Me, Getting Dressed

I'm still working on this page, but please take a look anyways if you wish. I want to add short descriptions to go with some of the pictures. These pictures were take to show the different layers of my reconstruction/interpretation of Landsknecht clothing. There were other styles of hosen, doublets, etc. - this is just what I had with me on one of several camping trips when I wanted to explore the functionality of some of the clothing I had made.

The under layer/underwear is a linen shirt next are the hosen, mine are split into short trunk hose with seperate hose for the legs. the shirt gets tucked in, shirttails tucked between the legs to help prevent chafing, and pulled through the bottom of the leg openings - which helps keep them from bunching up in other places and looks like the bits of fabric often seen sticking out of the bottom of trunk hose in woodcuts. This shirt would really work better for this if it was a few inches longer. linen hosen are then laced on via points around the bottom of the trunk hose. I made this layer of hose with only half of the foot and a sturrip bottom because I thought the front might fall apart anyways from being in a shoe. Next come the wool hose. Mine only have three pairs of eyelets in the front (the linen ones have six pair) because that's all they really seem to need. I wear a shorter stalking of similar construction (in my hand with this photo) over the hose on my left leg because the front of that hosen foot turned into one big hole. The soles of the grey stalking also need to be replaced, and I'm trying a suede leather sole/foot thing for the black and red leg to see if that lasts better - but I do tend to walk a lot and wear this stuff often, sometimes more often than modern clothes. These things in my hands, they are silk garter/scarf-things, and they tie in a bow around my leg to help keep my hosen from sagging below the knee. ...and there they are. Random notes on the hosen: they are made of panels, slightly tailored to the shape/dimensions of my legs, and cut on the bias so they stretch properly. Though each panel is pretty much the same shape (except in the foot area), they've actually stretched to become very leg-shaped even when not worn. Now it's time for a doublet. A note on the sleeves: the linen lining of the sleeves is fairly huge, a bit under 30 inch diameter, while the wool shell is somewhat closer fitting - the extra material and stretching of the wool causes to slashed areas to puff out. I feel that this sleeve should actually be cut in a bit closer under the arm with a smaller diameter arm hole to give a better range of motion. The sleeves on this doublet are also sewn directly into the arm hole rather than unobtrusively laced into a strip of eyelets hidden around the inside of the arm hole... either way would work, I believe either way was done, but having interchangeable sleeves might be a bit more desirable of clothing that gets abused as much as a landsknecht's doublet must have. The doublet helps to hold up the hosen by pointing the two together through matching pairs of eyelets at the waist of the doublet and waist of the hosen. Unless its really hot and I know I absolutely will not want to wear the doublet I tend to leave them pointed together at the back and sides so I can sort of climb into both doublet and hosen at the same time and just have to deal with a few points in the front. I obviously did not do that for these pictures, so in this one I'm tying one of the points at the side of the hose and doublet. ...and now I'm pointing the front closed. This double has one big flap that goes across the fron on the outside and closes on the left with three pairs of points/eyelets. The flap on the left side of the doublet cuts diagonaly from the shoulder/neck to the bottom/center, a strait line down from the shoulder/neck opening might be more appropriate - not really sure how it was done back then. Here is how it looks when closed. Someday I'll remember that I've been wanting to add buttons or something to close the cuffs up better. This one is a bit out of sequence. The Osprey 'Lansknecht Soldier' book mentions wearing a doublet like this during hot weather and has a photo of a reenactor not-quite-wearing his doublet in this way. It works. the doublet is left pointed to the hosen and I'm able to undo the front and squirm into and out of it. Skirted gown-like garments are not seen as often in woodcuts as just doublet and hosen, but there seem to have been quite a few types of things like that. I have more detailed pictures and info about it on another page, but this time it has an optional front-piece/stomacher/placket sort of pointed to one side of the front opening. ...and here I am closing the front by tying it to the other side too. Not only does this front-piece make a handy sort of marsupial pouch that random smallish things can be dropped into the top of, but I designed it with a pocket built into the inside of the placket with kangaroo-pocket sort of openings hidden in the sides and a small opening in part of the scallop on the front. There are more layers and different layers that could be substituted for the skirted vest and such, but this is what I had with me on this outing. My last layers are the hat, belt, knife, belt pouch, and furry bag. This is actually a bit warm for mid-day in the summer so for further wandering around I stripped a few layers off and went with just the trunk hose, linen under-hose, grey netherstalks, linen shirt, skirted vest, and hat.

~A couple more pictures from the same day~