Money Matters: Tyrian Purple

By Stephanie Dray

Today we say the rich are born with silver spoons in their mouths. In the ancient world, they said the wealthy were born to the purple. This phrase alludes to the royal robes dyed with a precious shade of deep purple originally created by the Phoenicians in Tyre.

Tyrian purple was a hue worn by royals and conquerors including Alexander the Great. Romans had a great affinity for it too, and their bright white senatorial togas were bordered with a great purple band. Tyrian purple was not only a commodity, but also a status symbol. It may have even accounted for the assassination of Julius Caesar who wore the royal purple so often that his colleagues feared he intended to make himself King.

The true color cannot be accurately identified now; the best we can do is reconstruct it based on the surviving description of the ancients, but we do know that redder shades of purple were considered to be inferior. It was the darkest, richest purple that they prized, and this may have been achieved by dipping the fabric twice in two slightly different shades, one redder, one bluer.

Whatever the methodology, the purple dye itself was so expensive that it was worth its weight in silver. The salesman of a silken garment dyed properly in the stuff might be able to buy a small city with the proceeds. The reason it was so costly is because of its enduring quality, one that improved, rather than faded, with age. And also it was wildly expensive because of the process used to make it.

The source of the dye was the murex brandaris, which is a name for a spiny sea snail. While it's possible to capture one of these little gastropods and poke it until it excretes a defensive mucus containing at least one of the ingredients required to make the precious purple, milking the murex snails was entirely too labor intensive. To meet demand, millions of murex were harvested. More than a thousand shells were needed to make even one gram of dye.

The exact process by which the dye was made has not been perfectly reproduced to date, but it was described by Pliny and involved vats of rotting shellfish. The smell was so terrible that dye factories had to be built far away from population centers. Mountains of shells attest to their presence.

The heroine of my debut novel, LILY OF THE NILE, is Cleopatra Selene, daughter of the more famous Cleopatra VII of Egypt. Together with her husband King Juba II, Selene built several purple dye factories on islands off the coast of Mauretania. Perhaps unable to replicate the exact shade of purple invented by the Tyrians, they called their own Gaetulian purple after one of the native Berber tribes. Gaetulian purple was prized almost as much as the Tyrian variety and was probably responsible for funding many of Juba and Selene's building projects and cultural programs.

Stephanie Dray's debut historical fiction novel, LILY OF THE NILE, will release January 2011 from Berkley Books. The sequel is expected to release at the end of 2011. Both novels are set in the Augustan Age and feature Cleopatra's daughter.

Research: Men's Underpants

By Erastes

When you write romance, particularly historical romance, you need to know a lot about the clothes. For me, part of the sensuous and pleasurable aspects of writing in eras other than our own is to picture exactly what my characters are wearing, what those clothes are made of, how they are created, dyed, woven, etc. A historical writer has to be partly geek, and would fit right in with any society of living history buffs.

When you write books which are going to have the protagonists stripping off, then you need to know what's under those clothes, and when--like me--you write about homosexual men, you need a good grounding in what men wear under those breeches, those kilts (if anything) and those dandified trousers. And how they go on. And how they come off!

So I'd like to share a little with you about things I have learned about men's undergarments whilst researching for my books. Here I cover up to the Elizabethan age, I'll share later eras perhaps in another month.

Loincloths might still be around (roll on global warming!!), but they have been found in burial sites on the bodies of men living over 7,000 years ago. Who knows what sparked man to start covering his bits--it would hardly be warmth, after all. It would offer some level of protection from thistles I suppose, but not if a sabre toothed-tiger was coming at you at groin level.

Tutankhamun was buried with 145 loincloths. This seems either a lot, or not enough, depending on your point of view of how long the afterlife is going to be. Of course by this time, the loincloth was worn under a skirt. Still--roll on global warming!

The Ancient Greeks obviously didn't have to worry about sabre-toothed tigers, and consequently didn't wear any underwear at all. Good for them! Φοβάμαι τους Έλληνες όταν είναι πηγαίνοντας καταδρομέας!*

The Romans did, though00big sissies. Possibly because their empire stretched into chillier areas. They'd wear something called a subligaculum, which in modern terms means a pair of shorts or a loincloth and was worn under a toga or tunic.

