The-Bliaut-art
- 11/20/11
“The
Mysterious Bliaut Revealed” by Mistress Enid d’Auliere, OL
NOTE:
See also the files: bliauts-msg, Garboholic-art, fasteners-msg,
cotehardies-msg, cl-12C-Woman-art, silk-msg, p-shoes-msg,
embroidery-msg.
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NOTICE
-
This
article was submitted to me by the author for inclusion in this set
of files, called Stefan's Florilegium.
These
files are available on the Internet at: http://www.florilegium.org
Copyright
to the contents of this file remains with the author or translator.
While
the author will likely give permission for this work to be reprinted
in SCA type publications, please check with the author first or check
for any permissions granted at the end of this file.
Thank
you,
Mark
S. Harris...AKA:..Stefan li Rous
stefan
at florilegium.org
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The
Mysterious Bliaut Revealed
by
Mistress Enid d’Auliere, OL
The Mystery:
A garment called a
Bliaut appeared in the historical record from about 1120 to about
1170, then was replaced by the form fitting cotehardie, along with
the secret of it’s construction. The bliaut seemed to be a form
fitting lady’s garment (though there was a men’s version that I
will address in a different article) from the shoulder to the hips,
then fell from the hips to the floor in graceful pleats, almost
accordian-like. There seems to be a large girdle or belt around the
midsection of the garment, obscuring how this garment might have been
achieved. Often the bliaut was depicted with wide sleeves on the
overdress and a tight fitted sleeve on the underdress. In the few
descriptions we find from the period, it is mentioned that the dress
was often made of fine silk, rich and beautiful fabrics that would
have cost a king’s ransom in the early middle ages, though it could
be made of other fabrics as well, which would have been most likely
fine wool or linen.
This graceful garment
has intrigued historians and costumers for ages. It has an elegant
line to it, seemingly light and flowing even in stone. But the stone
has kept it’s secret and the bliaut continued to be a mystery in
the costuming world. Many theories have been put forth to explain the
seemingly unexplainable. The Victorians depicted the bliaut as having
a large, quilted, fitted girdle around the midsection, almost like
the beginnings of a corset. Other theories have included the
possibility of the bodice and skirt being separate pieces, though
other examples of that skill waited for centuries to appear; wide
skirts with inserted gores or even netting between a short bodice and
dropped skirt. Unfortunately, none of these theories successfully
explained the appearance of the dress within the skills known to be
available to the seamstresses of the time. None of them truly
explained the odd middle section and what that might have been even
if they might have explained the construction of the dress. The
mystery remained.
The Detective Work:
I had determined that
there had to be an answer to the riddle of the bliaut that fitted
with the known skills of the seamstresses and needle workers of the
period. I just had to find it, that’s all. So, lets take a look at
this garment once again. The bliaut is a fitted garment from the
shoulder to the hips ending in close pleats that fall to the floor.
The midsection is fitted with “something” similar to an expanded
belt or corset and obviously decorated, primarily in horizontal
markings. The skirt falls from the this midsection to the floor in
graceful, close pleats and doesn‘t appear to be much larger at the
bottom of the skirt than at the top of the skirt, making it also
pretty close fitting. The sleeves seem to be large and often bordered
with either embroidery or woven trim. The neckline of the bliaut is
wider and often a “V” neckline or a keyhole neckline, both being
used at differing times with decoration around the neck, either trim
or embroidery. The underdress seems to be unremarkable, a round
neckline and long, tapered sleeves that seem to lace at the wrists.
Now,
let’s look at how this garment might have been constructed starting
with a couple of basic assumptions. Assumption number one is that the
garment is one piece from shoulder to floor. The reason I am
assuming this is that there is no other garment with a separated
bodice and skirt until the 15th
century. I can safely assume that this knowledge was unlikely to have
been gained and lost in the space of 50 years. Assumption number two
is that the dress appeared as depicted in the statuary and drawings
of the period. Given those two assumptions, the question for any good
seamstress is if the pleats end at the floor, where do they need to
begin?
