German workingclass outfit

This week has been spent in Finland, at a lovely event called Cudjel wars. I brought to much clothing as usual and ended up only using my new dress for one day. But I will be using it a lot. I have come to really like the working clothes of southern Germany, the farmer outfit. I could go out in the fields like this any day! Most of this outfit is old garments, you have seen me in this before, only the kirtle is new and you could hardly tell. I made a new kirtle for the farmer-clothing because the one I have is a bit to warm. Now I have a summer version of it. 

 

I thought we should look at what Im wearing.

Here you see the whole outfit together. As I was saying in the last post, these dresses should be short. Especially the kirtle, but the gown could be too. All the garments are handmade by me, I dont use a sewing-machine, even for the long seams. And I use undyed linen thread and bees wax. The colour, shape, length, the amoutn of layers and details of dress would tell the social status of the wearer. Here is a worker of the land, a farmers wife, wearing undyed garments, produced in the area of which she lived, according to the sumptuary law, so "that it will allow for recognition of differentiation anytime". The text from the sumptuary law comes from the book Town and Country by Marion McNealy and Max Geisberg. The whole law from 1530 is written in that book.

 

The jacket is made of brown wool in two layers, the top one and the lining. That would have made this garment a bit more expensive, that even the lining where in a nice wool. 

The belt might be the only thing in this outfit that does not belong. I need to get a brown belt for this. In my belt hangs a grey cloth, good for covering the neck in the sun or wipe the hands.

I finally figured out how to get this headwear to work. It always fell of my head and I could not get it to stay. But now I put a loose braid on my head, the one I use together with my hairnets and pin it with as many hairpins as possible. And then I can wrap the cloth around the braid and it stays on. Maybe I should try to get even more hair visible. The unmarried girls where allowed a silk headband according to the law and Im guessing that its the headband you see in many of the woodcuts of dancing farmers. When they married they keept the headband but covered the rest of their hair.

 

The apron, my wrap around the waist apron. Very good cover for the skirt as it cover the entire thing. It almost look like the skirt is made by linen. And in this picture is possible to see the bow on the gollar, under my arm. A bow in each side and a pin in the front. 

Most people thinking about shoes in 16th century Germany think about the oxmule-shoe, that the landsknechts are wearing. But most people dont wear that type of shoe, they wear a more closed up version like the ones Im wearing in this picture. A everyday type of shoe made in leather. The hose are also made of undyed wool, and has a pair of garters tied under the knee. Its acutally the only garment Im wearing here that are in colour, they are red.

 

And the new kirtle with the apron of. Its an undyed woolen dress, with a waistline, a tight bodies and a short pleated skirt. The typical 16th century shape. It closes by eyelet-holes and a string I made out of linen fabric. The gollar is in white linen and is pinned on. The hemd has quite a high neckline so I dont really need it but I think it looks good together with the white apron.

 

Here is a closeup of the closing of the dress and the waistline. I have most of the pleats placed in the back and the front straight. Its much easier to work in a dress like that, less fabric in the front. The waistline is still a bit stiff but will softener by using it.

 And here is the kirtle with nothing on top. It has almost the same grey colour as the hemd, and its difficult to see that the dress does not have any sleeves. Its a sleeveless kirtle.  As I called it in the previous post, the porridge-outfit. Grey upon grey upon grey...and some white. My goal with my recreations are always to be as accurate as I can, but its only fun if there are room for improvement. Im working on the gown, the bodice are done, the hooks and eyes are there and the skirt is attached. But It went a bit to short, even for a farmers outfit, so Im attaching a border on the skirt. And after that the only thing left are the sleeves.

A dream now would be more people doing this type of outfits and to get together and take photos.  

German working women

Im working on a new outfit, an outfit for a 16th century working woman of southern Germany. There are a lot of woodcuts of 16th century working woman. But they are almost never in colour. So I also have too look elsewere. There are both biblical and allegorical scenes painted in contemporaneous settings and therefore its safe to belive that the working class garments shown in them are accurate. The women in these paintings wear gowns with a smooth bodies, fitted sleeves and a skirt pleated to the bodies. The neckline is most often squared-shaped, but the can also be a bit more round. The most common way to close the bodies is with hooks and eyes in the front, but there are also a few that are closed at the side. Undergarments can be closed with eyelets. Colours tend to be yellow, red, green and blue. Dresses without sleeves can be seen but are most likely kirtles. 

