clothes are the ultimate form of visual communication by looking at the way people dressed we can learn not only about them as individuals but about the society they lived in I'm amber Bouchard fashioned historian and in the words of louis xiv i believe that fashion is the mirror of history so taking historical works of art as our inspiration traditional tailor linear Michaela and the team will be recreating historical clothing using only authentic methods it's changing economy and I'll be finding out what they tell us about the people who boredom I'm assuming the king wouldn't be dressing himself and the times they lived in and seeing what they like to wear [Music] the picture that launched a thousand theories yan van Eyck's famous double portrait painted in 1434 is considered one of the most complex paintings in Western art I chose this portrait for a number of reasons it's something that has been written about extensively in art history there's a real appetite for new information that can shed light on this portrait and the cities now historically speaking it's also a very fascinating period we've seen the emergence of mercantile capitalism all around port cities in Europe so we begin to see the effects of trades really heavily on the way that people are dressing now also the emergence of the merchants this is quite an interesting character they challenged the previous very rigid structures of society so there's an element of social mobility here you can become a very rich through trade you don't necessarily have to have been born into wealth and I'm really interested to see if this element of social mobility is reflected in the way that people are dressing so there are a number of things going on with this portrait plus I really love the color green this dress is so alien to a modern aesthetic I'm really interested to find out from linea just how complicated it will be to make I suppose the thing that strikes you first is just quite how much fabric there is in there and then as you zoom in you see these huge hanging sleeves which have the most incredible decoration going on at bottom of them what you're seeing there is literally layers of the fabric which have been cut with a special tool of pinking tool to give that very fragile frayed look and so the fabric itself this gorgeous green fabric what is this what material is it it was a kind of cloth that was woven very wide so it's called broadcloth this fabric today is usually called doe skin or superfine but what these very small samples don't really show is how beautiful that looks in the picture and that's because you need a larger piece of the fabric so this is a piece of doe skin so you can see that once it starts to drape and actually get the light on it it becomes a much more silky looking material yeah people don't usually associate wool as being a luxury fabric do they they don't and at this date it really was one of England's finest exports and it was bought and used all over Europe but it's not just the wool that we're seeing here is it there's this fur trim as well now where is this fur in particular come from we're still thinking about what it might be and one possibility is it might be an arctic fox Wow where does one get hold of arctic fox well for these people it would have been imported it would be Baltic it's another expensive luxury item and that's quite helpful in an age before central heating isn't it would be really keep you warm yes well and fair now we're not going to be using any arctic fox I'm assuming this so what will we be using we'll be looking for a faux fur so really throughout here we're seeing quite an opulent display of wealth it is literally wearing your wealth on your sleeves yeah I'm trailing it on the ground given that this dress seems to be such a conspicuous display of wealth I'm fascinated to find out more about the couple in the portrait and why they might have chosen these clothes to be painted in I'm hoping art historian Jenny Graham can shed some light on the subject for this portrait one of the most contested most debated in the history of Western Arts who do we think these people are there are a very wealthy couple we know that they come from the Arnolfini family who traded in luxurious fabrics and exotic items such as the four oranges that you can see this really represents their conspicuous consumption of wealth and splendid things and this picture has become ensconced within popular culture even Charles Dickens refers to it as that strange mirror picture why do you think it's got such an enduring appeal I can't think of another painting in sort of Western art history whereby we know so very much about how it's been interpreted in different ways over the years it seems to be a painting which triggers all kinds of detective like attempts to solve the Enigma the riddle one of the overriding theories that's now been discredited is that she's pregnant but that's not the case is it no the pregnancy theories first crop up in the 19th century but a modern reading of the painting is very much that she is holding up the green wool dress very very heavy and so the painting now is much more understood I think as a display of opulence and wealth and it's more than that as well it's very very interesting in terms of gender politics if she were to let go of the folds of the dress it would pull out all around her in a way that would make it almost impossible to walk and we know for example that there were lots of ways that women in this at