Given assumption number
one, the answer to that question is at the top. The pleats had to
begin at the shoulder to be able to appear as they did at the hips
and fall to the floor. They had to be folded on the straight of the
grain of the fabric (or the warp) in order to fall so straight and
gracefully to the floor. It’s in the nature of fabric itself. That
means that the whole garment had to be shaped by manipulating the
fabric by pleating it from the shoulder to the hips creating the
pleated skirt. Let me say that again because it’s the key to the
whole dress. The fabric is manipulated into place by a series of
pleats from the shoulder to the hips. Looking at the garment again, I
determined that my garment would be pleated at the shoulder and again
at the midsection to create the fitted silhouette shown in the
statuary from the 
period of the actual
garment.
The next question is
what is that stuff in the middle? Is that some kind of belt, sash,
corset? What are those horizontal lines? If it is a belt in itself,
why is there another belt over it? In the construction of the dress,
I found the answer to this problem as well.
What we are seeing, or
so I believe, is the pleating around the middle to fit the garment,
sewn down to secure the pleats and embroidered over with decorative
stitches to make it pretty. The process of pleating stiffens and
thickens the fabrics and the decorative stitching further enforces
the structure the pleating began, giving the midsection the signature
stiff and quilted appearance. This leaves the skirt to drop from the
hips to the floor in the graceful and close pleats we see in the
statuary. The pleats are vertical so the stitching to secure them
would be best if they were horizontal, giving the midsection it’s
signature look.
The Bliaut Revealed:
The garment itself is
not beyond the skills of the artisans of the period, actually it was
well within the skills of the seamstresses given a bit of innovation
and lots of time. The pleating is not a documented sewing technique
that I have found, at least to this extent, however, no examples of
this garment yet exist into our time, so it is impossible to tell if
pleating was taken to this extreme during this period. Looking at the
finished statuary, I have to conclude that pleating rather than
smocking or gathering is the most likely technique used to result in
the particular silhouette of the garment.
This pleating technique
is time consuming, but quite lovely when it is finished. The garment,
using this technique, would have been based on a T-tunic pattern,
just starting out very large, probably involving the full width of
the fabric available for each side, thereby needing the length of 4
dresses for the body of the dress plus fabric for two sleeves,
pleated into the shoulders and midsection until the dress is
formfitting though the body to the hips, falling in neat, graceful
pleats to the floor as it has been shown in the drawings and statuary
from the period.
Now why would the
artisans of the time use such a time consuming technique as hand
pleating an entire garment to fit and spending hours embroidering
over the pleats? We can’t really know the answer to that, but my
belief is that at this time in history, rich, fine silks were
becoming available to the courts of France through trade with the
Holy Lands. These fine silks intimidate me now even with modern
scissors, but most likely would have intrigued and intimidated the
artisans of the day presenting a unique challenge. Not wanting to cut
the fabric with the scissors available in Iron Age Europe, they
invented another process to shape the fabric. It may have been that
the fine silk fabric was so valuable, they didn’t want to discard a
scrap of it; they were afraid to cut it; or they just came up with
idea, there is now no way to know, of course. It is certainly
possible that this method of construction enabled the seamstresses of
the time to use more fabric thus displaying the wearer’s wealth.
Fine silks would have been worth their weight in gold, if not more,
so wearing yards and yards of fine silk would have proclaimed the
wearer’s status loudly.
It is reasonable to say
that the bliaut was, indeed, a transitional garment, coming between
the loose and simple T-Tunic and the more fitted and complicated
cotehardie of later periods. It is just possible that the pleating
technique used to fit the bliaut helped shape later patterns, however
that is just a guess. My guess is that the ladies of the day wanted
something more elegant than a T-tunic from the fine silks that were
becoming available and the leap from a T-tunic to the pleated bliaut
was a logical step given the skills and tools of the time. The step
to the fitted bliaut was the first time a fitted garment was worn
that was purposely fitted through the waist and hips and must have
been the haute couture of the day, nothing short of the medieval
Channel.
