15th century clothing & culture

You didn't say what part of Europe you were interested in and I'm afraid most of my resources lean more toward England and France but a couple of really good books on the subject are:

Medieval Costume in England and France by Mary G. Houston. 

Comes complete with illustrations, discussions on the construction and diagrams which could be used to help create patterns if you're talented that way.  Covers royalty down to peasant.

A History of Costume by Carl Kohler

Tudor Costume and Fashion by Herbert Norris

Late in the period and you can see the switch from the more simple costumes to the elaborate Elizabethan.  However, the peasant/commoner dress was very slow to change.

This is a reenactor's costume website but you can get a good look at what the costumes may have looked like.

http://www.historicenterprises.com/

 

"Late in the period and you can see the switch from the more simple costumes to the elaborate Elizabethan.  However, the peasant/commoner dress was very slow to change."

That's what my guess was, but I was still hoping for pics.  If I'm looking to approximate 15th century peasant/commoner dress, what centuries should I accept as proxy?  I'm not a stickler, I just don't want any egregious errors - maybe 13th-15th?

A friend who is a professional theater costumer recommended some of these sites:

http://www.siue.edu/COSTUMES/history.html

http://www.costumepage.org/tcpinfo2.html

http://www.milieux.com/costume/

http://moas.atlantia.sca.org/topics/clot.htm

http://www.lyonslpgas.com/sewscape/costume.html

and run a search in your fave rave search engine for Historical Medieval Costume

 

it wasn't much but y ou are very welcome and by the way welcome to the forum

Caicai the spammer is caca.

Edited by Centrix Vigilis - 18-Jul-2011 at 23:14

In many European countries peasants were wearing no shoes, and that's up till the nineteenth century, so in the fifteen century would be no better. Mother of the philosopher Artur Schopenhauer described her journey through England and Scotland. While in England most people had shoes, in Scotland only few.