A SHOE.
Women wore short boots as well as shoes, but the dresses were so long that only the tips of the toes could be seen, and they were content to embroider these in gold with fanciful or circular devices.
Gloves, jewelled at the back, were chosen by the richer classes, and coarsely-made warm gloves without fingers received a mild patronage from the poor. But women wore gloves very rarely; they were not amongst the trifles which attracted feminine attention, though there was much general love for variety, and a vast amount of money, care, and thought was bestowed on personal adornment.
DAGGED COSTUME IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY.
In the early part of the thirteenth century many beautiful fabrics put in an appearance. Velvet, and silk interwoven with gold, and cloth with many colours were fashionable, while it became a very popular practice to ornament hems of garments by cutting them into indented tabs or leaves, a fashion to which I have referred previously as "dagged," the contemporary expression. How pretty the dagged costume may be is easily realised by glancing at the picture on page 16, which shows it entirely made in cloth, crowned by a white linen turban with a band of linen under the chin.
The turban adorned many a fair and dark head, the Spanish women wearing it exclusively, drawing their inspiration for this, and for their trailing robes and funnel-shaped sleeves, from the Arab fashions.
Frenchwomen asserted themselves as pioneers with the closely-fitting garment that allowed the lines of the figure to be seen, a legitimate ancestress to our princess gown. Sleeves established their right to exist in more than one form, some being wide at the top, others narrow, close-fitting, and fastened at the wrists, and others again narrow at the top and to the middle of the forearm, where they widened and fell almost to the ground.
The cuirass dress was often slightly open at the neck in order to show the under-garment, and a long girdle embroidered in gold was passed round the waist, crossed behind and brought round again to the front a little lower down, where it was tied so that the ends fell loosely. In the twelfth century this style of gown was frequently draped on the hips and worn without the embroidered bodice or the girdle, and a favoured long robe was open from top to bottom and fastened with buttons. Mantles were semicircular in cut and held in divers ways, and their borders were adorned with rectangular metal plaques, each pierced with five holes, a double cord being passed through these holes and fastened behind.