Cotehardie

The "cotehardie" as it is often described and seen in historical costuming circles is a long, fitted, buttoned gown with tight, buttoned sleeves. Though popular to recreate, it is relatively rare in artistic sources from the period. The Garment was a close-fitting tunic worn in two lengths: by men covering the buttocks and belted around the hips; worn full-length by women and often unbelted.

The Gown

The Cotehardie, or Eight-Gore Dress, is a favorite because it is both form-fitting and very full. "Princess" is the modern name for this slimming cut, with seams at each side, over the bust and shoulder blades, and at the center front and back. The traditional Cotehardie buttons up the front, and has long, fitted sleeves with buttons from the wrist to the elbow. You can, however, choose to lace the dress up the back and have less-fitted, button-less sleeves.

The garment now known as the lady's cotehardie appears to have developed in the early to mid fourteenth century, as a fashionable variation of the long-lived dalmatic. It appears to have been worn, with regional or national variations, through much, if not all, of Europe. It changed little through the fashion-conscious decades of the fourteenth century and even well into the fifteenth century. In its most aristocratic form, it was possibly the most elegant costume ever created, although lower-class versions of the gown are also represented in artwork of the period.

The fabrics available for use in clothing of the time came in a stunning array of materials and weaves. Silks were often patterned, with botanical scrollwork or complex patterns of simple geometrics enclosing animals and plants. Silk and half-silk velvets, satin and twill damasks, striped fabrics, and cloth with silver or gold threads woven or embroidered in were widely used. Small motifs in gold leaf may be scattered over the fabric. Checked cloth and fabrics woven with the warp one colour or shade and the weft another were also used. Even common wool fabric could be quite desirable. Good-looking and durable, worsted wools were used on fashionable buttoned clothing of the period, recovered in London, and wool flannels were appreciated for their luxurious softness. Heraldic colours seem to have been most appreciated, with the addition of some almost-pastel shades in Italian art (Klapisch-Zuber, cover). In England, a colour called "blodei" (bloody?) joins the heraldic mix (Crowfoot, p. 122).

Modern make partie colored Cotehardie with pennant sleeves.

The cotehardie, or outermost gown, cannot be worn alone. The French wore theirs with bicep to elbow length sleeves, while the Italians seem to have preferred theirs with 3/4 length sleeves. Both would have been considered unseemly without a long-sleeved undergown, which the French called a sorquenie. The English seem to have preferred a long-sleeved cotehardie, or dropped it altogether in favour of a sideless surcote worn over the sorquenie (kirtle in English). The English also appear to have chosen to close their gowns by means of buttons or lacing up the front, as opposed to the French and Italians, who seem to have preferred a smooth front. Some sources differentiate the sorquenie from a generic cote (undergown) by saying that it was a type of cote cut close under the bust. The art from the period supports the theory that the sorquenie, the chemise worn under it, or both, were cut with a self-supporting bodice, as even large-busted women are represented with a relatively high "monobosom" that few could have achieved without support.

The pieces are cut out according to the pattern you will be making to your measurements, then the sorquenie is snugly fitted, with the bust manually raised into its desired location. Once the sorquenie is fitted and finished, the cotehardie can be cut along the same original measurements, but left slightly looser under the bust so the secret of the support is not readily apparent. For the best comfort and support, your sorquenie should be a heavy to medium-weight linen. Wool or an appropriate fashion fabric would be best for the cotehardie itself, although you can certainly use linen here as a wool substitute.

How to make one

Start by having someone take your measurements. The ones you will need are:

Circumferences: [divide by 4, then add 2" for ease and seams:]

• bust
• underbust (bra band)
• waist
• hips [divide by 2, then add 2" for ease and seams:]
• bicep
• bent elbow (bent so sleeve not too tight for this later)
• forearm
• wrist
• relaxed hand at thumb knuckle

Distances (neckbone to...): leave unaltered unless directed to do otherwise

• décolletage of choice (pretty high, give AT LEAST 2" above bust) To get this, add one inch to the distance between your neck "V" and the décolletage.
• bust
• underbust
• waist
• hips
• floor: add up to 6" for hem and break in front add up to 3' in back for train
• shoulder point
• bicep
• elbow
• forearm
• wrist
• finished sleeve length + hem allowance (varied from wrist to full goblet)

If you're worried about how you'd manage in a truly long cotehardie, cut it to floor length. If you're willing to try it, though, you're likely to find that you can learn to walk in cotehardies up to as much as 4" longer than floor length, just by doing the arcing pavane step. Add the desired train length to the back -- since this gown is so full, 2 or 3 feet of linear train will fall like twice that. Not that it's a bad thing! The sorquenie should just reach the floor in front, and never be longer than your cotehardie. It can have up to 12" of train, just enough so its weight pulls it out behind you and out from underfoot. Any more train, and it's likely to show at some point.

