It was a time of foreign war and improvement in military armour and arms. Richard I. favoured the cross-bow, and brought it into general use in England to be used in conjunction with the old 4-foot bow and the great bow 6 feet long with the cloth-yard arrow—a bow which could send a shaft through a 4-inch door.
For some time this military movement, together with the influence of the East, kept England from any advance or great change in costume; indeed, the Orientalism reached a pitch in the age of Henry III. which, so far as costume is concerned, may be called the Age of Draperies.
To recall such a time in pictures, one must then see visions of loose-tuniced men, with heavy cloaks; of men in short tunics with sleeves tight or loose at the wrists; of hoods with capes to them, the cape-edge sometimes cut in a round design; of soft leather boots and shoes, the boots reaching to the calf of the leg. To see in the streets bright Oriental colours and cloaks edged with broad bands of pattern; to see hooded heads and bared heads on which the hair was long; to see many long-bearded men; to see old men leaning on tan-handled sticks; the sailor in a cap or coif tied under his chin; the builder, stonemason, and skilled workman in the same coif; to see, as a whole, a brilliant shifting colour scheme in which armour gleamed and leather tunics supplied a dull, fine background. Among these one might see, at a town, by the shore, a thief of a sailor being carried through the streets with his head shaven, tarred and feathered.
THE WOMEN
It is difficult to describe an influence in clothes.
It is difficult nowadays to say in millinery where Paris begins and London accepts. The hint of Paris in a gown suggests taste; the whole of Paris in a gown savours of servile imitation.
No well-dressed Englishwoman should, or does, look French, but she may have a subtle cachet of France if she choose.
The perfection of art is to conceal the means to the end; the perfection of dress is to hide the milliner in the millinery.
The ladies of Richard I.’s time did not wear Oriental clothes, but they had a flavour of Orientalism pervading their dress—rather masculine Orientalism than feminine.