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Haptic & Hue
The Garment That Sweeps Through History: The Everlasting Cloak
00:38:34
There’s a piece of clothing that has a good claim to being a universal garment. It is thousands of years old and yet it featured on the catwalks last year. It’s stylish and at the same time the humblest and simplest of garments. It has been worn...
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- [00:24]
Jo Andrews
It's February and we're on Hadrian's Wall in the north of England. The wall was built in the 2nd century AD at the command of the Emperor Hadrian to defend the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire. It's barely light, there's snow on the ground, and a bitter wind is blowing straight out of the northeast. As a soldier in the Roman army, you're standing on the wall on duty, probably wondering how on earth you got yourself into this mess. But you can see that the local tribes are wearing something very practical that keeps them warm and dry, and it's called the Birus Britannicus.
- [01:20]
Sue Day
The Biris is an all in one cloak from ankles to head, and it's got no seams apart from one. And then it's all woven on one loom in one piece and then just sewn up the front. And the only way you can get into it is by climbing into it and hopefully getting your head towards the hole. And the hood is also attached. And so when it's on, it's actually down to the ground and up above your head and you can't do anything because your arms are inside.
- [01:58]
Jo Andrews
That's Sue Day, who recreates ancient textiles. And I'm Jo Andrews, the host of Haptic and Hughes Tales of Textiles. I'm a hand weaver, interested in what cloth tells us about ourselves and our societies. Often the stories and information that textiles give us are ignored and we lose a whole dimension of human experience. This episode is about cloaks and capes, a piece of clothing that has as good a claim as any to being a universal garment. It crosses cultures and centuries. It has accompanied humanity down the long march of time and has been repurposed and reshaped by almost everyone, from saints to sinners, from highwaymen to hobbits. You could spend a lifetime researching this one garment. But here's an episode of Haptic and Hue that looks at just some aspects of the all purpose cloak. Sue works at the Chedworth Roman villa in Gloucestershire and she's made herself a Beerus Britannicus.
- [03:27]
Sue Day
It is very restricting, but it's a waterproof coat or cloak. It would have been worn by virtually everybody, including all the plebeians out in the fields. You may know of them as plebs. That's the shortened word, means the common people out in the field, the workers. But it would also have been worn by the higher officials as well, and the soldiers would have been wearing them as well. Now, it was well known that if the Roman army was on march, they would send out scouts and those scouts would go to any occupied area. So for instance, our villa is only three miles away from the Foss Way and they would actually go to the villa and several others that are around us and commandeer all of the woven material and that includes all the cloaks and everything else. I always tell people that if you heard the army were on the march, you hid everything.
- [04:33]
Jo Andrews
The important thing about the Birus Britannicus was that it was warm, but magically it was also waterproof.
- [04:42]
Sue Day
It was made from sheep's fleece, sheep's wool and it was just washed. So to get rid of all the dirt and all the mekis bits of sheep, it would then have been spun and woven in the grease. So you've still got the lanolin. So once it was made and you were wearing it, it's all covered in lanolin. So when the rain hits it, that runs off. Now in no, it would have been spun as a worsted spin. So that's spun along the fibres because that's the best one to help the rain also run off as well. It's almost like today's wax jacket. You can think of it in the same way. You know the Barbour wax jackets, you put those on, they're covered with a covering of oil to help the rain and they're waterproof as well and windproof, which the Berris would have been as well. It was a tightly woven cloak they.
- [05:37]
Jo Andrews
Were restricting to wear because they had no armholes and no open seams. If you wanted to use your arms, you had to hitch the cloak up until you freed an arm. But they became highly coveted in Rome, where they were prepared to pay a huge amount for them.
- [05:58]
Sue Day
But we do know that during the second century one of the emperors, Diocletian, actually wrote the Edict of Diocletian. And the second item on his list of exported items was a Berus Britannicus and that was worth, in today's money, 250kg of pork.
- [06:20]
Jo Andrews
That's a great deal of pig in anyone's terms. About 550 pounds in weight. Diocletian was setting what he considered to be fair prices to be paid for items. Of course, being a textile, there are no surviving biri that we know of. But at Chedworth Villa there is a Roman mosaic of the seasons and depicting winter is a little cherub like figure wearing a representation of a Beerus. And not far away in Cirencester Museum is a tombstone with three men on it who could be soldiers. They appear to Be wearing the British cloak. All you can see are their faces with their little toes sticking out at the bottom. But there is a cloak that's more than 2,000 years old and it's in pretty good shape.
