Clothing and footwear in medieval Europe


Medieval Europeans dressed warmer than the Romans, because the climate in Europe was colder, besides, the church considered the body “sinful” and demanded to carefully cover it.

Europeans managed only with outer clothing. The main details were a linen shirt, short pants, a top shirt, a raincoat. Gradually it became fashionable to wear thick stockings over short pants, which in the XIV century. turned into pants. Wore gloves and mittens – first for convenience, and later – for chic. Gloves acquired a symbolic significance in the Middle Ages: it was considered indecent for them to go into church, shake hands without taking them off-offensive, throwing a glove at someone meant expressing deep contempt.

At first, women’s clothing differed little from the male. However, over time, women began to wear a cape on their heads, a narrow bottom dress with long sleeves, over which an apron or short under skirt was worn. The clothes of the noble ladies

were very pompous.

Shoes were leather boots with bent socks. The more famous the dandy was, the longer his boot sock was. Sometimes it reached 60-70 cm. To somehow walk in such shoes, socks were tied with laces to the belt. Street mud was trampled barefoot or in wooden boots.

In the Middle Ages, social inequality was manifested. So, the grandees forbade ordinary people to wear bright clothes, they themselves dressed up like parrots. The peasants sewed their clothes from rough homespun cloth, the feudal lords and the urban elite – of cotton fabric and silk. The clothes of the clergy gradually became special.

Fashion for clothes, especially women’s, has changed many times. All the attempts of the church to keep the ladies from infatuation with fashion were in vain. Clothes were given a lot of attention, because she not only protected the body, but also pointed to belonging to a certain estate.

In the XIII-XIV centuries. in Europe, the prestigious aristocratic coat of arms came into use. First they served as recognition marks on the battlefield, but over time they became a kind of visiting card of their master, pointing to the step taken on the public staircase. For the interpretation of arms there was a separate science – heraldry. She was engaged in heralds, which kept the rules of drawing arms in great secrecy.


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Clothing and footwear in medieval Europe