this time signaled their social status the fact that they weren't going to be moving around or undertaking anything manual everything seems to signal restraint so the dress we're seeing here represents a number of different things it can speak to us about the position of women in society it can speak to us about the couple the status as merchants so it really there's an awful lot going on here isn't that yes I mean interestingly the green dress is made of wool which was very much associated with trade between Bruges where young Van Dyck paints the portrait and Italy we know that the owner fini family traded in cloth particularly so there's a sort of familial significance there but Greene itself was a color associated with high finance and banking when one made a trade in Italy during this period one would place down a green cloth so I think there's a real significance given the trade in which they've made their money [Music] just as the paintings complexity provides continual debate for art historians so the dresses design is proving a challenge for Linea I'm trying to work out how the sleeves on this Arnolfini gown actually work because they're incredibly complicated if you go to the bottom of the strips see look isn't that the bottom edge of a strip and that's the bottom a trip so it's like there's layers isn't it it's got a sort of fold at the bottom hasn't it those are your point maybe it's not the raw edge maybe it's folded I don't think that is an orange look it doesn't it's not pink the edge the edge is is definitely different that's not a pinked edge that's a fold how about it's one piece that's really long and it's folded up behind itself and pinned so that though it's behaving the long things would come down to there and then fold back up yeah and that would give it more body so it would say give it it that sort of flat front thing I think that's worth a shot need to do another twelve in something thicker yeah how about if I cut it in wool and then we can cut into it and see yes how it behaves yes it'll have more body rent it for Isis big box adjourned [Laughter] [Music] as we've seen everything about this portrait screams status just the sheer amount of fabric in the gown could have caused offense at a time when strict sumptuary laws dictated what different classes of society could wear as merchants the Arnolfini x' may have been rich but they weren't nobility and their ostentatious display of wealth was at odds with the rigid hierarchical society at the time in Flanders where they lived one chronicler even blamed the outbreak of civil war just over fifty years earlier on the audacity of city dwellers who were better dress than the nobles and this attitude wasn't confined to Europe in England Geoffrey Chaucer roads may not a man Sears in our days the sinful costly array of clothing and mainly in too much superfluity that make if it's so dear to the harm of the people but there is also the costly burning in their gowns so much pouncing of chisel to make holes so much Daqing of shears with a superfluity in length of the aforesaid gowns trailing in the dung and in the mire wool was the primary fabric for clothing in the Middle Ages but quality vary depending on whether it was for a peasants or a prince English wools in particular were considered to be very high quality and some could even be more expensive than silk our gown would have been made from the highest quality drop cloth nowadays called doe skin to find out more about the processes involved in making this fabric I'm visiting a company that has been making doe skin for over 200 years we've gotta bail this size but when you unroll it Wow after arriving in tightly compacted bales the wool is pulled apart and aerated in the blending process [Music] what it looks like when it comes off the two parts of the machine you can see how different it looks how aerated now called the part is who next the aerated wallet was sent to carding the machine is going to take all of it some if you look like this okay and how does it do that carding is where the wool fibers are broken up and aligned into strands that really does Wow [Music] so to take that shape now before you get out to the end there this is what we call slipping if you pull it apart you can see that there's no strength in there but you can take the same piece and put all those twists it and turn and turn and turn it and then try and pull it apart you can see that you've got more strength in there so now fitting your own sets that we have to go through next to making the yarn through the yarn is spun on two spools and then woven into cloth [Music] [Music] the next process is what makes our wool so special it's washed and beaten which shrinks the cloth meshing the fibers together giving it its felt like texture and enabling it to be cut without fraying then tendering so you know the same tenterhooks yeah being kept on tenterhooks that's where this saying comes from it would have been carried out into the fields or what it means pinned actually onto wood an a-frame and left out into the Sun to dry yeah obviously we would have taken a very long time and therefore being kept on tenterhooks but this is the modern-day equivalent so you see these holes that's where you tend to hooks are so this is your dose skin oh my god so this is it so beautiful I know it's the sheen it's the face of the fabric that gives it that beautiful beautiful Sheen how exciting I can't wait to see it made of [Music] it's just incredible how many