If it is historically true that “clothing makes the man,” this collection of essays determines how that dictum was enacted in the Middle Ages. Désirée Koslin and Janet Snyder have assembled a variety of articles exploring medieval fashion and dress with a truly interdisciplinary approach. The scope of the collection is broad in several ways. The essays discuss textiles and dress diachronically from the Merovingian period of the seventh century to the sixteenth century. They combine the perspectives of archaeology, art history, economics, religion, costume history, material culture, and literary criticism, and explore fabrics from England, Ireland, France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia, Germany, and Italy. The authors consider the dress of not only the ruling elite, but of people from differing classes and genders engaged in various professions.

The majority of the articles in this collection are the result of papers presented at a series of sessions entitled, “Medieval Textiles and Dress: Object, Text, Image,” held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo in 1997. The editors divide the subjects into the early, central, and late Middle Ages. Not surprisingly, the amount of documentation and comparative material increases as the research progresses from early medieval Europe through the later period. At the outset, the authors acknowledge the inherent problems with visual representations of dress and textiles in medieval manuscripts, paintings, sculpture, and other art forms when they are taken out of their original historical context. One way they address this issue is by recapturing different aspects of history. Koslin and Snyder state in the introduction, “Research in iconography has also broadened to include dress as carrier of meaning beyond the three estates, capable of subtle nuance when ‘read’ with textual concordance” (3). In spite of this, seven of the fourteen articles use visual imagery such as manuscript illustrations and sculpture as primary historical sources. These authors’ reliance on images turns out not to be a problem because they effectively relate their careful observations to contemporary and historical texts or to social phenomena. While each contribution deserves careful consideration, space limitation prevents commentary here on all of the articles.

Part 1 of the book covers the early Middle Ages, with essays by Bonnie Effros on Merovingian clerical dress, by Maggie McEnchroe Williams on depictions of Irish nobility on sculptural high crosses, and by Nina Crummy on the development of a textile industry in Britain. Both Effros and Williams utilize medieval textual sources to argue their points, which is that specific types of garments were associated with certain classes of people in society. Effros focuses on clerics and the laity and the laws that governed their dress and bodily adornment. As her examples, she cites nine monastic texts and two saints’ vitae in which regulation of clerical garment is mentioned, but documentation for clothing regulations among the laity is lacking. Williams relies on literary sources in her discussion of the léine and brat, two distinctive coverings worn by Irish nobility. She finds them depicted on three famous high crosses located at Clonmacnois, Monasterboice, and Kells. Because no actual textiles survive from this period, Crummy bases her history of British textile development on archaeological evidence, such as loom weights, spindlewhorls, and other textile-producing implements. Studying three regions, she examines animal-bone reports to determine whether sheep-killing patterns indicate how much wool each area produced. Goltho, a fortified settlement of the ninth century, produced a surplus of wool. Archaeological remains of weaving sheds in Coppergate, a contemporary village, suggest that a textile-producing industry flourished there as well. At West Stow, though, an Anglo-Saxon village, Crummy contradicts a previous report that interpreted the large quantity of the loom and spinning components found at the site as evidence that textile manufacture was “a major economic support of the village” (33). She argues that the animal-bone evidence indicates instead that the village only produced textiles as needed for “self-sufficiency” (30).

Five essays make up the discussion of the central Middle Ages. Three focus on representations of dress in literature, one concentrates on sculpture, and one examines an illustrated legal text. Articles by Gloria Thomas Gilmore and Margarita Yanson referring to literature offer the most intriguing analysis of the integral and symbolic roles clothing plays in the examples they choose. Gilmore discusses one of the Lais of Marie de France that tells the story of Bisclavret, a werewolf whose very existence is defined by the clothing he does or does not wear. She reveals how dress in the story acts as a metaphor illustrating the delicate balance between free choice and conformity to societal mores. Yanson selects a particularly beautiful phrase from the thirteenth-century epic poem, Tristan, “Christ as a windblown sleeve,” and discusses how changes of clothing affect the actions and personalities of the poem’s main characters. By introducing the metaphor of Christ, Yanson asserts that the poem’s author “challenges the idea of a fundamental connection between the human and the divine realms” (135). Snyder’s essay on representations of court clothing in French sculpture looks at jamb statues placed at the portals of the cathedrals of Angers and Chartres. She finds that while the statues represent historical figures, the clothing the statues wear is not only an accurate representation of contemporary fashion in France, but provides an explication of the “complex networks of social, political, intellectual and economic circumstances” of society (96).

In the last section, three essays discuss representations of textiles and clothing in painting and sculpture. One focuses on the emergence of fashion in the late Middle Ages, and one deals with textiles in literature. Odile Blanc’s contribution opens the section with a treatment of changes in men’s fashion in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. She uses manuscript illuminations and chronicle texts to trace the metamorphosis of military garb to courtly garb. Her discussion of the chroniclers’ moralizing against the latest men’s fashions is particularly engaging because it illustrates the distress felt among late medieval writers of history concerning the breakdown of boundaries of dress at that time.

Donna Cottrell’s discussion of Cloths of Honor used behind the figures of the Virgin Mary, Christ, and John the Baptist in the Ghent Altarpiece presents fascinating ideas about the relationship of iconography to late medieval devotional practice. She addresses the question of whether the textiles so carefully rendered in the paintings represented actual fifteenth-century fabrics, but, not knowing the answer, instead provides an interpretation of their meaning in the painting.

An essay by Penny Howell Jolly deals with the significance of earrings as markers of “Otherness.” She notes that in Flemish paintings, earrings signified the person was not Christian and that these figures were often derided in the paintings. Her argument is, in fact, the opposite, in that the figures with earrings had the chance to accept Christ and thus become legitimate members of society. While no one would argue that earrings belong in discussions of the history of dress, they are not textiles, and this article seems out of place in this collection.

Désirée Koslin concludes the book with an overview of the economics of textile production and the significance of various processes of finishing textiles. She discusses color in terms of its function and symbolism, as well as weaving styles, and its application to different types of specialty fabrics, such as silk, tapestries, and moiré. All of these components work together as a means of “linking the production of textiles in the Middle Ages with the rhetorical schemes and dichotomous messages that fabrics and clothing represent in medieval culture” (245).

Overall, the articles in this collection are thoroughly researched and engaging. On the basis of papers given at a few sessions at Kalamazoo it is understandable, but still a shame, that no mention is made of the role of Byzantine textiles in Western Europe. Study of the Byzantine world is often treated separately from that of the medieval West, but silks produced in Constantinople appeared in Western Europe from the sixth century until the fall of the empire. Silk was a highly desired commodity, and secular and ecclesiastical patrons utilized them in many ways. In spite of this oversight, the contribution these essays make to the study of medieval textiles is impressive. They reveal the complexity of dress, and present fascinating theories about its role in an equally multifaceted society. For students and scholars of medieval textiles, the comprehensive glossary of French and English terms relating to textile and clothing production is a welcome contribution to the field.

Readers should be aware that the publication of Encountering Medieval Textiles and Dress follows another collection of essays about textiles published by Palgrave in its series “The New Middle Ages.” Combining this book with Robes and Honor: The Medieval World of Investiture, edited by Gordon Stewart (2001), scholars of medieval textiles now have the most valuable and comprehensive treatments of the subject to date.