- [07:19]
Amica Sundstrom
I will say it's in perfect condition. It's a fabric who is 2000 years old. And when it's preserved in a box, it's the best for wool. So that one is in perfect shape. They have some holes in it like they were digging. They make some holes and also they have some holes from how it was used. And you can still lift it without breaking it. It's fantastic.
- [07:44]
Jo Andrews
This is the Jerum cloak, which is around 2,300 years old. And that's Amica Sundstrom, a weaver and textile archaeologist at Sweden's National Historical Museum. This cloak is remarkable in so many ways. It was found by chance in the 1920s in western Sweden.
- [08:11]
Amica Sundstrom
And these two men, they were digging in the bog, they needed to fire the material and they found this was a packet. The clock was folded in a packet and was three stone on top of it. So they thought it will be like something very expensive inside. But we know it was the clock with the big present here, so maybe they was a little disappointed. But they still understand that this was old thing. So they contact the museum in the area and they come out and look at it and say, this is very special. So they send it up to Stockholm.
- [08:47]
Jo Andrews
It's Sweden's oldest complete garment and the reason it survived and none of the British cloaks survived is because it was in a bog.
- [08:58]
Amica Sundstrom
And for wool textile in our part of the world, bogs is the best thing ever. So from Denmark they have fantastic bog finds. You have it in Ireland and probably we have much more Sweden, but we have so much trees here, so we haven't dig so much in the bogs like they have done in Denmark.
- [09:18]
Jo Andrews
This isn't the British onesie. It's a much more elegant and fashionable version of the cloak, especially for its day. It's the earliest surviving representation of a houndstooth twill that we have anywhere in the world. It was made from natural coloured white and dark wool, warped in four strands of white and four strands of dark wool and then woven in the same way. The cloak is all deep brown now because it's been stained by the bog, but originally it would have been a striking brown and white. This is a pattern that has come down to us and is still used by designers in black and white. It practically became the house pattern for Christian Dior and Coco Chanel's 1960s tweed suits made great use of it. And indeed Ameca thinks that when this cloak was. Was made, it too would have been the height of fashion.
- [10:26]
Amica Sundstrom
So fabric is like something very new and very unique. And this, this one have also been amazing. You have to see the color pattern is white and brown. You see it from long distance is very powerful. So obviously are only people who have connection or some kind of power who devolved this textile and been using it. And clocks are a big piece of cloth. So it's of course a lot of effort put into it and. And you can show it off in a big way. You see it and look and you see that the person have it and say wow, that the purpose is also wow. But then you have the purpose of hold your warmth. Sweden and Denmark is not a very warm country, so you also need it to stay alive.
- [11:11]
Jo Andrews
So it has these two purposes. It keeps you warm, but it's also fantastic for showing off.
- [11:18]
Amica Sundstrom
Yeah, I think that part is very important here because also not everybody can have this. So it's very special, the knowledge about weaving and also to have sheep and to make threads of it quite new.
- [11:34]
Jo Andrews
And the Jarom cloak is a big piece of material, two and a half meters long and two meters wide. That's about eight foot by six foot six. It would have looked spectacular and it would have been extremely useful in keeping out those cold Scandinavian winds. And here lies part of the cloak's charm and the reason for its universal appeal. It's both showy and practical. Amica and her colleagues know that this cloak was woven on a Roman style two beam loom. And they've been able to show that it was made by two weavers working side by side. The method they used was that both had a shuttle and entered it at each side of the warp, meeting in the middle and crossing threads there, or as amica notes, not quite in the middle.
- [12:38]
Amica Sundstrom
So it's actually very clear, you see that. And so on one side you see this crossing very well. And the fun part is also they're not exactly in the middle. It's little more on one side. So I imagine that they are two people. One have like longer arms or are faster than the other one. So they don't come exactly the middle. And I love details like this because you get very close to the people who have made it and it's become your friends. Like you think about how they have sitting there and weaving this and like I'm a little faster than you and you, the crossing comer. On your side.
- [13:20]
Jo Andrews
And that's what the careful study of textiles can do for you. Text take you close to the women who sat beside each other thousands of years ago weaving a spectacular cloak together. One working slightly faster than the other. This particular cloak though, also hides a macabre secret. When the cloak first came to Stockholm, they noticed that it had some holes in it. The Swedish scholar and archaeologist Sunni Lundqvist suggested that these were stab marks.
- [14:00]
Amica Sundstrom
And because then you can see the marks, the holes in it go through the two layers. I have to say I was skeptical. I thought that maybe it was like when they was digging this up and make this hole. But before this exhibition they left a criminal working with homicide to look at it. And they confirmed that it was a very sharp object to have go through the fabric. And yeah, maybe sunilingfence is right in this. But they're not finding around the body. It's just this cloak put on in. In the bog. So we don't know the history around it. We just know that in some time some have stabbed into it and they are not like especially in the chest. They are quite. Yeah in the ending of it. So yeah, it doesn't mean exactly that someone have been killed in it.
- [14:54]
Jo Andrews
No one knows what the marks mean. And the Jerum cloak still guards its mystery close. I find cloaks fascinating. Once I started noticing them, I saw them everywhere. So much ancient clothing seemed to be derived from or related to the cloak or cape. There's barely a painting of the Madonna Mary, the mother of Jesus that doesn't show her wearing her iconic blue cloak. The incredible Byzantine mosaics of Ravenna dating to the 6th century are studded with cloaks draped over the shoulders of the three kings arriving at Jesus crib. And the Empress Theodora and her attendants wear the most incredible collection of purple cloaks and gold embroidered stoles. These cloaks are rich, elegant garments displaying power and wealth. And at the civilized heart of the ancient world, Rome there were cloaks everywhere.
- [16:04]
Maria Stella Busana
We know that there were many types of cloaks used both in the civic and military fields. They had different shapes, each with its own name. But sometimes is not so easy to understand the shape from the sources. For example, the Sagum, the Elena and the Lacerna had a rectangular shape and was closed in front near the right shoulder with a fibula. The penula had an oval or circular shape and about knee length with or without hood. For example, the cuculus had a similar shape but was shorter. So many kinds of clothes.
- [16:54]
Jo Andrews
That's Maria Stella Busana from the University of Padua, she's a professor of classical archaeology. And a fibula is a kind of brooch or fixing pin. In Rome, there was much to choose from, but each cloak told its own story, and you could only wear the one appropriate for your place in society.
- [17:21]
Maria Stella Busana
Cloaks were worn overall by men, but also by women. The typical feminine cloak was the palla. The pallo was made up of a rectangle of fabric folded around the body and fastened on the shoulders with pins. The pallo was worn in different ways, either over the head and all around the body, or left, draped loosely on the arms when the woman was sitting or in more comfortable position. And the matron wore it when she was in public so she could cover her head as a symbol of modesty.
- [18:10]
Jo Andrews
So here the cloak is a symbol of respectable female married status, used to cover the body for modesty when necessary. In Greek and Roman times, we're dealing with much simpler, less shaped clothes, clothing more draped, like the famous Roman toga, which in some ways sounds like a cloak.
- [18:35]
Maria Stella Busana
In some respects, yes. In other, no. On the one hand, the toga had the shape of a cloak and was worn over the tunic as a mantle. But on the other hand, however, it was worn in a completely different way from the cloak, which made it a true ceremonial dress. The toga was the distinct element of the Roman citizen. Initially, the toga was worn by both men and women. But starting from the second century bc, it becomes the prerogative of men alone. Only loose women and prostitutes could wear it to distinguish themselves from Roman matrons.
- [19:28]
Jo Andrews
So a properly dressed Roman citizen might be wearing a tunic, a toga and a cloak. On top of all that, the one figure from Roman history who almost certainly will be wearing his cloak is the Roman soldier who used his in a very different way.
- [19:49]
Maria Stella Busana
The clothing of Roman soldiers has undergone numerous changes over the centuries. The first clear indication of the cloaks used by soldiers can be traced back to republican rage. Already in these chronological phases, there must have been at least two different types. The first, called sagum, used by all troops. The second used by generals, called paludamentum.
- [20:25]
Jo Andrews
The sagum was an enormously practical item of military equipment, prized by all Roman soldiers when they weren't out stealing local cloaks. This was their fighting cloak. They lived in it and fought in it. And if you dropped your shield, it could even be used for make do self defence by wrapping it around your left arm as you fought on in the heat of battle. One Roman soldier and his cloak is still commemorated today all over Europe. In the third century, a Roman soldier was riding towards the French city of antique Amiens when he met a naked beggar on the road. Feeling sorry for him, he cut his cloak in half and gave it to the beggar. A vision later revealed to him that the beggar was Jesus. The soldier left the army, converted to Christianity and set up the first monastery in France, becoming the Bishop of Tours. After performing many miracles, he was concentrated as Saint Martin of Tours and became the patron saint of France. The remaining half of his cloak became so important to France that it was used as a royal banner in wartime, and the French kings swore their oaths upon it. The structure in which the cloak was, was preserved was called a capella, or little cloak, which comes down to us today as the word chapel or little church. In France, Italy and Germany, they still celebrate St. Martin's Day or Martinmas, on November 11. In Venice, the children wear small capes and rush from shop to shop, banging pan lids and asking for treats. In Padua, the students wear long cloaks and parade around the town singing and drinking. And the Romans never quite gave up their love affair with the cloak. Their descendants, the Italian army, were still wearing them 2,000 years later, although they had a different name, the Tabarro of.
