Image via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Of all sar­to­r­i­al crimes, none require quite so much brazen­ness — or sim­ple obliv­i­ous­ness — as the wear­ing of socks with san­dals. But unlike most wide­ly dis­dained fash­ions, which usu­al­ly tend to have enjoyed their hey­day two or three decades ago, the socks-and-san­dals com­bi­na­tion has deep his­tor­i­cal roots. And those roots, so 21st-cen­tu­ry researchers have found out, go much deep­er than most of us may have expect­ed. “Evi­dence from an archae­o­log­i­cal dig has found,” wrote Tele­graph sci­ence cor­re­spon­dent Richard Alleyne in 2012, “that legion­naires wore socks with san­dals” — ancient Roman legion­naires, that is. “Rust on a nail from a Roman san­dal found in new­ly dis­cov­ered ruins in North York­shire appears to con­tain fibres which could sug­gest that a sock-type gar­ment was being worn.”

“You don’t imag­ine Romans in socks,” Alleyne quot­ed the archae­ol­o­gist head­ing the cul­tur­al her­itage team on site as say­ing,” but I am sure they would have been pret­ty keen to get hold of some as soon as autumn came along.”

As with any new dis­cov­ery about life in the past, this changes the way enthu­si­asts of the peri­od have gone about re-cre­at­ing their favorite ele­ments of it: take, for instance, her­itage edu­ca­tor and crafter Sal­ly Point­er. “Point­er has been enam­ored with the ancient world since she was a kid,” writes Atlas Obscu­ra’s Jes­si­ca Leigh Hes­ter, “when she cooked up plans for potions, devices, and craft projects — all with the goal of under­stand­ing how things came to be.”

Image by David Jack­son via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Look­ing to socks worn in ancient Egypt (see above), Point­er makes her own ver­sions of these “cheer­ful­ly striped” socks using a tech­nique called naal­bind­ing, “which is some­times con­sid­ered a pre­cur­sor to two-nee­dle knit­ting and involves loop­ing yarn on a sin­gle nee­dle,” and in this case mak­ing each sock­’s two toes sep­a­rate­ly and then join­ing them togeth­er. Should more evi­dence emerge about the tech­niques and styles of the socks Romans seem to have worn under their san­dals, Point­er and mak­ers like her will no doubt be the first to make use of them. But for now, we need only make one impor­tant revi­sion to the his­tor­i­cal record: “Britons may be famous for their lack of fash­ion sense and Ital­ians for their style,” as the sub-head­line of Alleyne’s piece puts it, “but it appears we may have inher­it­ed one of our biggest sar­to­r­i­al crimes from the Romans.”

via Tele­graph/Atlas Obscu­ra

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Styl­ish 2,000-Year-Old Roman Shoe Found in a Well

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour of Ancient Rome, Cir­ca 320 C.E.

Ani­ma­tion Gives You a Glimpse of What Life Was Like for Teenagers in Ancient Rome

The Ancient Egyp­tians Wore Fash­ion­able Striped Socks, New Pio­neer­ing Imag­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Imag­ing Reveals

How Women Got Dressed in the 14th & 18th Cen­turies: Watch the Very Painstak­ing Process Get Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Recre­at­ed

Get­ting Dressed Dur­ing World War I: A Fas­ci­nat­ing Look at How Sol­diers, Nurs­ers & Oth­ers Dressed Dur­ing the Great War

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Not to dimin­ish the night­mare of mor­tars and shrap­nel, but as evi­denced by Crow’s Eye Pro­duc­tions’ peri­od accu­rate dress­ing video above, one of the great­est hor­rors of WWI was wet wool.

Decades before the inven­tion of Gore-Tex, Polar Fleece and oth­er high per­for­mance, all weath­er gear, British sol­diers relied on their woolies from head to toe.

An army of female knit­ters sent gloves, scarves, bal­a­clavas and oth­er such “com­forts” to the front, in addi­tion to seam­less socks designed to last their boys three whole march­ing days inside their ankle high leather boots.

Alas, no amount of wax­ing and oil­ing could keep the trench­es’ freez­ing cold pud­dles from seep­ing through those boots.

Nothing’s worse than the scent of three lay­ers of wet wool when you’re catch­ing your death in sod­den put­tees.

The reg­i­ments whose uni­form bot­toms con­sist­ed of kilts had it par­tic­u­lar­ly rough, as the wet mate­r­i­al would freeze, cut­ting across the wear­ers’ legs like knives.

Pre­vent­ed from join­ing the com­bat on the front­lines, British women helped out where they could, achiev­ing a more com­fort­able lev­el of dress than they’d known before the war.

Tor­so-smash­ing corsets were scrapped to pre­serve steel for the war effort, though deco­rum decreed that British Red Cross Soci­ety Vol­un­tary Aid Detach­ment nurs­es, such as Down­ton Abbey’s fic­tion­al Lady Sybil Craw­ley, main­tain a tidy fig­ure with lighter, front-fas­ten­ing corsets from hips to just below the bust.

Many of the upper class women swelling the vol­un­teer nurs­ing ranks were unac­cus­tomed to dress­ing in such util­i­tar­i­an fashion—cotton dress­es, black flat rub­ber-soled shoes, aprons and sleeve pro­tec­tors.

