Introduction

Exhortations against contemporary and novel fashions are found in a variety of genres and forms: this chapter includes extracts from an ecclesiastical history, sermons, manuals of general advice, instructions ostensibly written specifically for sons (Peter Idley’s Instructions to his Son) or daughters (the ‘God Wyf Wold a Pylgremage’), and satirical writing. They are written variously in prose and verse including rhyming ditties and ballads, one with the jingling rhyme scheme aaaa. The form of a text does not appear to be a guide to its seriousness: Lydgate’s ‘Horns Away’ is described by his biographer as a poem which resists the obvious possibilities for satire seen in, for example, Hoccleve’s Regiment of Princes, instead offering a serious and philosophical disquisition (see Pearsall 1970).

The main complaints concern the constant desire for novelty, a desire which leads to such unnecessary activities as the hacking about and altering of existing garments, and the changing of outfits several times a day. Different texts have different emphases: the earliest text we print here is almost solely concerned with men’s fashion; in some later texts the opprobrium is directed solely towards women’s styles of dress: G. R. Owst remarks that it is woman as ‘lover of finery, the mirror of fashion […] that calls down the full fury of the English preachers in satire and complaint’ (1961: 390). Sometimes the concern is only with one particular aspect of modish styling, such as the fashion for women to wear their hair in two horns.

A survey of the texts included here shows that the trends which attract the greatest ire are those relating to men’s shoes, in particular long pointed shoes, sometimes with the points so long that they were thought to be joined to the wearer’s ankle by a chain, and tight shoes which conceal the shape of the feet: fashions in men’s shoes are mentioned in three texts. Two texts mention, with disgust, the fashion for long hair on men, making them look effeminate. This is linked to sin as it was thought to license or even encourage sodomitic behaviour; goatee beards on fashion-conscious gallants also pose a problem.