During the medieval period, people invested heavily in looking good. The finest fashions demanded careful chemistry and compounds imported from great distances and at considerable risk to merchants; the Church became a major consumer of both the richest and humblest varieties of cloth, shoes, and adornment; and vernacular poets began to embroider their stories with hundreds of verses describing a plethora of dress styles, fabrics, and shopping experiences. Drawing on a wealth of pictorial, textual and object sources, the volume examines how dress cultures developed - often to a degree of dazzling sophistication - between the years 800 to 1450. Beautifully illustrated with 90 images, A Cultural History of Dress and Fashion in the Medieval Age presents an overview of the period with essays on textiles, production and distribution, the body, belief, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, visual representations, and literary representations.

The definitive overview of dress and fashion in the medieval age, this ground-breaking scholarly work presents 650 years of dress and fashion in culture and examines diverse topics such as textiles, production and distribution, the body, gender and sexuality, status, ethnicity, and visual and literary representations.

About the Author
Sarah-Grace Heller is Associate Professor at the Ohio State University, USA, specialising in French and Occitan medieval literature.


Book Information
ISBN 9781350204713
Author Professor Sarah-Grace Heller
Format Paperback
Page Count 256
Imprint Bloomsbury Academic
Publisher Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Weight(grams) 480g