dressed," he
says, "the passers by look at them as at painted walls. Their clothes
are pictures, which little children point out to one another. The
saintlier sort wear likenesses of Christ, the Marriage of Galilee,
and Lazarus raised from the dead." Allusion was made in a sermon:
"Persons who arrayed themselves like painted walls" "with beasts and
flowers all over them" were denounced!

In the early Dark Ages there was some prejudice against these rich
embroideries. In the sixth century the Bishop St. Cesaire of Arles
forbade his nuns to embroider robes with precious stones or painting
and flowers. King Withaf of Mercia willed to the Abbey of Croyland
"my purple mantle which I wore at my Coronation, to be made into
a cope, to be used by those who minister at the holy altar: and
also my golden veil, embroidered with the Siege of Troy, to be
hung up in the Church on my anniversary." St. Asterius preached to
his people, "Strive to follow in your lives the teachings of the
Gospel, rather than have the miracles of Our Redeemer embroidered
on your outward dress!" This prejudice, however, was not long lived,
and the embroidered vestments and garments continued to hold their
popularity all through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

It has been said on grave authority that "Woman is an animal that
delights in the toilette," while Petrarch, in 1366, recognized the
power of fashion over its votaries. "Who can see with patience,"
he writes, "the monstrous fantastical inventions which people of
our times have invented to deform rather than adorn their persons?
Who can behold without indignation their long pointed shoes, their
caps with feathers, their hair twisted and hanging down like
tails,... their bellies so cruelly squeezed with cords that they
suffer as much pain from vanity as the martyrs suffered for
religion!" And yet who shall say whether a "dress-reform" Laura would
have charmed any more surely the eye of the poet?

Chaucer, in England, also deplores the fashions of his day, alluding
to the "sinful costly array of clothing, namely, in too much superfluity
or else indisordinate scantiness!" Changing fashions have always been
the despair of writers who have tried to lay down rules for aesthetic
effect in dress. "An Englishman," says Harrison, "endeavouring
some time to write of our attire... when he saw what a difficult
piece of work he had taken in hand, he gave over his travail, and
onely drue a picture of a nake