different stages this fabric has gone through to get it into this beautiful finished state and it's even more astounding to think that in the 15th century each of these different stages would have actually been done by hand it really goes to show just how expensive this fabric would have been it was a real status symbol and a real show of wealth [Music] see how gorgeous it looks you could just put your cries it's like liquid it's so perfect and I did have to think quite carefully about how to cut such a wide pattern piece from the wool and it had to have pieces extra pieces sewn into it so we've got those pieces at the sides here oh wow and you can see how where they're upside down the light falls completely differently yeah on it and nowadays that's something we wouldn't find acceptable at all but of course you know in the gown you just you just don't see it with the way it falls yeah it just gets lost in the in the pleats and the folds the the real complex features of this gown are not there yet so we've got the pinking in the sleeves and also there's all this very tight pleating in the front and back I suspect of the gown I've done quite a lot of samples of the pinking because it's quite scary to go you know you can only cut once so I've done one strip here oh it's quite effective isn't it it's really effective it's all you know it's all such experimental archaeology as brilliant yeah you don't you don't make these things all the time and you can't possibly know all of the answers without just doing it which is what we're doing you like time ago okay yes yes I would sounds like it might not be I think what this also really illustrates is it's the nature of the cloth that allows you to do this kind of technique and it and it [Music] okay start to get a real feel for how delicate and yet how complex it looks yeah and in the Harriet is working on a very exciting pieces and this really is this so it doesn't look so exciting but a drab linen you know one of the features of these gowns is the way they've got all these pleats in the middle we know from having tried to make these reconstructions in the past that you can almost achieve that look and then as soon as the person moves all the pleats move and we've experimented with things like stay tapes and sewing the insides and nothing's ever been quite as effective as we want it to be yeah linen especially a sort of a rough canvas a linen like this has got a little control about it yeah what we're doing is just lightly stitching the linen down onto the wall we don't credit tailors this Ernie with such ingenuity and then it's slightly embarrassing when you discover these technologies anything they knew a lot more than we did really well really it's incredible the number of different techniques that go into it haven't even got to the fur yet it's quite a long way and it's heavy oh my gosh in fact this is something I hadn't really considered it's just how heavy this the whole thing is going to be yeah because this affair on its own if you lift that and see how heavy it is and then we've got the will on the top so is this the full amount of this is gonna go into the dress yep because we've decided that the whole of those big sleeves must be lined and then most of this gown which is probably why she's she's just going dayang was perhaps the most important of the finishing processes to give woollen cloth its final appearance blue dye had been common since the 14th century and even peasants were likely to own a colored gown deep shades like those in our portrait dome was still hard to achieve [Music] the colors in the Arnolfini picture are really important but this real richness to their colors and I think that it's all kind of bound up with the wealth and the status that's really on display in this picture so I'm really keen to see if we can replicate those colors using the techniques that would have been around in the 15th century I think it's going to be a really interesting experiment to find out Debbie Bamford specializes in traditional dyeing techniques so how common was Green as their color in their 15th century not as common Green is a much more expensive color because it's two dimes it's the yellow and the blue the yellow dye is made from a plant called welds or dyers Rockets which is dried and broken up just it just dropped in anything Huntly oh yeah yeah oh yeah yeah now the crucial bit well responds very very well to the addition of a little blob of this jalapenos display I have a feeling that says could you explain to me what this is assist valuing this is minimum three week old urine and I'm using it to modify the coli okay so you can see this pale yellow there yeah if I pour some of this thing this isn't giving the college is now trying the color a slug let's see how much it makes so much difference yes if I put that in there with that now see the yellow much more clearly to be heated up for a while for about 14 or 20 minutes mm-hmm and that should then start developing the color for blue another plant called word is used which is dried and made into balls for storage we have to dissolve it in an alkaline so that's where a urine came in and so the dye fat is actually made up with stole urine and the word mess there's kind of a dyers best friend mother's day on urine isn't yes so we take the other piece out now okay look at that that's really really lovely color it's really quite a busy vividly oh that's lovely that's what my favorite colors and that really smells unpleasant