The clothing of the past is always a fascinating and intriguing topic, which has the ability to draw you into books and websites and keep you there for hours.
Whether it’s photos of old clothes found in dusty storage rooms or drawings or paintings of everyday or special-occasion clothes, imagining what it would have been like to live your life dressed in those garments is always a great imagination exercise.
“Hofkleiderbuch (Abbildung und Beschreibung der Hof-Livreen) des Herzogs Wilhelm IV. und Albrecht V. 1508-1551” is a book that depicts clothes of the people who lived at the court of Counts Wilhelm IV and Albrecht V in 16th century Bavaria, in modern-day Germany .
It’s a wonderful watercolor sketch album where one can get a glimpse of the distinctive costumes worn by the nobility of those days. The clothing themselves were elaborate and in some ways were predicting the highly decorated and detail-obsessed, opulence-driven clothes that would follow at the courts of Europe over the next centuries.
The images are also exquisite works, they depict the beautiful draping and the thick, yet regal textures with fragility and style and, while they do have a certain flatness to them, they give the viewer a sense of space and movement. At the same time,there’s an overall feel of heaviness to the clothes, they seem to be rather hard to wear and even a little uncomfortable.
This sturdiness is also conveyed by the colors: while the clothes are mostly neutral in terms of chromatic, featuring many shades of gray, dark blue and charcoal, there is also the occasional red, but a shade of red that pops out of the frame and onto the viewer of the pictures. We can also see a deep shade of burgundy and the occasional pop of green.
While the men depicted in the illustrations are not strongly embellished, there is a strong orientation towards refined, meaningful details such as beautiful stitching and decorative feathers, which add not just volume and depth, but also social, cultural and even spiritual significance to the outfits.
The clothes of the past are always a great gateway to discovering not only the way people looked in other ages and times, but to also understand how they acted and what their vision and values were: what they emphasized, what they covered, what was considered beautiful and what attractive and how the clothes gave one status in society and a place in culture.
Fraquoh and Franchomme
Further reading:
AC Mood Board: Dutch clothes of the 18th century
AC Mood Board: The Renaissance in world fashions
AC Mood Board: Basel fashion in the 1630s
AC Mood Board: Medieval clothed horses
AC Mood Board: Royal, military and court costumes from the Jacobean era
P.S. We want to hear from you! What do you think of these clothes and illustration? How would you adapt them to modern outfits? What type of clothes would they be today? Share your feedback, questions or thoughts in the comments below! For more articles on style, fashion tips and cultural insights, you can subscribe to Attire Club via e-mail or follow us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram