Not wearing hose/ hose around the ankles -- myArmoury.com

Greg Marr

Hi, i'm in a Scottish re-enactment society doing gigs from 11thC-late 15thC timelines.
There is a group that we know that one year suddenly decided to go without wearing hose on their legs and said it was historically accurate. I think what happened is that one year someones hose broke so they had to go without for the weekend.

Could someone please tell me if this is a feasible excuse or if that groups just being a bit daft? (they mainly have well equiped people, shoes, braes, socks.. half harness.. you get my point)

Its a mystery to me

Boyd C-F · Posted: Thu 04 Aug, 2011 1:40 pm Post subject:

Hi there

Try this site;

http://larsdatter.com/breeches.htm

There are a lot of images of people working who take off their hose to keep cool or to stop them from being dirty; (late 1300s)

http://muckley.us/1386/cmf-tsv3.jpg
http://visualiseur.bnf.fr/ConsulterElementNum...mp;Param=C
http://muckley.us/1386/undm-tsc.jpg

So one or two people doing it when working may be acceptable, entire group maybe not? If it was hot and sunny, what I understand to be inclement weather for Scotland, it is far more comfortable.
As a lower class re-enactor in NZ I think I can get away with it during the day while working.

I personally think that it would be understandable for the lower classes to walk about in this way while the upper classes would be too important to do so, and the Middle classes would as they would try to be perceived as upper middle class.

Cheers

Boyd[/url]

Daniel Staberg · Posted: Thu 04 Aug, 2011 3:12 pm Post subject:

I think there is an important diffrence between wearing your hose rolled down or even taken completely off for hard labour and not wearing them at all as part of your everyday wear. The later was simply not done, particularly by members of the upper classes.

Frankly it sounds a bit like the group in question is either trying to not have to make the hose in the first place as accurate hose complete with feet can be a bit complex to make or they are simply trying to make themselves more comfortable in hot weather.

My own group allows rolled down hose or even working just in the braies as long as you are doing actual manual labour. But once that stops you have to go back to more proper wear.