I hate when it says “the man wears a dark mohair cossack coat woven with corduroy patches, and a blue cambraic pashmina wraps around his neck” and I have to google every single word, which seriously interrupts my flow of reading
Were Europeans just more picky with fabrics back in the days? I don’t understand why there are so many specific names just for silk from different regions. When I see a hoodie its a hoodie not a cashmere goat-wool 18th century hoodie
Edit: just wanted some historical context but thanks for downvoting me and making fun of me 😐 English isn’t even my first language and I just started properly learning it 4 years ago. Thanks guys 😐
by Motor-Bed7832
35 Comments
It’s because fabric assortments very easily painted an individual’s picture of relative WEALTH clearly in those days, but they didn’t have BRAND NAMES to help with that.
There wasn’t a pre-stocked clothing or department store that you could pop into to review a whole bunch of instantly recognizable fashion designer products in.
Poor people wore felt, or stinky wool because it lasted forever. Functional basic stuff that helped them survive.
But rich people went to dressmakers where they threw multiples of everyday salaries at assortments of colors and textures, or had relationships with traders who brought bolts of unique clothing contruction materials from overseas. Wearing a gaudy impractical outfit connoted power and prestige, and implied enough personal leisure or wealth in life to get all caught up in court intrigue and breathless romances and shit.
The books were going for that vibe. Rich people very obviously dressed rich, and by describing the variety of fabrics in their clothes, you KNEW they were rich without having to be outright told. But since there weren’t really recognizable brand names, authors relied on descriptions of the ornate and rare *components* of a character’s clothing, not *manufacturer*, to illustrate that.
When I’m reading for pleasure, I use an index card as bookmark. If I kind of get a word through context, I write the word on the index card and keep reading. Then I can look up definitions of any word I want later, without losing the flow.
It adds background, gives information about the character, their social status, economic status, their personality, and the era.
Someone wearing a coarse light brown linen shirt , and someone described as wearing the habit à la française, with a rich coloured and embroidered waistcoat, decorative cuffs, a cravat and silk stockings are two very different people.
“Were European just more picky with fabrics” yes, because the quality of your clothes is linked with how rich you are. Same as today.
Wool is not just wool, silk is not just silk. There are different varieties of wool and silk.
Cashemere and Merino wool are not the same. There are around 27 types of wool.
There are roughly 29 types of silk fabric.
Poor people don’t care about the quality of their clothes, but rich people did and still do today.
The word “semiotics” might be of some value here.
It basically means what signals something sends. Apply it to a fabric (and they do send signals).
A wool suit and a polyester suit and a linen suit all signal very different things today; blue jeans with ragged cuffs and holes in the knees signal something different than jeans that look painted on.
I remember reading a novel once where a town-council in New England appeared in “duck trousers.” This made no sense until I discovered that “duck” is a kind of canvas, and what was intended was that these were working men, probably fishermen or lobstermen or farmers who had achieved some status in the town.
Without that crucial piece of information, my imagination of them is going to be radically different.
Signal received.
[deleted]
We take extremely cheap textiles for granted, but through much of history cloth was a supreme exemplar of wealth, class and status. Florence, Italy and Burges, Belgium are just two examples of cities in that became economic center of wealth because they were involved in the textile trade. Even the dye used for cloth could increase it wealthy standing, purple is associated with monarchy, wealth and power because it was so extremely rare and expensive to harvest the dye source. Synthetic chemical dyes changed that, but even the first one, mauve, became a huge success and sought out by wealthy people as a status symbol.
Cloth was expensive and important, and what you could afford and wear was important, partly because it showed your status.
And in reality, if you don’t know these words, it shows a lack of vocabulary that you *should* be looking up. Hating to learn new vocabulary as a reader does you no favors. Regardless, you could just skip it and be satisfied with knowing they’re clothes without knowing the exact description of the clothes or fabrics.
To add to other comments, in that era, traveling was not as easy as we have right now.
The Internet was not invented yet. The detail of fabrics shapes the reader’s imagination and understanding of the world.
Even nowadays, some authors still like to detail their characters’ clothes for many different purposes.
Then, as well as now, fabric spoke volumes. The different social strata wore specific fabrics according to their wealth and position. It’s pretty much the same now, high quality fabric is expensive, even though a lot less than it would’ve been back in the pre-industrial ages. The cut and fit of a piece of clothing or accessory also denoted the position of a person and many times their character (certain types of people were very mindful of there appearance, others maybe not as much). The fact that it’s a wool weave of a particular kind of sheep or goat, would’ve told a contemporary reader whether it was coarse, common, itchy wool, or a soft, thin, expensive material. The different types of silk are the same, and the origin told you whether it was imported from afar, trendy at the time, considered elegant or maybe excessive and gaudy etc.
That’s so you know from now on that they’re not just superfluous details, but might tell you an important background story. And adding to that, we must not forget that our current world/ culture is exceedingly visual. An author doesn’t need to describe to us an outfit in detail, all they need to do is evoke in our mind images we are already familiar with from movies or tv.
Back when? There were sumptuary laws that prohibited the wearing of certain textiles, depending on your social class. Because of this, people could asses your social standing by the clothes that you wore. People took dress very seriously.
God forbid you learn something while reading…
Don’t even get into Victor Hugo’s obsession with architecture.
Or Melville and the history of whaling.
Sure, the stories are great, but sometimes the abridged versions are better.
I said what I said.
What about the myriad types of horse drawn vehicles? Carriage, surrey, dog cart, trap, cabriolet, phaeton, gig, hackney, hansom, etc etc etc. Fascinating stuff.
>I have to google every single word, which seriously interrupts my flow of reading
Oh no! You have to learn new words. :/
What a complaint.
Because dammit the author did all that research!
People undervalue textiles since the introduction of oil based synthetic fibres and the phenomenon of fast fashion. Do you know how much work went into making fabrics and clothes before nylon, polyester and elastane where invented?
Because that was a status symbol. You see it in the society columns even in the 40s and around then. Like, “Mrs. Roberts was sporting a sky blue taffeta gown.” when listing attendees at a charity ball and what not.
They didn’t have all this mass manufactured synthetic fabric back then. You couldn’t order velveteen and satin dresses for every day of the week on Shein.
[deleted]
Wait until you read the Wheel of Time series
>Were Europeans just more picky with fabrics back in the days? I don’t understand why there are so many specific names just for silk from different regions.
In short, classism
Longer…
Europeans were, and still are, conscious of a person’s “class” and status. Clothes are a sign of a person’s status/class/etc. Fancy clothes are the author’s way of shouting THIS PERSON IS HIGH CLASS!
Pre- photography, and when many people wouldn’t have access to paintings, the detail level of those descriptions was of tremendous interest to readers. As a modern reader you could probably skim those descriptions and just take away clues as to wealth and status from them.
There was so little else to describe
Clothes used to be heavily suggestive of social standing and wealth. In a class conscious society it’s a very easy short hand the intended audience would understand.
This is confirmation bias based on what you are reading, there are plenty of other writers that did not describe things that way.
I think it’s because almost all clothes were made to order so the average person would have more knowledge on what types of fabrics and cuts they were wearing. If they were poor they would have made their clothes themselves or had a family member make them.
There weren’t “brand name” clothes, you ascertained wealth and status of clothes by identifying the fabrics and dyes.
You can also get a bit of visual storytelling. A poor person wearing foreign fabrics may be adventurous or well-travelled, for example.
You don’t need to look up every word you don’t know, especially if you know it’s a fabric and don’t care about fabrics
I love those details! Really centres me in the fiction and makes me think of the trade and manufacturing of the time.
I downvoted you for giving out about people downvoting you after your post with no context about your language level in which you blamed books for your lack of understanding.
If you are new to English and having to frequently look up words, I would suggest that is a helpful part of the process.
And as others have noted, in earlier times style and wealth in clothes was often denoted by fabric rather than brand. I’m a native English speaker, and I’m having to do the same as you when reading about objects in older books that are uncommon now or no longer used.
Authors used to get paid by the word.
I believe it originates from the Sumptuary Laws of Medieval times. People of the lower classes were restricted in how much they spent on clothes. Only the wealthy were allowed to dress in fashionable and expensive clothes. Clothing also provided information to other people about someone’s status in society. T he headdress worn by people during the Medieval times immediately conveyed the rank of the person.
Only royalty were allowed to wear cloth of gold and purple silk. Expensive veils were banned for lower-class women. Only the wives or daughters of nobles were allowed to wear velvet, satin sable, or ermine.
The laws were put into effect in order to establish clear lines between the wealthy and the poor. Today, of course, we’re only limited as to how much we have in our bank account or credit card balance.
I want to read what you’re reading. (And “Pashmina” is very modern)
Going back a bit further than the other comments.
When you read the Icelandic sagas, there is a point where someone wants to escape, so he puts on some gray clothes.
He then rides just past the people trying to attack him without them noticing or caring, although they do see him, he is clearly not the one they are interested in, because his clothes are not colorful.
The reason is that the step of dyeing fabric was so luxurious, that it was reserved as a status symbol for the “free”. Anyone wearing a natural color (gray/black/brown/white) and no dyed stuff, would simply be considered a slave.
The names of the fabrics give one a very specific sense of what the feeling or appearance of a particular fabric gives. For someone who is familiar with the fabrics and their names it adds detail with only a few words. I’d recommend going into a fabric store and looking around – feeling the fabrics will make it much easier to associate names with materials. Good on you for taking the trouble to look up the unfamiliar words.