This is the second installment in what will be an ongoing series of literature reviews. The first was on H.F. McClintock's Old Irish and Highland Dress, which I tore apart with rather less mercy than others may have done. Since my knowledge on Dress in Ireland tapers off drastically after 900CE, I cannot say as much about the latter portion of the book. I also more or less skipped the second half of the book because it was on fashions from the eighteenth century onward and I wasn't interested, but I am sure that the quality of the book gets better and better as more evidence became available to the author.
I also wrote a small article on a particular detail on the use of linen in the Sixteenth century. You can read that article here.
For anyone who read my thesis (available here), you may have noticed a conspicuous lack of reference to the works of Mairead Dunlevy and H.F. McClintock. This was not an accident! In my research, I noticed that many of the articles available on medieval Irish dress referred to one or both of these resources and even those that didn't refer directly to them used remarkably similar language and made very similar arguments as those that did. It seemed like a lot of the current research referred back to these sources in some way. One of my original goals when writing my thesis was to see what other resources were out there, which is part of the reason why the title includes the phrase "Re-Examining the Evidence." I simply wasn't satisfied with the current body of available knowledge, and particularly the tendency to go back to just a handful of sources. I have already reviewed Old Irish and Highland Dress by H.F. McClintock, but I took the plunge on the recommendation of a friend and bought a copy of Dress in Ireland: a history(1987) by Mairead Dunlevy. While this comes too late to make it into my thesis, I was hoping that the book could give me a better basis for my research and possibly provide me with more artifacts that I could research directly. In the former I was disappointed, but in the latter I was pleasantly surprised.
First off, let me say that Dress in Ireland is full of assertions that are based on art and artifacts, which is fantastic. The first pages of chapter 1 greet you with detailed photographs of artifacts from the first century BCE, found by a farmer in Co. Armagh. In these photographs you can see relevant details such as decoration, weave structure, and what joining techniques were left visible when the artifact was made. There is a shoe that prominently displays repair and sophisticated structure and two horsehair belts with weave structure visible as well as intricate fringes. The artifacts, along with a couple not pictured, are synthesized into a picture of what the wearers may have looked like in these garments. This is great! A+ to Dunlevy on the BCE portion of her book and the presentation of her evidence.
I will also say that this is the most complete collection of knowledge on Irish dress that I have encountered so far. Unfortunately, it has been cited to death and I had heard almost everything before. Had it been the first source I read, it would have given me the essential knowledge base that I craved when I started my research, which began even before I started my thesis. For that, I commend Dunlevy and I wish I had found this book years ago.
It's time for my complaints. Like McClintock, Dunlevy seems to treat the first millennium CE as a relatively static period, and jumps from the first centuries (both BCE and CE) up to the 8th, 9th, and even 10th centuries like it ain't no thang. What about the introduction of Roman culture? She acknowledges the possible influence of the Romans on the Irish and that Roman styles might have been incorporated into Irish dress, but never details what these changes might be and never really acknowledges it after that, even as a style of pants from the later centuries are described as possibly hearkening back to 100 BCE. I agree that it's possible that it was a deliberate revival of the old styles, but I'm more inclined to believe that practical styles of pants in a given region have a somewhat limited range of possible styles (pumpkin pants excluded - there's no accounting for pumpkin pants ;)).
It is also sometimes odd to hear Dunlevy's interpretation of various artifacts. I mentioned the repaired shoe above. Dunlevy believes that it was cut into shape from a single piece of leather. With my experience in sewing and leatherwork, I don't see how this particular shoe could have been constructed from only one piece of leather. I will grant that shoes made from one piece of leather were known in Ireland, and I even used the 10th century Drumacoon bog shoe as a pattern for the shoes that went along with my thesis dress. They're fantastic and I love them, and I absolutely believe one-piece shoes were a thing in Ireland at that time. However, the images provided in the book do not indicate a single-piece shoe. There are clearly seams that indicate that the top of the shoe was cut separate from the sides and sole, then the top was sewn onto the main portion. Maybe there are details that are not visible in the image that prove it was from a single piece of leather, but there's no way to tell from the given evidence. There is a smattering of things in the first few chapters that, similar to the "single piece" leather shoe, just don't make sense, so I take issue with it.
The latter part of Dress in Ireland was quite enjoyable in my opinion. As one might expect, the prevalence of extant pieces increased as the timeline progressed, giving more and more (aged, of course) examples of what dress actually looked like in a given time period. Occasional details were lost in the actual clothing articles, such as color schemes and what some hems would have looked like, but for the most part those could be filled in with artistic representations of clothing, which were presented alongside the actual clothes to give a more complete image.
I also really enjoyed the excerpts from contemporary literature that stated details like attitudes toward the new fashions from contemporary perspectives and prices of materials and tailoring service along with the occasional inventory of a person's garments. While I was researching my thesis, these were questions that I desperately wished I could answer because they help me figure out a garment's place in society. Did someone have lots of clothing options? Did they rely on a single outfit for their daily needs? Were certain styles seen as practical or frivolous, or modest or indecent? Which materials were produced locally and which had to be imported? Since fashion is affected by all of these factors, it is important to know these contextual details in order to form a more complete idea of how a fashion could have arisen, which groups would have worn it, and what kind of message it would have sent to other members of a culture. With information like this, it was easier for me to grasp how people of various groups, genders, economic backgrounds, and political and religious affiliations were dressing.
In the sixteenth century chapter, I particularly enjoyed the gown found in Shinrone bog and decided to emulate it in linen for An Tir's Twelfth Night 2015. While not entirely accurate (for one, the whole thing was done in a week of evenings on a sewing machine), it was a great chance to explore late Medieval construction and Irish styles.
Complaints aside, this is a great book to get an introduction to what we currently know about Irish dress in the Early Medieval Period. If you are coming straight into learning about dress in Ireland, pick it up ASAP. It's one of the most commonly cited resources for the topic and I guarantee you that it will save you hours of wasted time on the Internet trying to find reliable sources.
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