A Cultural history of dress and fashion in the medieval age
Author
Additional Author(s)
Heller, Sarah-Grace
Publisher
London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017
Language
English
ISBN
9781474206396
Series
Subject(s)
CLOTHING AND DRESS
CLOTHING AND DRESS--MEDIEVAL
DECORATIVE ARTS, MEDIEVAL
FASHION
Notes
. .
Abstract
During the medieval period, people invested heavily in looking good. The finest fashions demanded careful chemistry and compounds imported from great distances and at considerable risk to merchants; the Church became a major consumer of both the richest and humblest varieties of cloth, shoes, and adornment; and vernacular poets began to embroider their stories with hundreds of verses describing a plethora of dress styles, fabrics, and shopping experiences.
Drawing on a wealth of pictorial, textual and object sources, the volume examines how dress cultures developed – often to a degree of dazzling sophistication – between the years 800AD to 1450AD.
Beautifully illustrated with 100 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, visual representations, and literary representations.