- [22:54]
Vittorio Zara
The Italian troops during the First World War. This model nowadays called the 1518, and it's inspired from the troops, the Italian troops, because it was the period when Italy was in the First World War. So in 1915 and 1918, as you can see in the inside of the tabarro, we wrote that it's made in Italy in pure wool. And there's a really nice other thing that you have to clean the Tabarrons in the snow, because when the troops were in the mountains and they. They had this tabarro the morning they cleaned the Tabarro on the snow.
- [23:33]
Jo Andrews
Vittorio is a member of the Zara family, Italian manufacturers who love cloaks and the stories behind them. They make a number of traditional cloaks to this day, close to Venice. One of the cloaks being the 1518, a reproduction of the Italian military cloak that went on being used well into the 20th century. Short ones for the enlisted men and longer ones for the officers. There's no doubt that the cloak utabaru has a particular Italian resonance, as Vittorio's grandfather Sandro knows. Sandro is in his 80s now. He says he loves work so much he'd pay to come in every day to the production house where he keeps his collection of historic coats and cloaks and makes beautiful new Italian and Venetian cloaks. Sandro grew up In a world where everyone, whatever their class, wore a cloak as part of their everyday dress, from the postman to the judge. But then it began to disappear, as he explains in Italian, translated by Vittorio.
- [25:04]
Vittorio Zara
Okay, he asked himself a question that was why the garment that lived and survived for thousands and thousands of years had lost his popularity or its use. And so he asked himself this question, and he was really fascinated by the fact that the tabarro was worn by every type of citizen, from the nobles to the poor ones, from the American to the magistrated. So it was in Italian is transversale. It was worn by everyone. It could be worn by everyone. And these are the reasons why he decided to try to give life back to a garment like this.
- [25:58]
Jo Andrews
Sandro set about gathering all the information he could about cloaks. One of the things he quickly understood was that a lot of formal dress that is even used today derived one way or another from the humble cloak.
- [26:17]
Vittorio Zara
We can see in the 1300s in Venice and in Tuscany, the tabarro was more considered as a long overcoat with wide but not long sleeves, like one of the magistrates have nowadays, or the one that the professors of university wear sometimes. And in fact, it was worn by doctors, magistrates and ecclesiastics people. And so in the 13th century, the tabarro was a garment without refinements. It was a more humble garment. And at the end of the 16th century it became the cloak, and it covered the shoulders of the citizens and the travelers. But only in the 17th century it began to be used also by the nobles. And in the 1900s it became symbol of elegance and distinction.
- [27:17]
Jo Andrews
Sandrose's cloaks were used all over Italy and had different names, but they were particularly popular in the colder areas of the north.
- [27:28]
Vittorio Zara
It was mostly used in Emilia Romagna, in Veneto and in the Po Valley. These areas were the areas where the tabarro was most diffused. And in Venice, Even before the 1900s, the use of the tabarro was generalized also to combat the winter climate, the foggy and the humid that entered in the bones we could see. And the same applies to Emilia Romagna, where everyone rode their bikes to move, and wind and cold did not penetrate that armor, because the tabarro was seen quite as an armor because it defended you from this wind and cold, so.
- [28:13]
Jo Andrews
Your cloak kept the cold out. And just as it had been a brilliant garment for riding a horse in, so it proved to be an excellent choice for a bicycle. And for the rich men of the Italian region of Emilia Romana, what it concealed could Be useful.
- [28:33]
Vittorio Zara
And the landowners of Romagna who rode around the plain by bicycle wore the tabarro, under which sometimes they carried some tools to defend themselves. And it is said, and there are some voices that go around about the fact that also Giuseppe Verdi wore in Emilia Romagna vista Barro and had a small caliber pistol to defend himself.
- [29:08]
Jo Andrews
I love that image of the composer Giuseppe Verdi bicycling, circling furiously around Italy in the fog with his pistol concealed underneath his cloak. It gives us a clue as to why highwaymen and smugglers loved the cloak. The sheer volume of the thing made it easy to hide whatever you had underneath. In fact, the cloak became so associated with Italians that they were identified by them when they arrived in America as new migrants in the 19th century. But in the 20th century, Sandro's Italian fashion contemporaries thought him nuts to try to bring back something so old fashioned.