Pull-on undergarments were invented around the 13th century, large baggy drawers called "braies" made from linen were worn by men under their clothes. This style of undergarment did not really change in design for 500 years--Plus ca change...I know some men who change them about as frequently--other than to be fashioned from better, finer fabrics and to have ornamentation.

These knickers shrank considerable during the Renaissance as the familiar image of cod-piece and hose emerged. The hose themselves were an open garment--not like our tights or hose of today. Tight on the legs and open at the front and back which could not be worn openly as the privities hung lose. As the doublet became shorter clearly something else was needed! The braies shrank to show off the hose, and the codpiece was developed to protect the wearer's modesty.

Or at least at first.

Gradually the codpiece evolved, became padded, shaped to fit and as some clearly showed were frankly showing off--and obviously exaggerating. Some of the most "impressive" are those belonging to Henry 8th and shown at the Tower of London.

What is interesting about fashion today is that of showing off one's designer underwear is not a new thing at all. The rich would commission the most exquisite undershirts, and underwear, fabulously expensive fabrics and meticulously embroidered. Why, they reasoned, am I paying for such incredible work that will never be seen? Well, partly because Sumptuary Laws came into force in many European countries, restricting the sumptuousness of dress in order to curb extravagance, protect fortunes, and make clear the necessary and appropriate distinctions between levels of society.

This led to the "slashing" fashions that we see in the Elizabethan period, where the overclothes had slits, the better to show off the gorgeous clothes being worn beneath, and thus bypassing the laws.

After these excesses calmed down, and waistcoat shirt and breeches took the place of doublet and hose, men returned to wearing braies or "strossers." During the English Civil War the only difference between undergarments and overgarments were the weight of the wool they were made from.

*I fear the Greeks when they go commando.

Sources:
A history of Men's Underwear
Revival Clothing
Vintage Skivvies

Fashion: Ready-to-Wear

By Eliza Tucker

From shop to store: prêt-a-porter sales have been a long time coming. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, clothiers' guilds limited the mass production of clothes, but by the 1700s, the US, China, and Europe could all boast flourishing clothing industries.

In 1820, the measuring tape was invented, which helped make consistent sizing methods. And in 1846, Elias Howe's sewing machine further increased the availability of clothes made en masse.

During the American Civil War, the demand for mass-produced uniforms was high. Sizes became standardized so that soldiers order uniforms to fit without much, if any, tailoring. After the war, men's clothes retained the standard sizing, making it easy to buy ready-made clothes.

Department stores grew in popularity. The first of these stores, Le Bon Marche ("the good deal"), opened in Paris in 1838. In New York, Alexander Turney Stewart opened his own store, aptly named AT Stewart, also called The Marble Palace, on Broadway (pictured). The Marble Palace officially became a department store in 1858, and by 182, it was linked with Macy's, B. Altman, and Lord & Taylor to form "The Ladies' Mile" on Broadway. In 1869, Stewart became a millionaire.

Other stores followed. In 1872, Bloomingdale's opened, and Bergdorf-Goodman opened its swanky doors in 1906.

Isaac Singer's electric sewing machine, which had come out in 1889, was another catalyst for ready-made clothing. Clothing factories popped up all over the world, since garment making had never been easier. Using an electric machines in an assembly line, even the most unskilled seamstresses could be of use, as they only had to learn how to make a single piece of clothing. This also created a way for clothing manufacturers to branch out into women's clothing, starting with shirtwaists, which are long, tapered blouses worn with flowing skirts.

Sears, Roebuck & Co., which had begun as a mail-order service in 1839, took on clothing manufacturer Julius Rosenwald as part owner in 1895. With the addition of ready-to-wear clothing available in standard sizes, the catalog grew from 320 pages, to more than 530. In 1925, Sears opened its first retail store. By the end of 1929, 319 stores had popped across America.

Ready-to-wear clothing had found a place in the middle-class, where people were too busy to make their own clothes but not wealthy enough to hire someone to custom-sew them. After World War II, haute couture ready-to-wear began to pop up in Europe from designers like Dior and Givenchy, names still expensive today.

