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Medieval · Europe · 500 - 1500 CE
From early medieval tunics to the elaborate fitted garments of the Gothic period, European dress transformed dramatically over a millennium — what peasants, nobles, men, and women wore, and how we know.
By Dan Schnau · Last updated
Medieval European clothing spans roughly a thousand years, from the collapse of Roman rule in the west around 500 CE to the eve of the Renaissance around 1500. Over that span, dress moved from loose, belted tunics built out of rectangles of cloth to closely tailored garments cut to the body.21 Wool and linen dominated throughout; what changed was cut, fit, ornament, and how sharply clothing marked social rank.
The following finds and records provide evidence for medieval clothing:
Like most historical evidence, this skews toward the wealthy. But the Herjolfsnes and Bocksten garments were everyday clothing that did not belong to the nobility, and they show that well-made clothing reached far beyond the courts.1,2
In the centuries following the fall of Rome, the basic garment for both men and women was the tunic, usually a thin undertunic under a heavier one; women's tunics reached the ground, and men wore leg coverings beneath theirs.21 Charlemagne's biographer describes the Frankish version: a linen shirt and linen breeches next to the skin, a tunic over them, hose bound to the legs with bands, and a cloak on top, fastened on feast days with a golden buckle.3
Germanic and Norse peoples brought their own textile traditions. Tablet-woven bands appear in Danish graves from Roman times onward, and a ninth-century Viking woman buried at Bryndum in Denmark wore a wool dress dyed blue with woad, its straps made from a tablet-woven band.18 Woad (blue), madder (red), and weld (yellow) were still the staple dye plants of the great Flemish cloth industry centuries later.5 Garments were cut from a few large pieces, with extra width supplied by triangular gores set into the sides and skirt — a technique still used in the late medieval dresses from Herjolfsnes, where many narrow gores were a mark of fashion rather than of economy.19
Jewelry did much of the work that tailoring would later do. Norse women fastened the straps of their dresses with a pair of large oval brooches.18 Frankish dress fasteners, such as sixth-century bow brooches of gilded silver set with garnets, put wealth on display.20
Rome's successor in the east cast a long shadow. Byzantine silk was produced in the empire after, according to the historian Procopius, monks brought silkworm eggs to Constantinople in the sixth century.15 The emperor Justinian backed the venture so that the Romans would no longer have to buy silk from their Persian enemies.15 Einhard records that Charlemagne disliked foreign fashions and wore Roman-style robes only twice, each time at a pope's request.3 For court dress, imperial purple, and how ordinary Byzantines dressed from 330 to 1453, see our page on Byzantine clothing.
For tunics, strap dresses, imported silk, and what the grave finds reveal about Norse dress, see Viking clothing.
Crusaders returning from the Middle East brought back new ideas and new styles of dress, and skilled craftsmen, including professional tailors, organized themselves into guilds.21 A thriving cloth industry in Flanders wove the finest English wools into luxury broadcloths.5
In the twelfth century, wealthy men and women adopted the bliaut, a long gown.23 Women's bliauts were close-fitting through the shoulders, torso, and upper arms, with sleeves that widened greatly from elbow to wrist and a full, many-pleated skirt that reached the ground.23 It was an early sign that European clothing was starting to follow the body rather than hang from it.
The thirteenth century returned to a looser, softly draped silhouette: a cote (tunic or gown) worn under a surcote, an overgarment.16,17 Knights wore surcoats over their armor, emblazoned with heraldic emblems such as crosses, lions, and eagles.16 Women covered their hair with a veil and a wimple, a cloth wrapped around the neck and chin, or with a barbette chin band and linen fillet band around the head.11
By the second quarter of the fourteenth century, European fashion had changed sharply: clothing for both sexes was now cut and sewn to fit closely.17 Women's gowns were laced tight through the bodice, and men's doublets fastened down the front with laces or buttons.8,26 Many historians treat this as the beginning of fashion in the modern sense, when skilled tailors began changing styles to suit constantly changing tastes.22
The cotehardie, a close-fitting garment that for men ended at the hips, replaced the loose cote and surcote.17 Tight sleeves could fasten down the forearm with buttons.26 Men's hemlines rose dramatically: by the fifteenth century fashionable men wore short padded doublets laced to long hose.24,14 Moralists objected — in 1427 the preacher Bernardino of Siena attacked doublets so skimpy and hose so tight that they exposed underwear, and a 1463 English law reserved short gowns that revealed the buttocks for the upper classes.25,29,28 Women's dress grew more elaborate, with snug bodices, flowing skirts, and dramatic sleeves.8,21
The following examples describe fourteenth- and fifteenth-century elite fashions:
The Burgundian court of the fifteenth century set the tone for much of northern Europe. Duke Philip the Good, who first wore black in mourning for his murdered father, made black a mark of luxury: his black doublets, gowns, and hoods were cut from costly Italian silks, and courtiers followed his lead.4,5
The following examples describe layers in medieval men's dress:
Women's clothing followed the same layering logic. Next to the skin was a linen chemise or smock.13 Over it went the kirtle (called the côte-hardie in France), a full-length dress, usually of wool, laced tightly through the bodice.8,26 Over the kirtle, women of means wore a gown or surcote; the sideless surcote, worn over the fitted côte-hardie, was preserved as a ceremonial court garment into the fifteenth century.8
Head coverings mattered. Unmarried girls might wear their hair flowing loose and unveiled, traditionally their privilege, while married women covered theirs with a veil, wimple, or later a structured headdress.27,11 Even the linen showed rank: a noblewoman's barbette might be almost transparent, a working woman's thick and coarse.11
Most people never wore the latest fashions: the vast majority of men kept to the woolen tunics and capes of earlier centuries, worn over plain linen shirts and drawers.8 A peasant man at work might strip down to his undyed linen shirt and drawers or wear a loose tunic tucked up over a belt; in winter he added a second, woolen tunic and woolen hose.24 A peasant woman wore a linen chemise under a full-length dress, usually of wool, and covered her head with linen.26,11
The cloth was coarse and cheap. Russet, a gray or brown woolen cloth, was the cloth of the poor: England's 1363 sumptuary statute named russet and blanket as the cloths for carters, ploughmen, oxherds, and shepherds.34,30 But peasants were not dressed only in brown. As dyed woolens grew cheaper around 1400, men of the lower classes began to dress more colorfully.8
Shoes were leather turnshoes, stitched inside out and then turned so the seam sat on the inside.33 Even coarse clothing was expensive, so it was mended until it wore out, left in wills, and bought and sold through dealers in second-hand clothes.32
Wool was the foundation of medieval European clothing, and by the mid-fourteenth century England produced almost all of its own woolen cloth, from cheap russets to costly fine woolens.30 Linen, made from flax, was used for the chemise and other garments worn next to the skin because it could be washed, protecting the more valuable layers above it.12,14 Silk was a luxury for the aristocracy, and in the fourteenth century Lucca was Italy's leading silk-weaving center.26
Color was a matter of money. Scarlet was the name of the most expensive grade of fine woolen cloth, always dyed wholly or partly with kermes, a costly red dye made from insects.5 Most scarlets were a brilliant red, but records also describe brown, purple, and striped scarlets, made by dyeing blue or mixed cloth again with kermes; it was the dye, not the color, that made a cloth a scarlet.5
Fur marked rank as clearly as fabric. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, anyone with pretensions to elegance wore vair and miniver, furs made from the skins of northern squirrels, until sable, lynx, and other exotic furs replaced them in the 1450s.31,12 Ermine, with its distinctive black tail tips, remained the prerogative of royalty.8,12 Lambskin was the everyday fur, found in rich and poor households alike.31
As prosperous commoners grew rich enough to dress like lords, rulers tried to hold the line with sumptuary laws that restricted certain fabrics, colors, furs, and styles to particular social classes.8,30 England's 1363 statute on diet and apparel set out what each rank — from knights down to carters and shepherds — could wear and how much their cloth could cost.6,30 A 1463 English law limited the length of shoe toes, allowing points longer than two inches only to the nobility.28 Italian city-states such as Florence, Lucca, and Milan issued their own detailed regulations, down to the number of buttons on a dress or sleeve and the yards of fabric a garment could use.30
Enforcement was uneven: no case is known of anyone in England being fined under these laws, while Italian cities kept officials to fine offenders.30 Either way, the laws show how deeply clothing had become entangled with identity and power. Dress could also be used to mark people out: in 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council required Jews and Muslims in Christian lands to be distinguished from Christians by their dress.7 Monks, like doctors, lawyers, and knights, could be recognized at a glance by their distinctive clothing.29
"Medieval people were filthy." Linen undergarments existed precisely so they could be washed: the chemise was a washable layer that protected the clothing worn over it.12,14
"Everyone dressed in drab brown." Cheap, undyed wool in browns and grays was common among peasants, but even lower-class men began wearing brighter colors as dyed cloth grew cheaper.29,8 The wealthy wore the deepest and most expensive colors, above all kermes-dyed scarlet.5
"Clothing barely changed for a thousand years." The difference between a sixth-century Frankish tunic and a fifteenth-century Burgundian doublet or houppelande is enormous. The medieval period is where closely fitted tailoring took shape, along with the beginnings of modern fashion.21,22
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