Now you're ready to graph out your pattern. Take a large sheet of paper, like a roll of newspaper, and mark a new baseline 5 or 6" from one long edge. At one end of this line, mark a point for the front cutting line. Measure up from this point and mark the shoulder line. Measuring on back, mark a line the total back length away from this line. Graph out all other points on the paper, measuring down front or back from the shoulder line and out from the baseline. Don't worry about marking any sleeve measurements past the elbow that fall off the edge of the paper, since they'll need to be marked separately anyway. Connect the dots on the front side. Don't be worried if the line seems remarkably curvy, and don't go for straight lines, but pass to the OUTSIDE of any dots that can't be reached. Flare the skirt at 40 - 45 degrees, starting between waist height and the bottom of the rib cage (in the art, these gowns are pretty full pretty fast, hence the high flare). I think this was done not just for fashionable reasons, but also because these women expected to spend much of their adult lives pregnant. With the high flair, these beautiful gowns were likely to fit through most, if not all, of a woman's term.

Between the baseline and the near long edge, give yourself 1 - 3 inches of extra room just above the underbust, maximizing at the bust line, and coming in a little, gently, above to keep the bust from coming out on its own. It's likely that you'll need to take the gown in here, but be sure to retain the slight inward curve. From the base of the floating ribs, flare the skirt the full width of the space between the baseline and the raw edge. This is so you have a bit of fullness in front without needing to piece in this very visible spot. Connect these two areas with a gently curved line.

Mark the neck opening. Its widest point should be just forward (~1/2") of the shoulder line. On the back side of this opening, you'll want the neckline to curve back in dramatically, so it's at least an inch narrower by the time it reaches the shoulder line. This is so the weight of the gown rests soundly on the bones at the back of the shoulder, allowing you to have a very wide neckline that won't slip down and limit arm mobility. This curve can be noted in some of the period art (Crowfoot, cover). Continue this line almost straight to the baseline, since the straighter the neckline is, the less it will stretch. Mine are only about an inch deep in the back. The front of the neckline should curve gently down to the décolletage, a wide, almost flat oval. In some of the art, the neckline actually appears to go straight across from shoulder to shoulder, with no dip in the middle. Only in the fifteenth century does it appear to get very deep, and even then it doesn't seem to be what we would consider to be daring.

Now you need to mark the center back line. Starting on the baseline a narrow hem allowance down from your neckline, gently curve out to provide ease for your shoulder blades. This curve should be very gentle, almost flat, reaching a maximum of about an inch into the space between the baseline and the near edge. It should curve back into the baseline by the underbust line.

At about the level of the floating ribs, flare out from the baseline at about 30 degrees, and connect this with a gentle curve to the other curves of the back. This flare is so the skirt falls naturally, but anything more will be excessive, especially if you have much of a train. French cotehardies seem to have laced up the back, since (unlike Italian) they seem to have been snug enough that one would expect to have to be laced into them, and (unlike English) there is no sign of them lacing or buttoning elsewhere. Alter the curve of your back seam to allow for your preferred method of adding in a facing for a lacing strip.

Cut out the front side, ending the sleeves between the bicep and elbow. Fold the paper along the shoulder line so the front is laying on top of the back, and trace this curve onto the back. Cut the side back curve. Open the pattern back up again, lay a long strip of tape across the neck opening from front to back (to keep the pattern from ripping apart here), and cut the front and back center lines. When cutting out the neckline, cut UP TO the tape, and cut out the rest of the neckline inside the taped zone, but DO NOT cut the tape strip. When you use your pattern, you can mark the neckline on both sides of the tape strip, then remove the pattern and connect the lines. You'll also need to cut the skirt along the pattern lines until you get to the selvage, then piece on godets straight edge to straight edge.

The sorquenie sleeves will need to be pieced, with the seam an inch or two higher than the end of the cotehardie sleeve. Find the remaining length that will need to be pieced on, adding seam allowances and an inch for ease. On another piece of your newspaper roll, mark a line about 2' long and 5" from one edge. In the middle of this line, mark another one perpendicular to it that is long enough for your finished sleeve pattern. Mark out the sleeve distance at the seam along the first line, then graph out the other points from your arm measurements. Connect them with a curved line on one side, then cut out along this line, fold, and copy it on the other side of your first line. Do not cut out along the second line! Mark a gentle convex curve at the wrist end, and cut that out.

