I am helping a friend think about 6thc clothing for Crown List, and thought it'd be nice to collect some research images, with my thoughts about how they might be put together.

Aillegan is focused on Merovingian – that'd be Continental – but as there's significant influence in Kent by Franks (the marriage of Berthe to Ethelbert in late 6thc), and I've got a couple of really good books about the period, I'm sharing.

The books are:

Owen-Crocker, Gale.  Dress in Anglo-Saxon England.

Rogers, Penelope Walton.  Cloth and Clothing in Early Anglo-Saxon England.

The images that follow are from them.

(Owen-Crocker: "Middle class and upper class Kentish Women")  Bangs?  Really?  I also think this depiction looks unnecessarily gritty, based on an Anglo-Saxon architecture class I took at Pennsic, but that's another post a long time from now.

Aillegan was originally concerned with veils, so I'll start there.  The evidence supports veils – veils pinned under the chin, veils attached to a gold-brocaded fillet…earrings strung on a wealth chain because they wouldn't be seen with a veil.

(Owen-Crocker) (I need to get a good description of the Arnegundis gravefind – it's becoming Necessary.)

Since I mentioned the "wealth chains" – that got A's interest, and she wanted to know how that worked.  The answer seems to be, "any way you'd like it to…"

(Rogers)  Right now, I'm combining the plainest 'Kent' version, since I don't have many beads*, with the first of these dresses:

(also from Rogers)  I've made a long woolly version of the coat-dress in the second figure, and mean to make another of lighter weight, that will be fancier.  (Winter North-Sea dress needs its cuffs redone, too, but my hands were cold.)

*I don't have many beads, because I associated glass beads until this year with Viking aprons and tortoise brooches, and that style doesn't appeal to me.  But then my glass-bead-making friend Lavena gave me a handful of museum replicas she'd done, including a precious face bead from 100 BC…and happily my Kentish stuff can use them…until I redistribute them more accurately.  (Because 100 BC really ought to be Roman Republic, right?)

The brooches vary a lot, too – here's the variety found in one cemetery:

Aillegan, I hope this helps, and it has shown me that I need to keep documenting the garb I'm making for my own use.  And probably prep a class, with a big map.