doesn't it yes the more times it's gone back in the dye bath the more expensive the color gets gray or dark green you're going to go in two or three times if you want to cook a green like you're wearing or like we're talking in the this particular painting then yes that is I've got some states and I've got some wealth that's so interesting I didn't there's strength of the color sort of determined the price I mean it makes perfect sense you want to take the yellow activity blue yes so this everything that's going to be good Honorine yeah okay it looks gorgeous oh look at that it's changing color in the air pretty much getting to the same color as my top I did not realize that it had that kind of reaction to the air that's really exciting that is an amazing color that's gorgeous this beautiful green isn't it and you can see how that is getting you the color for the idol Feeny absolutely yeah yeah it's so interesting I think if it wasn't for this smell I would have been very happy being a medieval survivor [Music] while fifteenth-century dyeing techniques still produce incredible results lynnie is finding not all traditional methods but quite so well with modern life we've now got to do is wait for the hot plate to heat up and then the hot plate to heat the iron up in the tailor shop in Arnold Feeny's time his apprentice would have set all this up the coals and the brazier early on in the day and one of his tasks would then be to maintain that heat and make sure that the heat of the iron was never interrupted so the tailor wasn't inconvenienced so that you know we're doing everything by hand as it would have been done in Arnold finish time and this is really the only real inconvenience of early tools because all the other tailoring tools that we use really haven't changed very much since the 15th century oh yeah I can hand it over to Hannah who's preparing at the moment the edging for the sleeve slits yeah it's good [Music] that is the last slit well that's really nice it's gorgeous isn't it yeah it's ready to put the fairy linings in yeah they're not ready yet sorry [Laughter] [Music] [Music] if we didn't steam it because the nature of the wool is that it's very bouncy which is what's really beautiful about the nature of the fabric means that it wouldn't stay in the place fanning out like that that we wanted to as soon as the wearer moved around the police would shift whereas because they're stitched to this canvas and then they're steamed into place that the fibers have molded around those pleats that lovely fan shape that very it's actually arranged should stay just sending the steam down into the pleats only look at that it's like a peacocks tail isn't it yeah it is really beautiful it's exactly right [Music] we try and say something [Music] oh my god oh look at that you all moves the slaves are just amazing when they move they're even better they are it's great seeing them moving it looks so much like the painting I can't get out this it's just incredible and it's so heavy it feels insanely luxurious doesn't it really luxurious so can you actually walk do you think if you grab a pan full of the stuff so that you can actually not try the upset oh it's very elegant that's really exciting and it gives you that stunts that yeah she has in the painting as well doesn't it which is really interesting maybe part of that stance is to do with the weight of the fabric balancing it yeah that's being held you know if you have to kind of lean back to be able to get purchase on there on the weight and fabric well it's a constant reminder of your wealth yeah isn't it this is so heavy I've got so much money that's good that's a good thing yeah the sleeves are just absolutely phenomenal it didn't occur to me that they would make you want to do that yeah they would be so kind of fluid it's that sort of fluidity that the whole thing but that's what you just can't get from a poor in a portrait as a maker you always want to say could you just lift your arm just do that and and then you would see what was going on and we can't do that with yeah it really gives it life doesn't it have a real human person in it [Laughter] I'm not too hot I mean it's it's quite hot thing is at this period in the 15th century it's basically what the period that's known as the mini ice ages this is a time when the River Thames regularly froze thick enough that you could have whole frost effects on that it makes a lot more sense when you take away central heating and reduce the temperature outside by a few degrees yeah you are a lady of leisure if you're a laboring woman you would keep a lot warmer but you're spending a lot of your time just sitting or standing and so you would definitely need these kinds of layers yeah and swishing and swish I would defend all my time you needed to warm up any moister bit swishing and in sit down it's just fantastic this experiment has been really fascinating what surprised me about seeing the gown I think is really how bulky it is how much fabric and how much fur there is it must have cost an absolute fortune this idea of wealth and status is really rammed home she really becomes a symbol of these new types of wealth these new types of people who are buying and selling who are trading at this time it also is incredibly fascinating in terms of the female body ideal as well that was prevalent in the 15th century so having an idea and understanding of what this feels like to create this is is just invaluable [Music] you you you [Music] you