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Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval, I'm Matt Lewis.

Thanks to those big hitting names and events, we always try to bring you some of the everyday

detail from Medieval Life 2 and it doesn't get much more of an everyday necessity than

clothing and getting dressed.

What did people wear and what was it like to be in Medieval clothes all day?

Well, fortunately Sarah Grace Heller is here to tell us.

Sarah Grace is Associate Professor of French at Ohio State University but one of her areas

of expertise is Medieval Fashion Theory and her books include Fashion in Medieval France

and a cultural history of fashion in a Medieval Age.

Welcome to Gone Medieval Sarah Grace.

Hello, thank you. It's an honour to be here.

To start off with, what would most clothing in the medieval period be made out of and how

much is that affected by your social standing?

All clothing is made of natural fibers so you'd start with a layer of linen or hemp,

linen, the finer the thread and the finer the weave would equate to nice or social standing.

The rougher weaves shed dirt and stains and so on more easily, particularly hemp.

So hemp was a very practical fiber, linen is nicer next to the skin, it's a little bit softer.

Then silk was highly prized, it was not highly available in the early middle ages, it had to come

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