The icon of medieval fashionable dress is the ‘poulaine’ – the extremely pointed shoe that was all the rage in the 1380s and again 100 years later. However fashions changed hugely over the thousand or so years covered by the gallery.
In Saxon times people’s tunics were held together with brooches: those of the rich were often gilded. Tailoring gradually became more sophisticated and luxury fabrics such as silk started to be imported from Italy. Most Londoners would have worn woollen clothing, rare fragments of which still survive today, having been preserved in waterlogged conditions.