The Construction:
The method of
construction is simple in theory and a bit more time consuming in
practice. The width of the garment at the bottom of the skirt is
equal to the top of the garment, it is all fitted to the wearer by
making small pleats in the fabric which are sewn over to fix them in
place. The pattern is that of a simple T-tunic without the gores on
the sides, just two rectangles, one for the front and one for the
back. I find it best if both the front and back are made up of the
full width of the fabric piece, so that each rectangle contains 2
widths of the fabric and cut longer than the garment is intended to
be. The pleating and sewing take up more length than you would
imagine. The front seam where the two widths of the fabric are sewn
together will be the center front of the garment and the same thing
for the back, but it will be the center back.
Now you can begin
pleating. The pleating will begin at the shoulder and neck and then
again at the midsection or waist. This is a time intensive process
and takes patience, I’ve found. Keeping the pleats even is the
trick to this technique. Pleat the fabric to the measurement from
shoulder to shoulder of the wearer, leaving space for the neck, of
course. Make the pleats as long as you wish, but longer pleats mold
the fabric better to the body of the wearer. However, keep these
pleats as even as possible as they affect the pleats at the
midsection and how the skirt falls.
My personal technique
for pleating is folding, pinning with straight pins, and repeating
until the desired width is achieved. This allows for fixing mistakes
and adjustments by simply moving the pins. Once the I have the pleats
in to the proper width and as evenly spaced as possible, I baste the
pleats in place with a single thread later to be removed, press them
down and draw the lines for the beginning of my embroidery. I draw
the horizontal lines so that they are straight, and take the rest of
the pattern from that. You will notice that once the horizontal lines
are embroidered by using either a chain stitch or split stitch, the
pleats make box shapes. I embroider an X in each box then a + over
that in a contrasting color of thread. This simple embroidery makes a
star shape and can continue the width of the garment, eventually
resulting in fixing the pleats in place.
Once the front and back
neck/shoulder are done, you can move on to the midsection. This is a
bit more of a challenge in shape, though the pleats are usually
evident by now from having been secured at the shoulders. The statues
show that the front midsection was a convex shape or bowed out, but
tell us nothing about the back. I’m assuming that the back was a
concave shape or bowed in for the purpose of this garment and ease
of fitting. The design I chose was to have a border around the
midsection top and bottom and then horizontal lines within the rest
of the design. The width of the midsection should be just a bit
larger than the measurement of the wearer’s midsection. You can
adjust the pleats to fit this measurement but remember that the
embroidery stitches will pull it in a bit.
Sleeves are shown to be
large and flowing, angel type in design. I have continued the
pleating method to the shoulders of the sleeves and embroidered the
tops of the sleeves to achieve the effect I wanted. I believe that
the design of the sleeves are pretty open to discussion and
imagination, given the skills and tastes of the time. They could be
long and pointed, or open and flowing, but always show a
tight-sleeved undergarment with the bliaut.
This technique is
intensive in detail and hand sewing, but simple in cutting. I think
it has been in front of us all this time, but not seen because we no
longer fit dresses by pleating methods, nor have we done this for
many centuries. It is a technique lost to time, so lost that there is
no name for this technique. We have smocking and shearing, but no
name for this pleating method that the seamstresses of this long ago
time used to fit the fine fabrics they found in their hands. Though
the name is lost, the technique need not be entirely lost. With some
practice, this pleating method can create new bliauts equally as
lovely and flowing as the original gowns were.
-----
Copyright
2007 by Marcia Wallace. <orlando at portagetravel.com>.
Permission is granted for republication in SCA-related publications,
provided the author is credited. Addresses change, but a reasonable
attempt should be made to ensure that the author is notified of the
publication and if possible receives a copy.
If
this article is reprinted in a publication, I would appreciate a
notice in the publication that you found this article in the
Florilegium. I would also appreciate an email to myself, so that I
can track which articles are being reprinted. Thanks. -Stefan.
<the
end>
Edited by Mark S. Harris The-Bliaut-art