What do medieval people wear

These were probably the only clothes he owned. As you can see he did not wear a hat or shoes. This picture, from a painting by Brueghel, shows late medieval peasants enjoying a wedding. They are, therefore, wearing their best clothes, including shoes and hats. What Did Medieval People Wear? Additional Resources About Medieval Life. Sometimes clothes were garnished with silver, but only the wealthy could wear such items.

Peasant Clothing Peasant men wore stockings or tunics, while women wore long gowns with sleeveless tunics and wimples to cover their hair. Sheepskin cloaks and woolen hats and mittens were worn in winter for protection from the cold and rain. Leather boots were covered with wooden patens to keep the feet dry. We have virtually no documentation regarding what people wore to bed, but from these images it is clear that that those who wore night dress would have been clad in an under-tunic, possibly the same one they had worn during the day.

Leather boots were covered with wooden patens to keep the feet dry. Outer clothes were almost never laundered, but the linen underwear was regularly washed. The smell of wood smoke that permeated the clothing seemed to act as a deodorant. Clothing of the aristocracy and wealthy merchants tended to be elaborate and changed according to the dictates of fashion.

Fur was often used to line the garments of the wealthy. Jewellery was lavish, much of it imported. Gem cutting had not been invented until the fifteenth century, so most stones were not lustrous. Ring brooches were the most popular item from the twelfth century on.

Diamonds became popular in Europe in the fourteenth century. By the mid-fourteenth century there were laws to control who wore what jewellery. Knights were not permitted to wear rings. Sometimes clothes were garnished with silver, but only the wealthy could wear such items.

Virtually everyone wore something on their heads in the Middle Ages, to keep off the sun in hot weather, to keep their heads warm in cold weather, and to keep dirt out of their hair. Hats were especially important, and to knock someone's hat off his or her head was a grave insult that, depending on the circumstances, could even be considered assault. Types of men's hats included wide-brimmed straw hats, close-fitting coifs of linen or hemp that tied under the chin like a bonnet, and a wide variety of felt caps.

Women wore veils and wimples; among the fashion-conscious nobility of the High Middle Ages, some fairly complex hats and head rolls were in vogue. Both men and women wore hoods, sometimes attached to capes or jackets but sometimes standing alone.

Some of the more complicated men's hats were hoods with a long strip of fabric in the back that could be wound around the head. A common accoutrement for men of the working classes was a hood attached to a short cape that covered just the shoulders. Unfortunately they are fragmented with only one cup preserved each but appear to have had additional cloth above the cups to cover the cleavage, thus being a combination of a short shirt, ending right below the breasts, and a bra.

It has two broad shoulder straps and the partially torn edges at the cups indicate a back strap. The cups are each made from two pieces of linen sewn together and the surrounding fabric extends down to the bottom of the ribcage with a row of six eyelets on the side of the body for fastening with a lace.

There are narrow shoulder straps, and needle-lace decorates the cleavage. Two of the bras have been radiocarbon-dated at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, the dates ranging from the end of the 14th to the second half of the 15th century. But while it might have been socially acceptable to do so in order to flatten the bosom, the complaints and satirical comments on breast-enhancement suggest that it was not generally approved of. It is believed that women did not wear underpants or drawers until as late as the very end of the 18th century.

The find of a pair of completely preserved linen underpants in Lengberg arouses anew the question: male or female? The underpants from Lengberg are of a type that developed during the late 14th and 15th century, when men started to wear joined full hose or trousers instead of single legged split hose.