Our Late 14th Century Outfits

I’m working on a post of our last event, and am hoping to borrow a picture or two from some of the other members of the group. In the meanwhile, here’s a description of mine and Tobias’ outfits, all of it hand sewn. Peter, one of the group members, said we looked the part of a lesser bugher couple, which I guess has some truth to it. Tobias is wearing his blue, front laced cotehardie, green hose and a grey bag hat. I’m wearing my yellow kirtle, and over that the reddish maroon, short sleeved dress I've been working on lately, also front laced. I’m wearing a wimple and a veil as well.

The lacing on Tobias’ wool cotehardie. There are 50 eyelets, and the cord is made from finger looped wool yarn.

Eight cloth buttons on each sleeve, and buttonholes. I had some help in making the buttons from Mikael, at the event in Varberg two months ago, as I was running out of time, and he had nothing to do at the moment. Let’s just say his buttons are much nicer than mine…

The lacing on my over kirtle. It has 42 eyelets on it. Since making the cord for Tobias’ cotehardie, I learned how to make lucet cords, and this is what I use to lace my kirtle, again made from wool yarn. Tobias thought it was fun to take the picture at this angle, as it showed of the baby bump...

I was thinking long and hard on what kind of sleeves I wanted on this dress. One part of me wanted full length sleeves, but wasn’t sure how that’d look worn over the buttons on my yellow kirtle. When I looked at pictures, shorter sleeves usually had some sort of tippets on them, and that’s just not very practical for a soldiers wife working around camp. I’d seen a lot of reenactors with short sleeved kirtles worn over full length sleeves of the kirtle beneath, but you can’t use other interpreters as source material. When asking for advice, Maria pointed out that there are examples of shorter sleeves without tippets in the Herjolfsnes finds. Yes of course... I knew that. Finally some proof – I went for that.

A while back I wrote about us ordering new shoes for both of us, and pins for me, and this was our first time using our new purchases. I used my pins to secure the wimple and veil – I don’t have any proof for this, but I secured the wimple to my dress as well, to keep it in place.

Wimples are far from mandatory on married women in the late 14^th century, but you can still see them on some married and widowed women of all ages even in the 15^th, so I consider it safe to use. I think it looks nice, and I also find it strangely comfortable (especially on a cold, windy day...). Not that I don’t think it a relief to take it all of after an event, but in this setting, I like it.