Corsets and Codpieces: A History of Outrageous Fashion, from Roman Times to the Modern Era

by Karen Bowman

New and exciting colours appeared in England by way of the crusades, such as carmine and lilac, as well as fabrics such as muslin, cotton, satin and damask.

There were no gender assigned medieval colours, no pink for feminine or blue for masculine. It was in fact the reverse. Blue was associated with the Virgin Mary and conveyed gentleness. It was considered a weak colour in comparison to pink as pink came from red and red was the embodiment of power, passion, wealth and blood. White stood for purity, but was not worn by brides – whatever their station, people were simply married in the very best clothing they owned.

Perhaps more than male dress, female attire in the Middle Ages definitely indicated a woman’s social status, and morality.

While it was not required by law for medieval prostitutes to emulate their ancient Greek and Roman sisters by dressing deliberately seductively in short, flame-coloured togas, applying copious amounts of make-up, wearing sandals that spelled out ‘follow – me’ in the sand (earning them the name ‘street walker’) and dyeing their hair yellow to differentiate themselves from respectable women, yellow was a colour effectively assigned them.

There is a theory that this directly mirrored the colour assigned to medieval Jews who were also viewed with suspicion and considered outcasts from medieval society.

To be specific, different places had different cos...

Unlike her Roman sister, the medieval prostitute could not rise through the ranks

Sumptuary laws of 1337 first restricted the wearing of furs, with legislation of 1363 decreeing that women were, in general, to be dressed according to the position of their fathers or husbands.

Peasants were warned they should never wear more than one colour at once, except, perhaps, a different coloured hood for special occasions.

The best and easiest to access was human urine, a substance collected daily for the purpose of fulling and dyeing cloth.

Medieval craftsmen had recipe books for making dyes, some of the information having been passed down in Latin from ancient times, but many women would have some knowledge of basic dyes and would collect the family’s morning urine – which was most effective – and store it until needed to help dye the wool.

Wool was such a significant source of income to the English Crown in 1275 that the first ever export tax was imposed on its shipment abroad.

Wool also originated the label ‘spinster’ from ‘spin’ as women made most of the clothes.

Mercers’ shops also sold accessories, like gloves, caps, socks and hose.

As well as universally recycled, medieval clothing indicated class differences, and was used to mark religious, military and chivalric orders as well as single out pilgrims, Jews, muslims, heretics, lepers and prostitutes, the insane and individuals condemned to death.

We cannot, of course, leave the Middle Ages without mentioning two outrageous fashions which allude to the blatant citing of male sexuality, first male footwear and secondly the codpiece.

As if not to be outdone by the fair sex, as ladies headwear ranged ever higher, so too men’s footwear became ever longer.

By 1367 a fashion for long-toed shoes called Krakows, after the capital city of Poland at that time, emerged and by 1450 the shoes were known as pikes or pigac...

A decade later they were universally recognised as Poulaines as in ‘souliers a la Poulaine’, otherwise shoes in the Polish fashion. The monstrosities lasted over 300 years, with the term Poulaine always referring to the l...

Blatantly phallic, young men tended to stuff wool and moss in the extensions to keep them erect and a popular vulgarity was to paint the extensions flesh-coloured.

depending on a gentleman’s rank, could extended to almost 24in longer than the foot and glorify masculine sexuality in such an obvious way.

The clergy supported legislation against the shoe exclaiming that it had incited God’s rage and exacted his wrath against mankind in the shape of the great Black Plague of ...

the shoes were branded both as Satan’s Curse or Satan’s Claw and university professors were banned from wearing them.

When it comes to the codpiece much has been said about it but almost nothing written.

It was a fashion born out of necessity and in this period of history it was a simple covering to prevent a man’s genitals from being exposed when the medieval tunic rose from knee-high in 1340 to thigh-high by the 1360s.

