The handbag in our culture is so ubiquitous and the ranges of handbag styles is so expansive that we may take for granted the history of the handbag or the simpler pouch. Examples of pouches used to carry objects or goods or money are seen in art from antiquity, such as in the sculpture of Hermes of Thrace found at the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. Hermes, apart from being the messenger god, was also the god protectorate of commerce and trade and so, aptly, could be depicted carrying a pouch of money.
Even in its early history, the pouch was adorned in ways that attested to its transformational potential. And often it has been the case that a bag’s outer adornment reflects a desire or intention or a meaning beyond its material purpose. In the middle ages, for example, purses were often exchanged between couples as tokens of love and courtship and the purses themselves would often display embroidered images of lovers in courtship. This was part of the medieval fashion to celebrate courtly love and romance and a bag with an embroidered image of this would serve to echo a cultural notion of the times.
During the early medieval period men and women’s costumes were not greatly differentiated and it was not until the mid 1300’s that significant distinctions in clothing began to make their mark in the theater of the public sphere. What contributed significantly to the increasing distinctions in men’s and women’s garments was the evolution of certain types of armor made to better fit the man’s body.
Up until this transition in clothing, men and women to greater or lesser degree wore tunics that were not very far removed in style and function from the robes and tunics of the Roman period. (Roman Tunic) The simplicity of the Roman costume held sway in Europe with very few changes partly due to the socio-economic reality of the feudal system that was dominant in Western Europe as well as to the lack of developed trade and commercial routes that weren’t to flourish until the 13th century.
The typical suit of armor for the knight of the 13th century was a hauberk of chain mail. This was a top that reached to mid-thigh with sleeves and neck of linked chain metal and it followed the pattern of the typical woolen dress worn by men at the time. A gambeson, or quilted cotton garment, was worn beneath the hauberk for additional protection and in the 13th century it became customary for knight’s to wear a heraldic surcoat over both these layers. The change in this chain mail uniform towards a more fitted, plated body armor required a more closely adjusted undergarment: the doublet for the upper body, and the trunk hose, short padded breeches, for the lower body. These more tailored styles, necessary to make the protection of the plated armor more effective, were quickly translated into the daily costume of the medieval man.
Tags: armor, armour, Medieval Armor, medieval fashion, Medieval History, roman tunic, shaping