They almost always wear a apron, mostly white linen, but there are some red ones too. And yes, I know there are other colours too, but I have not seen any on workers. The contemporary designations Schurz, Schurzrock, Schurz fur, Schurzhemd and Schurzfleck from 16th century German inventories refer to differences in apperence. According to Jutta Zanders-Seidel (Textilier Hausrat) the apron surrounding the whole skirt is called a Schurz. The Schurz, also called a doppelschurze, a dubbleapron, had during the 15th century and early 16th century also a part over the shoulders, covering the upper body. We see both versions on the working women of the first half of the 16th century. Like this lady here. She is from a painting by Albrecht Altdorfer from 1526. She is wearing a schurz, a  wrap-around apron, in white linen. And she is also wearing a white linen gollar on top of her blue gown. A gollar, most commonly in linen, could be worn both underneath the gowns and on top of them. This is because they could actually be fined if the neckline where to low. It was solved by wearing gollars of different shapes and sizes. There are plain ones in white linen but they could also be wearing a bit more fancy ones. I really love her outfit. It reminds me of my own clothing. And therefore I used it as inspiration for the working class outfit Im working on right now. I have the apron and the gollar, I need to remake this painting as a picture when Im done. 

 

Many of them does not cover their hair. Its common in paintings showing workers and farmers to see women wearing straw hats and braided hair. Or even with their hair hanging loose. In Durers woodcuts many of them have a hairdo that look like a mix, like in this picture, they cover half the head with a headcloth, wrapped around the back parts of the head, together with a ribbon around their forehead. It might be some kind of newly-wed thing. Unmarried women in the lower classes where allowed a silk headband acording to sumptuary law. And when they wed they might use this half-covering wit the headband visible. This headwear is quite common in Durers woodscuts. But we see a lot of ordinary stechleins too, wulsthaubes covers with a veil or cap.

This is a hairdo that is seen in the same serie of woodcuts. Maybe they just wrap a cloth around the braid when they got married to get the look seen in the picture above. It would explain how they got the cloth to stay on their heads, it never work on me, it just falls off. Sebald Behman made this one in 1537.

Here we see working people taking a break. Straw hats, wrapp-around aprons and gowns and kirtle in light purple, red and green. From Augsburg 1516. 

In the woodcuts many of them also wears different kind of jackets. They can have the same length as the bodies or a bit longer, some even down to half the thigh. This one is one of the longer versions. Many of them are closed with a few eyelets. Even the dresses is sometimes closed with a few eyelets, like the one in the picture above. Her bodies is closed entirely in the lower half and open at the top except for a string at the very top. As is the jacket in the picture above, with the people dancing.

My plan was not to use woodcuts just because they are in black and white, but I obviously did that anyway... because they are beautiful....and common. 

We can talk about this instead. The women are wearing gowns in different kind of yellow. The one in the front has black borders on hers. It has also many pleats a the waist, also in the front. Its not unusual to have less pleats in the front, to get some of the fabric away to be able to work. But it does not look like she has any problems with that. The woman in the back actually look like she is wearing some kind of hairnet, with some hair visibly at the temples. That was actually high fashion in the first half of the 16th century and the first time women could allow some hair to be visibly. I would have though that the working women this early would not wore them though. It could also be some kind of cap. 

 

The dresses are plain. They could have borders but if they do its most common on the bodies or on the skirt, not both. Like the one above, she has black borders on the bodies, but non on the skirt. And we dont see any slashing. And many of them are quite short, like in this woodcut, made by Sebald Beham 1500-1550. The length of the skirts varies between footlengh to half the calf. She is wearing a jacket with a squared neckline closed with two eyelets. And a gown or kirtle with a border on the skirt. Her headwear is something you see on older women during the period, not something that are in fashion. It also look like she is wearing a highnecked gollar in linen.   

This farmer is wearing a undyed wool kirtle, a hemd and a straw hat. Im a bit confused about her hemd. It looks like she has something black around her neck but this social class where not allowed to wear blackwork according to the sumptuary laws. So its probably something else. It could be just a painted shadow to show that the hemd is smocked. It has similarities with how the smock on the apron in the first painting in this post is made. 

I could not resist to put in a picture of myself in my farmer´s kirtle. My hemd is not as white as hers but otherwise I think I could fit right in! Im also wearing a apron like in the first picture in this blogpost. I need to remake this painting with a stick, a straw hat and a belt. In that angle I might even be able to have my hair loos without showing my bangs.