Your sleeve needs to be rotated a quarter of the way around, so the buttons are along the bone on the bottom / back of your arm. Decide which half of your sleeve pattern is the back, and fold this side in half longways, using the bicep end of your sleeve and the edge of the sleeve at the wrist as your points to line up with the center line. Draw a sine wave along the second line, connecting with this line a hem allowance from each end and at the middle. Make the wave curve out and be fullest (about 2") on the rotated line, and curve it in the same amount at the same point on the front side. Cut along this line. You might need to alter this line if the sleeves turn out to have more width than you need, but I've not had a problem with cutting it down after the fact, since a woven fabric that has enough stretch one way to need to be cut down always seems to have more of an overlap at the seam than I need. At any rate, the sleeve fabric will need to be eased onto the body fabric. The sides of the sleeves on the extant fragments are made to be buttoned together, possibly all the way up to the seam. Small cloth buttons are placed along one edge, and buttonholes are made very close to the other edge, reinforced with a narrow band of tabletweaving.

If you're making a French style cotehardie, you'll want some sort of hanging tippets. The exact style and width of these tibbets appears to vary over the time period in which this gown was worn, but I've found that a cuff and calf-length tippet arrangement, each about 4" wide, works well for most of it. In French art, at least (I've heard rumours of black ones in eastern Europe), they are always white. Even in the fifteenth century, some gowns continued to have this style of sleeve treatment. I've never seen art showing tippets on a gown worn with a sideless surcote, or on a gown that appears to have the same fabric for the upper and lower sleeve, so I'm of the opinion that tippets were only worn as a sleeve treatment on short sleeved cotehardies. I've also never seen them on Italian cotehardies, called "gonellas", where the sleeves appear to be 3 /4 length. I have seen exactly one English statue showing a lady wearing French-style cuffs and tippets. She also had an English-style button front, and clearly had slits through her skirt, for reaching a pouch worn over her kirtle, or undergown (Crowfoot, p. 181).

The cotehardie can have a yard's worth of train easily, and should be at least long enough even in front to hide the sorquenie completely. How you curve the hem of your skirt for the train will have a distinct effect on the finished look. If the godets are almost as short as the front and the two main back panels are the only ones that train out (along with the skinny godets between them, of course), the finished train will look skinny, like a modern bridal gown. If the almost-straight line of the front hem continues out into the front godets, so the side back godets are long as well, the train will be full and more medieval looking. It looks like it isn't abnormal for the 14th century cotehardie skirt to "break" on the floor, although it doesn't achieve quite the fullness and puddling of 15th century court gowns.

Construction:

The sorquenie is the first layer that must be made. Sew on the godets, then sew up the front and side seams, using a 3/4" seam allowance and stitches that are large enough that you can take them out. Baste the center back seam closed as well, or put in the facings and buttonholes to lace it closed. Put the sorquenie on inside out, and have a friend help you adjust your bust into location and pin the seams in until they are snug under the bust, and close-fitting and smooth throughout the upper torso. You will need to finesse the fit in multiple fittings with a linen sorquenie, because part of the incredibly supportive fit is due to its gradual stretch. This process can be sped up a bit if you wear it for a few minutes every time before you pin the gown tighter. Make it as tight as it will go, don't be afraid to manually raise the bust into the position you want it to stay in, and you'll have a wonderful sorquenie you won't want to take off! I've made a sorquenie for a lady with a DDD cup, and this method even worked for her, although there was much more compression and less lift for her than I use on my own gowns. Be sure to gently curve the front seamline in just above the largest part of the bust, so you can lean over or bounce without having your bust try to come out!

Once the front seamline is finished, you can hem the neckline, attach the lower sleeves, sew on the buttons and make the buttonholes for the sleeves, and hem the sorquenie and sleeves. Finish the lacing strip, if you haven't already.

Construct the cotehardie by the same method, but using 5/8" seam allowances. You might find you need to finesse the fit through the bust on the cotehardie as well, but do not make it as fitted, as you don't want it to give away the secret of your bust support. Instead of sewing on lower sleeves, you will want to add tippets, at least for the French version of the gown. The most lasting style is a long (some appear floor-length) strip of fabric, attached at the side seam. A band of the same fabric, in the same width, covers the lower edges of the sleeves. For other styles, you'll want to check the artwork. Make sure you like the curve of the hemline, then hem the gown. You are finished!

Embellishment:

Many of the more detailed artworks show a narrow ribbon of black or metallic stuff around the edge of the neckline of the cotehardie. This may have been done to minimize stretch in this very important part of the garment, or it may have been done purely as a decorative element. Aside from the black or metallic band around the neckline, the gown might be embellished with metal embroidery, heraldic appliqué, or small gilt sequins. It can also be left as-is for a simpler look.

Links

• Patterns
• Pattern
• Pattern from greenland dresses (Very descriptive)
• Directions
• Directions
• Gallery of Images