With men performing physical daily tasks glimpses of the male sexual organs became commonplace and a general outcry prompted Edward IV in 1482 to introduce legislation. The law, which forbade persons below the rank of lord to expose their private ‘sinful’ parts by wearing short doublets, was at first ignored as sewing the hose together would make necessary front access almost impossible. Later, the first three-cornered fabric codpieces – cod meaning ‘scrotum’ or ‘bag’ in Middle English – were tied or partially stitched over the gap in the front of the hose.

The codpiece was to remain relatively unobtrusive during the Middle Ages but was to re-emerge as a major fashion accessory in the coming century, as the Tudors will illustrate in the next chapter.

Now men needed to don ‘underwear’ beneath their plate armour in order to prevent their skin chafing and bruising and so garments such as aketons, gambesons and hacketons became available.

Also known as ‘Welsh Jacks’, Scottish Jacks and ‘doublets of fense’, these tight-fitting, quilted coats were sewn and stuffed with linen or even grass to help absorb blows to the armour on the battlefield.

One example of padding is the gambeson of Edward the Black Prince which consists of five layers: two linen shells and the wool stuffing in between, an inner satin lining and coat of...

Squires rarely used water to clean the metal as that was wasteful, especially if out in the field. Instead, an abrasive was applied such as sand, where smaller pieces of armour were immersed in a barrel and rolled to enable the sand to remove mud and mire. Larger pieces were scoured with a cloth frequently dipped into sand mixed in with both vinegar and urine.

vardingale.

Wearing it in 1501, when she arrived in England to marry Prince Arthur Tudor, it would become the fashion for well over a century, going from a modest garment to the extravagant ‘wheel and drum’ farthingales favoured by her step-daughter Elizabeth I (1533–1603).

From the moment Catherine stepped ashore after her treacherous three-month journey from her old homeland to her new, the Englishwoman’s dress was to be shaped and dramatically increased in size.

‘Verdugadas’, ‘vertugale’ and the ‘verdingale’ derives from the Spanish word ‘verdugos’, meaning ‘smooth twigs put out by a tree that has been cut or pruned’, and relates to the fact this new skirt was held away from the body by horizontal seams thread through with wood.

Differing from later farthingales which became the stiffened petticoat that a woman’s dress was draped over, this skirt, first seen in Spain in the late 1470s, was an outer garment, its cone shape achieved via hoops, called a...

This dress did not just raise eyebrows in Spain. When it was introduced into Italy in 1498 it was immediately banned and in many towns abandoned altogether.

It was England that embraced it in 1501 and until its eventual demise in the first decade of the seventeenth century it was worn by both commoner and queen alike.

When Henry VIII penned his love for Anne Boleyn in the song ‘Greensleeves’ (thought to be his own work) he immortalised the humble sleeve, revering it as the embodiment of something far more precious.

Detachable and therefore easily lost, sleeves and undersleeves – which resembled gauntlets – were taken care of and could make or break any outfit.

Sleeves were given as gifts, embroidered, quilted or slashed and were a thing apart, a totally independent item.

sleeves could be of any colour and often were. Fur was a popular adornment on sleeves, though it had to be worn in accordance with the sumptuary laws.

To the medieval and Tudor mind it was paramount they be able to distinguish at a single glance a milkmaid from a countess or a member of the merchant classes, who now rising swiftly within the class system had more money than blue blood.

Of course dress could be elaborate if you were of the correct station in life and sleeves were a case in point to prove it.

The fur that adorned the sleeves of the gentry or aristocratic ladies’ ‘trumpet’ sleeves could be as exotic as Lucerne or lynx fur, genet, the fur of the civet cat, or Foins, the name given to the pelts of the more common weasel-like animal namely the beech marten.

Slashed sleeves were popular in both Germany, France and England by the end of the 1520s and continued to be a favourite during the Elizabeth...

From large items of clothing to small, sumptuary laws even dictated what feathers could and could not adorn one’s hat, something everyone over the ...

Lower classes were allowed to wear plain feathers, such as goose, duck, chicken or grouse, while the middle classes and above could use expensive feathers...

As pheasants were considered a delicacy and were protected as game for the local nobility their feathers were ...

Any commoner caught wearing a pheasant feather was labelled a ‘poacher’ and...