Female Dress
The basic female clothing for all classes over the period was a simple sleeved tunic dress, with a vertical slit, usually laced, at the bodice, at least for women of an age to breast-feed. The borders and hems might be decorated with embroidery, very richly so for the upper classes. Hose were apparently often worn underneath, their length presumably depending on the weather, as the dress came near to the ankle throughout the period. An under-tunic might also be worn, and cloaks and mantles for winter or outside wear. With the coming of Christianity, married women were expected to cover their hair, at least in public, with a loose shoulder cape, mantle or kerchief. It appears that fur was mostly worn out of sight, as a lining, or perhaps like the fur waistcoats (probably worn lining outermost) known from the later Middle Ages.
Read more about this topic: Early Medieval European Dress
Famous quotes containing the words female and/or dress:
“Here falling houses thunder on your head,
And here a female atheist talks you dead.”
—Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
“At the milliners, the ladies we met were so much dressed, that I should rather have imagined they were making visits than purchases. But what diverted me most was, that we were more frequently served by men than by women; and such men! so finical, so affected! they seemed to understand every part of a woman’s dress better than we do ourselves; and they recommended caps and ribbons with an air of so much importance, that I wished to ask them how long they had left off wearing them.”
—Frances Burney (1752–1840)