Upon the invention of linen cloth, women were not satisfied with baring their necks in order to show their linen gorgets, or the tops of their chemises, they devised the plan of cutting their gowns open at the side, leaving long apertures from the shoulder to the hip, laced across and exhibiting the linen underneath.
At that time, as at every other, certain fine ladies persisted in exaggerating the vagaries of fashion. Some of these fair dames wore gowns so narrow and so clinging that they seemed to be sewn up in them, or else the surcoats were so much too long that the superfluous material had to be tucked into front pockets in which the hands also were placed, otherwise the skirt was gathered up and
The little Henuiu.
fastened to the girdle. The latter alternative was a very pretty fashion, and formed those delightful broken folds which we see in the drapery of statues.
The sleeves of these long surcoats, with the ' serpent-tail ' train, which great ladies were allowed to have carried by a page, became elongated also. The sleeves of the under-dress came down to the wrist with an outward slope which covered a portion of the hand. The wider sleeves of the surcoat were either open from the shoulder, and hung down almost to the ground, or slit from the elbow to the wrist, or made with only an aperture through which the fore-arm passed.
There were several varieties in sleeves, long, wide, or tight ; sleeves cut and buttoned underneath from shoulder to wrist, sleeves cut out, or puffed at the elbow, even the sleeves called ' à mitons ' were worn, the end forming close mittens, and ' pocket-sleeves ' closed at the ends ; these were pretty and convenient inventions after all.
Lastly, there were vast sleeves like wings, with edges cut like the teeth of a saw, or like oak leaves, or bordered with a thin line of fur.
Jewellery assumed great importance. All women, whether great ladies or bourgeoises, adorned their costumes with jewels of greater or less price ; necklaces, head-circlets ornamented with precious stones placed upon the head-piece, jewelled buckles, and girdles of wrought braid and gold work.
The ' aumônière ' or ' escarcelle ' (literally, alms-bag) attached to the girdle was made of rich stutf bordered with gold, with a gilded clasp and ornaments. The great ladies were dazzling, they literally shone. The sumptuary laws were quite ineffective. In vain did Philip the Fair enact and ordain, forbid ermine and miniver to the bourgeoises, and debar them from golden girdles set with pearls and precious stones, in vain did he decree that :—
"No damoiselle, if she be not châtelaine or dame owning 2,000 livres yearly shall have more than one pair of gowns per year, and if she be, she shall have two pairs and no more.
" In like manner also the dukes, counts, and barons owning 6,000 livres yearly shall be
CHATI-:[.AI\H, MIf.ll-;U DU XV^ SIHCl.E.
allowed to have made for them four pairs of gowns per year, and not more, and for their wives as many ..."
In vain did Philip the Fair fix a maximum price per ell on stuff for outer garments on a descending scale for all sorts and conditions of people, from twenty-five sols the ell for barons and their wives, down to seven sols for their squires, and—a remarkable testimony to the wealth of the townspeople and shopkeepers of the great cities even in that bygone time— permit the wives of the bourgeois to go so far as sixteen sols the ell ; in vain did he provide against everything, and make stringent rules ; nothing availed, not even the threat of fines. Great ladies and wealthy city dames alike defied the commands of the king, the remonstrances of their husbands, and the admonitions lavished upon them from innumerable pulpits.
In vain did the preachers attack every part of the costumes in vogue, denouncing the occasionally indecorous slits in the surcoat as ' doors of hell,' the shoes ' à la poulaiue ' (so-called after the spur of a ship) as ' An outrage on the Creator,' and waging a bitter war against the head-dresses, whether ' cornettes,' * hennins,' or the high head-tires called ' escoffions ' ; the
The Hennin \\ith largo veil.
women simply let them talk, and imperturbably followed the fashions.
In matters of the Mode, women were then, as they are now, a law unto themselves, they ignored all authority, royal, ecclesiastical, or marital.
The ladies of the period wore shoes 'à poiilaine ' ; those famous slioes with their turned-up points were adopted by the other sex, and adorned with a little ringing bell at the curved end.
High lieels were as yet unknown, but they gradually grew out of a kind of slipper with several soles placed one above the other. Headdresses assumed extravagant proportions, and the ' Hennin ' triumphed over all its rivals. The *Escofïîon' took various forms, now that of a crescent, anon that of a turban ; then there was the heart-shaped cap, a pompous head-tire of embi'oidered stuff, trellised with braid, adorned with beads, and having a wide frontlet set wàth jewels, which came down to the forehead in the form of a heart. It was, however, the great horned ' escoffion ' that gave offence in particular to the preachers; this curious structure consisted of a broad cylinder of rich stuff ornamented with jewels, terminating in two horns.
with a streamer of fine muslin which fell upon the shoulders from each point.
These ' escoffions '—(the term is obsolete, and has no equivalent in English)—were said to come from England, like many other eccentricities of costume at all times. The Anglomania that breaks out now and again, dates from afar. VioUet-le-Duc gives an example in his Dictionnaire du MoMlicr of a 'grand escof-fion ' on the statue of a Countess of Arundel who lived at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Preachers and moralists, comparing the women who wore those head-dresses to horned beasts, and to pictures of Satan, declared that she who had been unfaithful to her husband twelve times would go to Purgatory, but they cast directly and immediately into Hell the wearer of a horned escoffion.
The 'great hennin ' was a tall conic tube in brocaded stuff worked with beads, and tightly fixed upon the forehead. It closely confined the hair, and had a short veil in front, but from the top of the towering edifice a cloud of
fine muslin floated and fell around the figure. It was an unreasonable and inconvenient structure, it is true, but it was not ridiculous, it was monumental, but charming, and women persisted in wearing it for nearly a century, because it was in reality very becoming, and imparted an imposing effect to the countenance and to the entire figure. There was another reason also for this feminine persistency, which was probably not taken into account, but only unconsciously recognized ; it was that these ' great hennins ' harmonized with the architecture of the age.
What a magnificent epoch of expansion and elevation was that ! The church-spires, slender and darting upwards, scaled the sky and drew men's souls upward with them, all the lines of architecture sprang upward, spread out, and blossomed into richness. When we reflect that this was the time of marvellous façades of houses or palaces, of slim turrets, and of scalloped roof ridges, the time when the towns bristled with innumerable spires and clock-towers, it is easy to imderstaud the tapering height of the hennin. Like all ascensions it also was a rising towards the ideal, for the lofty head-tire with its long floating veil gave nobility to the attitude and gait of the wearer.
Nevertheless, the cry of the monks and the preachers was " War to the hennins ! " The most urgent of them all, and the most widely-heard, if not listened to, was a Carmelite monk of Rennes, named Brother Thomas Connecte. He undertook a regular campaign in his own town against the prevalent extravagance, and in particular against the poor hennins. From Brittany he proceeded to Anjou, Normandy, Ile-de-France, Flanders, and Champagne, preaching ardently everywhere, and discoursing in the cities from a lofty platform erected in the open air in the most public place, overwhelming the women who took delight in the refinements of dress with invectives, and threatening them with the Divine wrath.