Fashion: Medieval Vogue

By Carrie Lofty

In the medieval period, fashion meant anything above and beyond what was required for bare survival...and I suppose that still holds true today. So what form did medieval fashion take? What separated the garments worn by wealthy barons and monarchs from the basic clothes donned by commoners?

We'll start our medieval shopping trip by choosing an appropriate fabric. The most common fabric was made from wool, the production of which was a tedious process. After sheering the sheep, the wool was washed, combed, carded, spun, woven, and fulled. Fulling entailed a long soak in urine or a clay called fuller's earth, after which the wool was rinsed, beaten, felted, stretched on tenterframes and hooks, dried, and groomed with the spiny head of a teasel to create a soft finish. More steps meant more expensive cloth, so teaseled wool was the best money could buy.

Other cloth included linen, where the fibrous stems of flax were soaked, beaten, spun, and woven. This produced a very durable cloth like denim, which became softer after long use. Leather was also popular and equally arduous to process. The hides were scraped, softened and stripped of excess hair by using a lime solution or stale urine. Then they were tanned in a chemical solution derived from tree bark. Tanned leather could be boiled in oil or wax and then shaped to form armor called cuir boulli.


But what if plain cloth was simply not enough? Wealthy folks could decide to add fur to their ensembles. Peasants wore cheap, plentiful furs for warmth and softness, such as rabbit, cat, badger, beaver. These same furs were also used on blankets. But nobles could afford rarer animal skins, including ermine, sable and squirrel that were specially raised for that purpose.

Next, you had to decide on color. As a peasant, well...you got what you got. Wool might be variegated according to the color of the sheep, and linen came out looking like the flax of its origins. But for those who could splurge, color was the ultimate luxury. Indigo is colorless when cooked in vats, but it reacts with the air to create a deep blue. Madder is a red dye made from roots collected in the spring, and cinnabar (mercury sulfide) also creates a deep red. Other dyes include weld (yellow), woad (blue), iron oxide (black, bark and nuts (brown), mustard, and saffron. Women and men both experimented with color combinations, layering gowns or tunics of one color over undergarments of another, which were designed specifically to be seen and admired. If you're undergarments were dyed, that's saying something!


And no fashionable outfit would be complete without accessories. Rather than simply tying drawstrings or flaps together, a wealthier medieval individual might have used horn, wood, bone or ivory closure toggles, as well as crafted iron for buckles, clasps and pins. Other accents included elaborate embroidery, silken cords, and affixed jewels or quartz.

Here are some useful terms related to medieval clothing:
Agrafe: large brooch for fastening cloak or robe
Almoner: bag or purse looped by a cord to girdle
Buskins: high boots worn by country folk and travelers
Coif: close-fitting cap
Falding: coarse woolen cloth
Fustian: cotton or woolen cloth
Kirtle: woman's under-gown with tight sleeves
Latchet: strap used to fasten shoes
Roskin: squirrel fur (also called vair if grey or white fur)
Samite: rich silk fabric woven with gold

Thursday 13: Items from a Fashionable 1830's Trousseau

By Michelle Styles

Thirteen items from a fashionable woman's trousseau of the 1830s:

This comes from a list contained in Alison Adburham's Shops and Shopping 1800-1914: Where and In What Manner the Well Dressed Englishwoman bought her clothes (rev edn, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1981).

1. 9 chemises
2. 6 nightdresses
3. 6 Paris long cloth drawers; 3 trimmed with lace
4. 2 long cloth petticoats, tucked and one trimmed with work
5. 3 flannel petticoats
6. 3 camisoles, trimmed with work, plus 3 extra good camisoles
7. 3 merino wool vests
8. 1 printed cambric dressing gown, 1 in coloured flannel and 1 white hair-cord
9. 1 dressing jacket
10. 12 pairs white cotton hose, 6 hem stitched
11. 12 cambric pocket handkerchiefs, 6 hem stitched
12. 1 French wove corset
13. 6 fine towels (an assortment)