- [29:58]
Vittorio Zara
They thought he was crazy back in the past, but also nowadays, designers try to put produce something that is popular. And at that time, when the tabarro was disappearing from the common use, it was really unreal that the tabarro came back to its popularity. But Sandro was really fascinated from it. It has been really hard because the fabrics with which you do the tabarro had disappeared. So there were only the old people, or maybe someone that had a tabarro of their grandparents, or someone that was old, we could say. And in this way, my grandpa Sandro decided to call and search these people that had a tabarro, an old tabarro, to get the material, but also to see and to form an archive like the one we have today.
- [31:01]
Jo Andrews
Pizandro says he was born against the grain and that's the way he is. The tabarro that he has made is quite simply one of the most elegant garments I have ever set eyes on. It's Venetian in style, made of six meters of super soft felted wool that's produced especially for the zaras. The cloak is cut from two complete semicircles of rich fabric, which is warm and waterproof. Sandro and Vittorio are both tall Venetians, and as they show me just how to sweep the dark folds of their cloaks over their shoulders, this is more like a dance than putting on a piece of clothing. You know that Sandro has created something incredible.
- [32:00]
Vittorio Zara
Sandro thinks that the tabarro is a magic indent, and when you wrap yourself in it, you are only you. And the Tabarro wearing the tabarro is courage, is not caring about the fashion, the social fashion, and what is popular at the moment the Tabarro is synonym of courage, you don't care what the society thinks.
- [32:29]
Jo Andrews
Sandro says you have to find the Tabarro that is right for you.
- [32:35]
Vittorio Zara
And he was saying that you got to try every Tabarro and find the one that is yours. And it's not like the fashion we wear every day. You can't wear the Tabarro if you don't feel it yours. You gotta find the Tabarro that finds you. It's a sort of idea where you gotta find the Tabarro that suits you in the best way. You need to have your Tabarro and you can't wear the one of the others.
- [33:01]
Jo Andrews
I wonder if Little Red Riding Hood felt the same way about her cloak before she was gobbled up, or if witches on their broomsticks had such a personal relationship with theirs. Certainly they seem to be irrevocably connected to flight in the modern mind. Hollywood heroes like Batman and Superman wear them, and I think that's because they came from comics and illustrations where the cloak easily conveyed drama and movement through the air. But equally, it could be because of the mystery that cloaks symbolize even to this day. But they also signal evil, as in Dracula, and care, as in the uniform of nurses. And in case anyone thinks this is all history, Catherine, the Princess of Wales, was looking extremely elegant wearing a bright red cloak on an official visit to South Korea late last year. Back in the Veneto, where the Zara's produced their cloak, sits Katja Simeon. She's the woman at the sewing machine. She's worked there for 16 years and loves making the thousand or so cloaks that she constructs every year.
- [34:29]
Vittorio Zara
She has a very personal relationships with them. She actually feels like they are hers and she feels a lot of passion about them.
- [34:39]
Jo Andrews
Katya believes very strongly that the Tabaro chooses the wearer and not the other way around. She sees it happen as people try them on in front of her.
- [34:56]
Vittorio Zara
So she's saying that every single person must feel feel like the Tabarro is theirs. And furthermore, depending on every single person's characteristics, there are different models which, let's say, are more suitable. In a way, it is only in the moment when you wear it that you actually feel like it's your Tabarro. Therefore, it is the Tabarro that chooses the person, not the person that chooses the Tabarro.
- [35:29]
Jo Andrews
Katja's own cloak is a green 15 18. I don't have a cloak. I'm waiting for one to choose me. And that might just mean a trip back to Italy. What hardship. Thank you to the entire Zara family for their hospitality and knowledge, but especially to Vittorio and his brother Alessandro, who did the hard work of translating Sandro and Katya's wisdom. Thanks too to Sue Day, Amica Sundstrom and Maria Stella Busana for their knowledge. Haptic and Hu is hosted by me, Joe Andrews and produced by Bill Taylor. It's an independent, independent production supported entirely by its listeners who bring us ideas and generously fund us via Buy Me a Coffee or by becoming a friend of Haptic and Hu. This keeps the podcast independent and free from advertising and sponsorship. It also brings you extra content every month with a separate podcast who Travels with Textiles, Hosted by Bill Taylor and me, where we cover a whole range of different textile subjects. You can find out more about this episode and see pictures and videos of how to put on your elegant venetian cloak@www.hapticandhue.com. listen we'll be back next week month with a puzzle when two forms of artistry meet. Who is the artist? Come with us as we explore this in the company of some of the best modern tapestry weavers in Scotland's celebrated weaving studio and follow the process of turning a new piece of art into a tapestry. Join us next time on the first Thursday of the month and until then, thank you for listening and enjoy whatever making you are doing.
- [38:23]
Alessandro Zara
SA.