The Sture shirts

[frualeydis]

There are four shirts preserved from the Sture murders in the 16th century (you probably all know about the costumes, since they are in Janet Arnold's book Patterns of Fashion). The shirts are afaik only published in a little booklet in swedish. They are rather alike all of them and are based on rectangles, like for example the Warwick shirt. There are a few things that are different though.





See the cut-off corners on top of the pieces? Those are about a decimetre long and when the straight sleeve is sewn in there, like you do with the more normal T-construction, you get a more shaped sleevehead.
All the shirts are very long, though I don't know what is considered normal. They're about 125 cm long. They're also wide, the widest is made of two 115 cm wide pieces.
Except for 6 cm in each side, the straight tops are gathered and sewn to the collar.

Comments

[peteyfrogboy.livejournal.com]

I don't think I buy the "shirttails as underwear" theory. There's ample evidence for 15th century underwear, and I can't see why it would suddenly go away. I think they are long so that they are less likely to ride up as you move. I have one shirt that is only about hip length, and as the day goes on it tends to crawl up inside my doublet. When your pants are pointed to your doublet, there's no easy way to get the shirt back down. If the shirt is long enough to tuck it down into the pants, this problem is eliminated.