Working-Class Man in Flanders

When Mike started pestering me for a new outfit to wear to faire this year, I decided that I wanted to make him something to go with my new Flemish working-woman's dress. The only problem was that my husband was not too fond of the typical men's styles found in the majority of Flemish genre paintings, but then I stumbled across a few painting from the late 1500's by the two lesser known Bruegel's (Pieter the Younger and Jan the Elder) that showed men wearing long pluderhose, a German style of pants with panes and large puffs created by the lining fabric. (You can also see a few above-the-knee pluderhose being worn by gentlemen in paintings by Pieter Aertsen). Some of the men wearing versions of pluderhose appear to be upper-class or military, but I did find one example of a man wearing this style who appears to be just a generic Flemish working-man. (if you click on the little picture of him to the right, you can play a game of "Flemish Where's Waldo" and see how long it takes you to find him in Village Feast by Pieter Bruegel the Younger!) Although it is impossible to tell if he is actually a Flemish man wearing a German fashion, or a German living in Flanders, at least I can say that our two outfits could have possibly been seen in the same place at the same time, which was really my main goal with this project.

The doublet was really nothing fancy, but ended up being a complete nightmare to make! For some reason, I had a lot of problems getting it to fit right and kept making stupid mistakes, so I had to take the whole thing apart and do it over again... twice! I originally wanted to make some period buttons and hand-bound buttonholes, but I ended up running out time. It also would be more historically correct if it had tight, attached sleeves, but this outfit was intended to be the "hot weather garb", so the sleeves were omitted. The outer fabric and lining are both linen, and although wool would have been used in the 16th century, I decided to go with linen to make it cooler.

The pluderhose are roughly based on the surviving garment worn by Svante Sture that is featured in Patterns of Fashion. Although you don't see this in the Flemish painting of pluderhose, all of the other examples I have seen (for lack of a better way of saying this) have wierd butts! But due to time issues and concern about making my husband look like a dork, I decided to just simplify the pattern and make them like regular paned slops, just with the bigger puffs of lining fabric. The panes are made out of soft cotton velvet with a tiny checkerboard pattern created by cut and uncut areas. The lining is made out of linen, and the puffs of fabric between the panes not padded, but are simply created by gathering the fullness of the lining into five large bags at the knee that are attached to stiff stay strips on the inside bottom edge. When the puffs of fabric are pulled out between the panes, they stand out at the hemline, supported by the strips of binding.

The rest of the costume accessories are of dubious authenticity, but I had to compromise a little to make my man happy. Mike didn't like the idea of having little poofs of fabric on his codpiece, so I just made a simple generic version instead. The cap is similar to some of the styles worn in the paintings, but is made of a very non-period fabric. And finally, I tried to convince Mike that this outfit would be more correct with stockings and simple shoes, but he is in love with his "big black boots" and refuses to wear anything else! Oh well... at least we got pretty close! ;-)