The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines and with a special focus on reconstruction and re-enactment. Historical dress and textiles, always a topic of popular interest, has in recent years become an academic subject in its own right, transcending traditional genre boundaries. This annual journal includes in-depth studies from a variety of disciplines as well as cross-genre scholarship, representing such fields as social history, economics, history of techniques and technology, art history, archaeology, literature, and language. The contents cover a broad geographical scope and a range of periods from the early Middle Ages to the Renaissance. Papers in this latest volume discuss clothing descriptions in an early Irish poem in relation to archaeological finds; the Latin inscription embroidered on the Bayeux Tapestry; clothmaking in twelfth-century French romances; medieval Paris as an international textile market; the cost of sartorial excess in England as attested by sumptuary laws and satire; textile cleaning techniques at a German convent in the fifteenth century; the use of jewelled animal pelts as fashion accessories in the Renaissance; and the social significance of the embroidered jacket in early modern England. Also included are reviews of recent books on dress and textile topics. ROBIN NETHERTON's research focuses on medieval Western European clothing and its interpretation by artists and historians; GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor ofAnglo-Saxon Culture, The University of Manchester. Her most recent books are Dress in Anglo-Saxon England (2004), and King Harold II and the Bayeux Tapestry (2005). Contributors: Niamh Whitfield, Gale R. Owen-Crocker, Monica L. Wright, Sharon Farmer, Margaret Rose Jaster, Drea Leed, Tawny Sherrill, Danielle Nunn-Weinberg

The best new research on medieval clothing and textiles, drawing from a range of disciplines. The fifth volume of this annual series features several articles examining the interaction of medieval romance with textiles and clothing. French Gothic ivory carvings illustrating courtly romances reveal details of fashionable dress; the distinct languages of narrative poetry and Parisian tax records offer contrasting views of medieval embroiderers; and scenes from the Tristan legend provide clues to the original form of the earliest surviving decorativequilt. Other papers look at ecclesiastical attempts to restrict extravagance in secular women's dress, the use of clothing references to signal impending conflict in Icelandic sagas, the development and possible construction of the Tudor-era court headdress called the French hood, and the way Cesare Vecellio drew on both existing artwork and the Venetian image to present historical dress in his sixteenth-century treatise on costume. Also included are reviews of recent books on clothing and textiles. ROBIN NETHERTON is a professional editor and a researcher/lecturer on the interpretation of medieval European dress; GALE R. OWEN-CROCKER is Professor of Anglo-Saxon Culture atthe University of Manchester. Contributors: KATE D'ETTORE, SARAH-GRACE HELLER, THOMAS M. IZBICKI, PAULA MAE CARNS, SARAH RANDLES, MELANIE SCHUESSLER, TAWNY SHERRILL