What did people really wear during the Renaissance? Part I

August 30, 8:11 PMChicago French Culture ExaminerVirginie Ems-Bleneau

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It's Renaissance fair season again! Choosing which fair to go to is hard enough without having to think about what kind of costume you should wear. You think that your Halloween Pirates of the Caribbean outfit would look great (you saw tons of people dressed as barbarians or pirates last year...), but friends don't let friends go to a Renaissance festival dressed anachronistically (that is to say, wearing things that did not exist back then)! Read on to find out what people really wore during that time period, and more importantly, what people DID NOT wear...

We first need to consider the chronology of the Renaissance. There is much debate when it comes to defining the period with precision. Some scholars believe that it started as early as the XIIth century, but most agree that its beginning could be best defined as the fall of Constantinople in 1453 or by the discovery of the Americas in 1492; for the purpose of this article, we can simply agree that the Renaissance started at the end of the XVth century. I have included a simplified chart of the great European monarchies of the XVIth century, so pick your country and ruler wisely!

 * There was no Italy in the XVIth century. The Holy Roman Empire included parts of today's northern Italy, Germany, and Spain. Venice and Genoa were independent nations.
**: Spain was made up of several small nations, until Charles I became king, uniting the kingdoms of Aragon and Castile. Charles I of Spain is also Charles V of the Holy Roman Empire.

The style of each European court was profoundly influenced by its religion, the king of the Holy Roman Empire Charles V and his wife Isabella of Portugal can be seen wearing much more sober clothing than Protestant king Henry VIII for example (see portraits below). There were hundreds of courts throughout Europe, each prince, duke, count or marquis who was not at the Royal Court was surrounded by a court of his own. Outside the castle and throughout the land lived of course most of the population: artisans and peasants who because of their isolation and poverty could not really pay much attention to fashion. I will only talk about them briefly in the second part of this expose on Renaissance clothing since there was less variation that with wealthy and noble outfits.

       
              Charles V                         Isabella of Portugal                            Elizabeth I

 If you live in Chicago, you will most likely attend the Bristol Renaissance Fair, which is set in Bristol, England in 1574 during Elizabeth I's reign. But there are other places you can go to experience Renaissance life. The Society for Creative Anachronism is an umbrella organization regrouping several “kingdoms” throughout the world. The two closest kingdoms from Chicago are the Middle Kingdom (for those of us living in Illinois and Michigan) and the Kingdom of Northshield (if you live in Wisconsin). I do not know whether they have chosen a specific time period, but according to the name of the main organization, anachronisms might not be bad as long as they are creative...

But let's go back to Renaissance fairs. Typically, a village is recreated and is set in a specific country and time period. Each fair is a little different, but most of them choose XVIth century England as their setting (there was a French Renaissance festival in the Midwest this year in St Louis, but it was earlier in the season unfortunately). What bothers me the most when I go to a Renaissance fair is that all styles from different countries and periods are mixed together, without talking about the presence of pirates and barbarians in the same city!

French Pirate Lollonais, 1684

Yes there were pirates in the XVth and XVIth century, but pirates were thieves, and as such they would not be walking the streets “dressed like pirates” so that anyone who saw them could recognize them as such. Furthermore, the buccaneer pirate made famous by popular films and novels such as Pirates of the Caribbean (2003) or Treasure Island (1950) did not appear until the late XVIIth century, that is to say after the Renaissance! Corsairs were pirates operating in the Mediterranean, and buccaneers were pirates attacking ships in the Caribbean. Prior to the XVIth century, pirates were mostly North African Moors.

Moorish Man, end of XVth c

And as for barbarians, this term was used by Italians to describe all foreigners, by the English to describe violent groups of Norse or Germanic warriors as well as the “savage” Irish Celts, and the French used that term for North Africans. It would therefore be extremely rare to see a "barbarian" in town. Unless you happen to be walking by the gallows of course... But more realistically, only the military and people living in towns being attacked by those barbarians would have ever seen them.

Credit for photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/39049548@N05/ CC BY-SA 2.0

Prince Arthur and the
Faerie Queene - 1788

What about witches, elves and fairies? While pagan myths about elves and fairies existed throughout the period and for centuries before that, it was not advisable to dress as one since these creature were associated with magic and the devil. Whether in Spain during the Holy Inquisition, or in England during the reign of Catholic Queen “Bloody” Mary I, people were trying to look as “normal” and devout as possible to avoid being spotted as a witch, a Jew or a conspirator. It is likely that Spenser's The Faery Queene (1590,1596) was only approved at Court because it was an allegorical homage to the Tudor dynasty.