It is not so easy to see from my costume gallery, but one of the periods I like best and have most clothes from is the late 13th/early 14th century.
There are many reasons fo rmy liking it best: the documentation situation is good when it comes to art, with both the Manesse Codex
and the Konstanz-Weingartner Liederhandschrift as well as a lot of english manuscripts. There is also some really nice norwegian art from this time. It is also a period where there is a lot of information on clothing in
preserved swedish and norwegian documents. It is also a culturally interesting period, the end of the high middle ages and historically interesting in Sweden and Norway. And it's before the Plague.
But most of all I think it's beautiful and graceful and looks good on both men and women.
The cotte is made from reddish plum, aubergine or murrey coloured thin wool. Just like my red cotte it's cut after some of the
cottes from Herjolfsnes to give a seam on the side-front that is left open to make it possible to nurse. In the
second picture above you can see how it works since Maja decided something was so interesting that she had to stop eating and look at it.
The dress has cloth buttons made after the description in Textiles and Clothing. Medieval finds from excavations in London. Cloth buttons aren't documented for this period, because
the finds are from the last part of the 14th century, but since we know that buttons were used and cloth buttons are a really simple idea I thouht I could use them.
If I had gone for 100 % docuementable I would have used metal or glass buttons. Below you can see the buttons closer. I'm not too happy with them, I make better buttons now, and they may be replaced with pewter buttons later.
My headwear is simple. First I make my hair into two braided buns over my ears. Then I put on a hairnet on top of that. This hairnet is made from half-bleached linen thread.
Then I put the "chinband" (I don't know the english word) under my chin and pin it together on top of my head. The veil is semi-circular and pinned to the band. This type of headwear is seen in some pictures from the period,
even if it's more common to have a chinband and fillet and either loose hair or a hairnet. Both with a veil on top of the fillet as I wear it with the red cotte or without a veil.
You also see just a hairnet and a circlet.
