap across the instep. They were made of soft leather, velvet, or silk. Broad, squared toes were worn early, and were replaced by rounded toes in the 1530s. Toward the middle of the century, shoes became narrower and were shaped naturally to the foot. [31]
Clothes were very expensive, and both men and women were divided into social classes by regulating the colors and styles that various ranks were permitted to wear. In the early Middle Ages, clothing was typically simple and, particularly in the case of lower-class peoples, served only basic utilitarian functions such as modesty and protection ...
As in the previous centuries, two styles of dress existed side-by-side for men: a short (knee-length) costume deriving from a melding of the everyday dress of the later Roman Empire and the short tunics worn by the invading barbarians, and a long (ankle-length) costume descended from the clothing of the Roman upper classes and influenced by Byzantine dress.
A farthingale is one of several structures used under Western European women's clothing - especially in the 16th and 17th centuries - to support the skirts in the desired shape and to enlarge the lower half of the body. The fashion originated in Spain in the fifteenth century. Farthingales served important social and cultural functions for ...
These were stiff breeches which fell above or just below the knee and were rather moderately fitted. By the mid-1650s, in Western Europe, much looser, uncollected breeches, called petticoat breeches became the most popular. As the 1650s progressed, they became larger and looser, very much giving the impression of a lady's petticoat. They were ...