WHO made the clothes in Medieval Europe?

Question

who made the clothes in medieval europe was it poor peasants by the way i am just guessing so does anyone know for sure? i really need to know it is a question for some homework i have to do and i can not find any answers that say exactly who

Answer 1

Do you know anyone with the last name Taylor?  They probably had an ancestor that made clothing.

Answer 2

In most families the clothing was made by the wife and her daughters if they were old enough, plus any older women in the household. This was a ground-up operation, beginning with spinning. Women spun or knitted whenever their hands were free.

Wealthy people, of course, had professional tailors who produced very elaborate garments.

Believe it or not, even in 19th century America women still made most of their own clothing or had it made to order by local dressmakers.

Answer 3

Middle-aged tailors, dressmakers etc

Answer 4

Spinning was a major occupation of women in medieval times.  They would spin wool and flax into thread, both for their own use and to sell to professional weavers.  In early medieval times, both men and women worked as weavers, but in the later medieval period women were generally squeezed out of the trade by men.

Many people would buy or make cloth and make their own clothes, but there were professional tailors and semastresses who made clothes, though poor people would probably not be able to afford them and would more likely make their own clothes.

Answer 5

As with any question like this about "medieval" times, it must first be understood that things (everything) changed considerably over the period we know as the Middle Ages - lumping those centuries all together is always misleading and incorrect.

In general terms, however, there were various tradesmen and workers who contributed to the clothing industry - since wool was such a large percentage of this you need to start with shepherds and sheep-shearers. Fullers then cleaned and softened the wool, dyers would give it colour. Then there were weavers who spent all their time turning the yarn into cloth; clothiers would produce garments which might be sold locally at market or sent abroad via merchants. Each of these processes was quite separate, but an important link in the chain.

Woollen garments came in a range of quality, from coarse and undyed (the hooded esclavine cloak worn by shepherds, carters, pilgrims and so on) to the very finest brightly coloured (and therefore expensive) materials for the wealthy.

Underwear was most often of linen (the genuine thing, not cotton) which is produced from the flax plant. This production process was another industry in its own right.

Both wool and linen cloth might be produced on a very small scale in peasant cottages (hence the term "homespun"), but this would be a tiny proportion of the overall industry.

Leather items (shoes, belts, knife sheaths, pouches and so on) were the province of other craftsmen - corvisers (or cordwainers), tanners, skinners and others.