The Creative Contessa Blog

A smock in medieval English (known as a chemise, camisa, camicia, and Hemd in other European languages) is shirt-like undergarment, usually made of white or undyed linen. Longer for women than for men, it was worn specifically to protect the outerlayers of clothing from the evils of the soot, oils and dirt that build up on our skin - the white linen undergarments could be laundered at high temperatures with caustic lye and not be damaged by the process, unlike fine wool and silk layers, which would be destroyed by medieval wet laundering practices. But more than this, these crucial...

This morning, I actually wondered to myself at what point humans started adorning themselves and their environs. I recalled seeing archeological finds of deocrative beads and necklaces dating back tens of thousands of years, not to mention wall paintings and then I recalled reading about shells found in Indonesia with deocrative carvings incised into them that date back 540,000 years ago - even Homo Erectus apparently had a penchant for the lovely! Certainly by the 15th century in Europe, there had long been a keen interest in both fashionable attire and fashionable coiffure, so here is a video in which...

These days, line dances are very popular at DJed social events, from country to pop to hiphop. But this tradition of people dancing in a line, performing exactly the same steps and moves at the same time, dates back to centuries. Here is a fun video dance tutorial that will take you back in time! 

How did students in the Middle Ages and Renaissance party? Hard, but not in the manner you may imagine!

See the fun, engaging video version of this essay here.   In today’s Western world, people generally eschew the wearing of hats or headcoverings of any sort unless Mother Nature forces us to cover our locks – for instance to protect against cold, against overpowering sunlight, or driving rain. But in the not-so-distant past, it would have been unheard of for people to walk around without some sort of fabric bundled onto their pates. Bare heads were simply not done! For most of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, people of all levels of society covered their hair with linen, silk, or...