Tag: Medieval Fashion

Hello, Do you know any “rules” about wealth that make a noble person seem cultured/refined/ect? What would be considered nouveau riche and garish? Things with jewelry, food, clothing, horses would be nice to know. I mean this in context of ASOIAF/medieval and not today’s standards. The Lannisters are ridiculously wealthy, but since they are an old money family would they make big displays of wealth like the Tyrells? The Tyrells seem to use their wealth to deal with people who covet Highgarden.

The tricky thing is that there were different fashions for this kind of thing that changed dramatically over the course of the Middle Ages, the Early Modern period, etc – especially when you factor in the complicating factor of commoners getting richer than nobles by getting their hands dirty “in trade,” which makes the dividing line harder to enforce. 

So for example, big displays of wealth could be very “on-brand” at various times, because nobles are supposed to be “magnificent.” This fashion obviously works in a context in which commoners either can’t afford to keep up with their betters, or aren’t legally allowed to due to sumptuary laws. At other times, understatement and the display of refined aesthetic might be considered the mark of true nobility – this fashion works in a context in which merchants, the rising bourgeoisie, etc. have tons of money but don’t have the social and cultural capital to know the “right” way to display it. 

In general, I would say that some good rules of thumb for refinement are:

  • Don’t Talk About the Price Tag: regardless of what the fashion is about the degree of opulence at the moment, one of the key attitudes of the nobility w/r/t money is that you don’t care how much stuff costs, because you’re supposed to be stupendously wealthy, generous and open-handed, and more concerned with refined aesthetics than commercial calculation. It’s not an accident that one of the oldest tropes about “nouveau riche” is that they constantly talk about how much various things cost, because they’ve still got that bottom line mentality going on.
  • Know the Fashion, Know the Scene: one of the advantages of being a wealthy parasite who doesn’t work for a living is that you have a lot of spare time to do things like keep up with what’s in fashion and what’s not, what the trends are, who the best craftsmen are, etc. Especially in an aristocratic context where what’s fashionable is less decided by manufacturers and specialized press and more about what important individuals (the monarch, the monarch’s immediate family, the monarch’s mistress/mister, various long-time fixtures at court) are wearing, a lot of this knowledge is very personal and having a grasp of it is a sign that you’re close to the right people. 
  • Making Fashion, Not Just Taking It: of course, one of the clearest signs of refinement is that the noble in question doesn’t merely follow the latest fashions but makes them, bending it to their personal aesthetic. To give an example, “Beau” Brummell was a leading aesthete of his day and, thanks to his close connections with the Prince of Wales and his own personal force of charisma, changed the dominant well-to-do men’s fashion of the day from the fop (powdered wigs anf faces, knee britches, stockings, and buckled shoes, tailcoat, lace cravats, etc.) to the dandy (hair worn naturally, clean face, long trousers, white linen cravats, frock or morning coats). 

How often would a medieval monarch wear his/her crown? – RSAFan

Not that often. Not only were full crowns rather heavy, they were often the most valuable thing the monarch owned, partly for the symbolic value the particular crown had but mostly because of all of the jewels and precious metals. Thus, wearing it from day to day would have been a huge risk. (Also, depending on the state of the royal finances, you might have had to pawn them…) So most of the time, the crown stayed in the vaults with the rest of the royal jewels and plate.

A further complication is that monarchs seldom had just the one crown. To use the English monarch as one example: St Edward’s Crown was the oldest of the Crown Jewels and goes back all the way to Edward the Confessor (hence the name), although parts of it supposedly go back to Alfred the Great. This crown represented stability and legitimacy of succession, as it had been used for every king pretty much between William the Conqueror and Charles I, so using it was very important: hence why Henry VIII used it to crown Anne Boleyn, a very public statement about the way things went. Incidentally, Parliament sold the crown in 1642 during the Civil War, and no one knows where the original went. (Charles II had a replacement made, and then Colonel Thomas Blood stole that one, and so on…)

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Needless to say, you wouldn’t dream of using this crown except for coronations, so kings acquired other crowns to be used on different occasions. (Edward III, for example, had no less than nine crowns and a dozen circlets, because if you’re going to try to conquer France, you need to do that in style.) So when would a king wear a crown? Well, any major public event – a religious holiday, the installment of a bishop or the dedication of a church, a session of Parliament, meeting another monarch, making a pilgrimage, etc. etc. 

For ordinary fancy occasions – your state dinners, your feasts, your dances, your earlier monarchs went with circlets or coronets. But fashions change, and once we get into the later Middle Ages, you start to see more of a preference for fancy hats as day-to-day wear. My personal favorite is Henry IV’s rather snazzy red number:

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Now that is a hat that screams “I may be a usurper whose actions will lead to the Wars of the Roses, but you have to admit, I look damn good.”