A pink kyrtle for the late 14th century
The story of this dress has been a long one. A couple of years ago, some hobby ladies (Hello Leah and Nina :-) ) saw this picture here and recognised as dog lovers that this scene perfectly illuminates how we feel for doggos. So we all had to have a pink dress like this one to recreate this scene. Even though pink isn’t really my colour. The fabric was bought but then lay around forever since I couldn’t bring up the motivation. I finally found the energy a couple of days before a late 14th century event I was invited to.
The pattern is my own and is supposed to emulate austrian and northern italian fashion of the second half of the 14th century, towards its end, with a rather generic look that works over longer stretches of time, the waists sitting a bit higher on the body, wide falling skirts and tighter fitting breast parts, tight arms and a neckline that is wide but not too deep. Here is how I constructed the dress from the fabric:
Because especially the (italian based) Tacuinum Sanitatis shows many dresses with no visible closures, but a tight fitting chest, often even a visibly pushed up decoltee and sometimes opened arms for work, which suggests invisibly set closure methods, I saw my chance to try an invisible hooks and eyes closure, although the push up effect certainly isn’t too wild on me :-D
I worked with a cochenille dyed wool twill (that unfortunately pills a bit) and woad dyed silk to stabilise the neck opening and the arms (which I might reconsider to work into a ribbon closure). I used silk thread in the colour of the dress.
And this is the result. A very pretty every day dress, not really a poor woman’s garment, but also not really, what I would consider the dress of a citizen’s wife.
At the moment, I am using it for my impression as a prostitute with considerable succes. Between the poorest of women living on the streets and royal concubines, prostitution/sex work could play out in many different life situations and income stages which is also confirmed by sumptuary laws from the time. If you would like to know more about the topic, I recommend this blog article and my project @das.gemeine.wip on instagram. But it would certainly also work for a lot of different other impressions of the time. I only need to do a fotoshoot now to recreate the original picture with my dog Socke.
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