Period Kirtles
The kirtle was a floor-length, full-skirted linen, wool, or silk dress with a scoop neck and tightly-fitting bodice. Sleeves were wrist-length and tight, or short with a pinned-on oversleeve. They could be laced at back, front, or side, with a single spiral lace, not cross-laces.* They evolved from the looser gowns of the early 1300s and were worn into the early 1500s.
Kirtles were worn over a linen calf-length chemise with long sleeves, not very full. Working women often had a cord or belt round their waist and bloused their kirtle and chemise up over it, particularly when working in the fields as in the first image below.
While common women wore kirtles as their main dress, noble women typically wore them as under-dresses, although sometimes the overdress was itself a fancy kirtle.
* Although we think of lacing as typically X-shaped, this was not common in period. Simple zig-zag lacing, in which the lacing cord essentially spirals up through the holes, was the standard. It's a more efficient way of lacing -- with cross-lacing, to tighten it up you have to pull on both laces, and take in any slack several times along the length of the opening for it to work properly. With the single spiral lace, you only have to pull at the top to tighten, with no need to yank-and-pull at several points along the way. A half-hitch knot was used to tie off the lace, rather than our familiar bow.
Common Women
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From the Duc de Berri's Tres Riches Heures,
c. 1410, we have two young peasant women haymaking. Both wear short-sleeved
kirtles over chemises. Note that the chemise sleeves are much less full than Italian and
German ones, which were designed to be puffed out in the gaps of multi-part sleeves The kirtle on the right is front-laced, presumably for breast-feeding. Both women wear linen
headcloths, knotted up in the back on the left, and as a loose veil on the right.
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Again from the Tres Riches Heures, this farm wife is warming herself by the fire in winter. More modest than her two servants (see the larger image -- warning, naughty bits visible), she has not pulled her kirtle above her knees, This is a long-sleeved kirtle, but though it is winter, the neck is still low and scooped.
On her head she wears an open-fronted hood, which evolved from the capuchon (caped closed-fronted hood with a tail called a liripipe down the back) of the 1300s and early 1400s. The front of the hood is turned back to form wings at the sides.
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From the Heures de Charles d'Angouleme in the late 1400s we have peasants in a ring-dance. The girl in red wears a standard long-sleeved kirtle, with an apron. A piece of linen is worn round her shoulders under the kirtle and is crossed to make a V at the centre front. She is wearing a beaded or embroidered head dress which may have evolved from the turn-back of a hood.
From the larger image you can see the older woman in the yellow short-sleeved kirtle is wearing an underdress which is itself essentially a kirtle, longer than a chemise and with a frill round the bottom. She wears a red open-fronted hood with a long, long liripipe.
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From the Da Costa Hours, c. 1515, we have a woman in a red kirtle and an apron sweeping the floor. Note that the kirtle is a little longer than floor length. The walls and tiled floor indicate comfortable circumstances; while she may still be a countrywoman, she would be unlikely to do field work.
She is wearing another version of a open-fronted hood with the front turned back and a modest liripipe.
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Noble Women
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From the Duc de Berri's Tres Riches Heures, c. 1410, we have a noble handfasting. The bride-to-be is the central figure, her mother is on the left, and a maiden companion is kneeling on the right. Both girls are wearing kirtles as underdresses, one gold, the other royal blue. By the shine of the gold kirtle, it may be silk, which would accord with this girl's station.
The bride wears as her outer dress a version of the kirtle which is evolving into the later houpelande. Made of rich fabric, its full sleeves hang to the ground and are split from above the elbow. Her fur hat is trimmed with feathers.
Her companion has a short-sleeved black kirtle as her overdress. The sleeves end in tippets -- bands of white material wrapped round the arm with long hanging tails. She wears a shaped padded roll as her headgear. Her outer kirtle is banded with white at the bottom, as is the bride's -- this impracticable colour also shows their high station.
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From Christine de Pisan's Cite des Dames, 1410, come a pair of noble teenagers playing lawn bowls. She wears a red under-kirtle, with a rust-coloured outer dress like the bride's above with long, hanging split sleeves. Her loose, flowing hair proclaims her maiden status.
He wears a pink knee-length houpelande with pointy bag sleeves, and fashionable hose in two different colours. His pudding-bowl haircut is also the latest fashion.
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From the Hours of the Duchess de Bourgogne, c 1450, we have a high-status noblewoman (possibly the duchess herself) in very formal clothes. Crowned, she wears a cloth-of-gold fur-lined cloak and a fur-trimmed sideless surcoat as her outer garments. Underneath she wears a plain black kirtle.
Black cloth is also a mark of social status. Until the dyestuff logwood was imported from South America, black dyes faded to grey or rusty colours quite quickly, so a black garment had to re-dyed yearly or so to keep its colour.
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