Their fig­ures found com­par­a­tive lib­er­a­tion, while their van­i­ty found hum­bler out­lets in dust­ing pow­der and the flat­ter­ing army-style pro­fes­sion­al nurs­ing veils they pre­ferred to The Handmaid’s Tale-ish Sis­ter Dora caps.

The greater phys­i­cal free­dom of the nurs­es’ uni­forms extend­ed to ordi­nary young women as well. Their underwear—a midriff bar­ing chemise, knick­ers and petticoat—allowed for eas­i­er move­ment, as short­er skirts led to glam­orous stock­ings and—gasp!—shaved legs!

Trendy cardi­gans, jumpers and waist­coats weren’t just cute, they helped make up for the lost warmth of those oh-so-restric­tive corsets.

View more of Crow’s Eye Pro­duc­tions’ short films on the his­to­ry of dress here.

Knit­ters, you can find over 70 pat­terns for WW1 com­forts and neces­si­ties in the book Cen­te­nary Stitch­es: Telling the Sto­ry of One WW1 Fam­i­ly Through Vin­tage Knit­ting and Cro­chet.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Women Got Dressed in the 14th & 18th Cen­turies: Watch the Very Painstak­ing Process Get Cin­e­mat­i­cal­ly Recre­at­ed

The Dress­er: The Con­trap­tion That Makes Get­ting Dressed an Adven­ture

How to Make and Wear Medieval Armor: An In-Depth Primer

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inky zine.  See her onstage in New York City this Jan­u­ary as host of  The­ater of the Apes book-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

If you grew up in cer­tain decades of the 20th cen­tu­ry, you almost cer­tain­ly spent your child­hood wear­ing striped socks, and you may even have returned to the prac­tice in recent years as they’ve regained their sar­to­r­i­al respectabil­i­ty. But new research has revealed that this sort of mul­ti­col­ored hosiery has a more dis­tant his­tor­i­cal prece­dent than we may imag­ine, one going all the way back to ancient Egypt. The sub­ject of that research, the small sock pic­tured above, evi­dences the fash­ion­abil­i­ty of striped socks among the Egypt­ian youth of more than 1700 years ago, though its own stripes have only recent­ly been revealed by the most mod­ern imag­ing tech­nol­o­gy.

“Sci­en­tists at the British Muse­um have devel­oped pio­neer­ing imag­ing to dis­cov­er how enter­pris­ing Egyp­tians used dyes on a child’s sock, recov­ered from a rub­bish dump in ancient Anti­noupo­lis in Roman Egypt, and dat­ing from 300AD,” writes The Guardian’s Car­o­line Davies. “New mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing can estab­lish which dyes were used – mad­der (red), woad (blue) and weld (yel­low) – but also how peo­ple of the late antiq­ui­ty peri­od used dou­ble and sequen­tial dying and weav­ing, and twist­ing fibers to cre­ate myr­i­ad col­ors from their scarce resources.”

This and oth­er sim­i­lar­ly advanced research, such as the use of ultra­vi­o­let light and infrared and x‑ray spec­troscopy that found the bright col­ors of ancient Greek sculp­ture, no doubt has us all rethink­ing the broad­ly mono­chro­mat­ic fash­ion in which we’ve long envi­sioned the ancient world.

We may also have to start imag­in­ing it a lit­tle less ele­gant­ly than we have been. “The ancient Egyp­tians employed a sin­gle-nee­dle loop­ing tech­nique, often referred to as nål­bind­ning, to cre­ate their socks,” writes Smith­son­ian’s Kather­ine J. Wu. “Notably, the approach could be used to sep­a­rate the big toe and four oth­er toes in the sock — which just may have giv­en life to the ever-con­tro­ver­sial socks-and-san­dals trend.” It brings to mind the archae­o­log­i­cal research that came out a few years ago sug­gest­ing that the Romans in Britain two mil­len­nia ago may have worn socks with their san­dals as well. That infor­ma­tion has made it to the Wikipedia page specif­i­cal­ly ded­i­cat­ed to socks and san­dals; an enter­pris­ing read­er might have a look at the British Muse­um sci­en­tists’ paper, “A mul­ti­spec­tral imag­ing approach inte­grat­ed into the study of Late Antique tex­tiles from Egypt,” and add in a bit about the ancient wear­ing of striped socks with san­dals as well.

via Smith­son­ian

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Did the Egyp­tians Make Mum­mies? An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Ancient Art of Mum­mi­fi­ca­tion

How the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids Were Built: A New The­o­ry in 3D Ani­ma­tion

Try the Old­est Known Recipe For Tooth­paste: From Ancient Egypt, Cir­ca the 4th Cen­tu­ry BC

The Turin Erot­ic Papyrus: The Old­est Known Depic­tion of Human Sex­u­al­i­ty (Cir­ca 1150 B.C.E.)

The Met Dig­i­tal­ly Restores the Col­ors of an Ancient Egypt­ian Tem­ple, Using Pro­jec­tion Map­ping Tech­nol­o­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.