From Renaissance fairs to countless retellings of the legend of Robin Hood to the popular restaurant Medieval Times, people remain fascinated by the medieval era—and in particular the clothing of the time. The richly varied dress of medieval days meant more than just fashion and style, and Margaret Scott offers here an insightful chronicle of the layered meanings of the garb worn by queens, kings, courtiers, and peasants.
Scott draws upon the vibrant illuminated manuscripts of the era to analyze the beautiful design and functionality of medieval clothing. Fascinating changes mark the development of medieval fashion, such as the transition in men's grooming from wearing beards and long hair to being clean-shaven with short hair; the rise in women's fashion in the fourteenth century as a method of securing a husband; and the various types of jewelry, fabric, and subtle garment fittings that managed to convey the important distinctions between the upper class and the peasantry. Such distinctions, Scott reveals, were enforced by intricate and strict laws passed in countries throughout Europe that governed the color, styles, and number of a citizen's garments according to their career, social class, and even the times of year. Political and religious history were also critical factors, Medieval Dress and Fashion shows, as the book draws from first-hand accounts to analyze how pivotal historical moments such as the Crusades and the fall of the Roman Empire resulted in an unexpected blending of cultures and clothing styles.
Whether their interest lies in class or corsets, readers curious about the costumes of the past will be charmed by Margaret Scott's lively and engaging book.

From the back cover:
"In Medieval Dress and Fashion Margaret Scott presents a fascinating narrative of the history of European clothing for roughly 600 years from the tenth century onwards. Illuminated manuscripts are a treasure trove of information on the clothing people wore, or wanted to be seen to wear, in greater or lesser European courts, but she reminds us that written records, like household accounts, are a valuable complement to the pictures."
"Serious scholarship means looking carefully at the evidence, Scott reminds us, and not simply proposing abstract theories, as some modern scholars have done. Scott has clearly examined not only manuscript illuminations but also a great many medieval documents from many countries. The interplay between current fashion, heraldry, marital status, social position, profession, and wishful thinking is played out in those pages, but it takes a knowledgeable eye to discern it."
"The illustrations in Medieval Dress and Fashion are taken from the most magnificent manuscripts of the period, and the figures in them will never look the same after you read this entertaining yet scholarly account of our ancestors' garb."
The Art Book, Vol. 15, No. 1

Contents:
6 Introduction
10 I. Dressing the Great and the Good, c. 840-c. 1100
34 II. The Start of Fashion, c. 1110-c. 1300
78 III. Fashion and formality, c. 1300-c. 1400
122 IV. Dressing Everybody, c. 1400-c. 1500
170 V. Dressing the Present and the Past, c. 1500-c. 1570
194 Bibliography
203 Glossary
205 Index.