The Evolution of Clothing

 

I truly love clothing. I'm not a fashion guru and you can ask my wife Gabrielle, I definantly have my own style, ranging from plain boring to pure mountain man, but I do truly love clothing. I like to look at the clothing different cultures in history wore and figure out why they wore this item vs. that one. And I love to recreate concepts of historical clothing with our modern materials. Would you believe me if I told you that your trusty hoodie is just a modern tunic? Or that the awesome looking military shemagh scarf you bought off amazon has been used for thousands of years unchanged? What if I told you that your pockets used to be slits cut into your coat that let you pull coins out from your bag on your belt without letting pickpockets see you do it? Or that your wool blanket is really a coat? All these things are true and I want to look at them in this post to give you an idea of the evolution of clothing.

First off, many types of clothing styles and trends though out human history were not well thought out. I'm sorry, but a full wool three piece suit, a bowler hat, chewing tobacco, and bathing once a month wasn't the greatest combo for anyone in the American west, let's face it. But there was one particular piece of kit that most people kept with them: A 2x2 piece of cloth called a kerchief. You can wrap your face with it, use it as a scarf, dress wounds, wipe your brow, wrap up your hair, wear it on your head, really any use you can think of for it. Most cultures throughout time had some form of a broad piece of cloth they kept for this purpose. An inexpensive piece of cloth multi-tool technology that we still can't seem to get rid of. Many people in the outdoor community have shemagh scarfs;very large kerchiefs made of cotton originating from the middle east, and truly love the things to death. I used mine for many years as a piece of every day field wear and it served me well, as it has for people in middle eastern countries for thousands of years.

I had a very knowledgeable woods-runner offer me to try their silk scarf one time and I've never managed to make it back to using the shemagh since. Their silk scarf was just a wide silk tie that they had undone the stitching on but it worked like a charm, and was a distinctively different piece of clothing that most people weren't using. Since then, I've purchased a large silk bandana and that is now my best scarf, headwrap, and anything else I need it for. And by making a slide-bolo out of antler, I can keep my scarf in place and even make a small bag for carrying tinder or other materials with it if I wish. The advantages of using a silk scarf vs. the popular shemagh scarf is that silk heats up much faster to keep you warm, and the silk can dry out faster if you sweat on it, as well as being lighter and more compact. The only disadvantages I've managed to find are that you cant wrap your head and neck up in the same fashion for making a full faced hood, and you cant use the silk-scarf for char cloth material. However I usually wear clothing that has a hood on it, so i'm covered there, and I never travel without charcloth and material to make more. For me the large silk bandanna is a win, and a piece of kit I suggest you try out for yourself.

Many cultures had a cloak in the old days. The Romans and Greeks used one, the vikings, middle age Europe, Victorian era London, most cultures had a cloak of some type. Desert dwelling people used cloaks as well, often to protect themselves from the sweltering heat of the day and the chill of the night. The American mountain man even used their wool blankets in many different variations of a cloak. Most notable is what we call a Matchcoat(see picture below). So why did the cloak fall out of fashion and is really only popular with Tolkien fans now? Well many cultures used it probably because many made most of their clothing on hand looms, so making a full coat with a hood, sleeves, and pockets, that was also thick enough to be your outer garment was too time consuming on a hand loom. Once we hit the industrial age sewing machinery made mass production of heavier outer wear possible. Even still, many early outdoorsman can still be seen using their trusty blanket as a cloak to wrap up in on cold mornings. The Scottish great kilt is a fine example of the cloak being used for multiple purposes. The great kilt can be worn as clothing, be reconfigured as a coat, and is also what many men used to sleep in at night. Like the kerchief, the cloak is a simple piece of cloth with many functions, if you know how to use it.

Many modern woods-runners make it a point to learn how to use their wool blankets as outer wear still. I personally use mine on very cold mornings and enjoy the fact that I only need to bring one good piece of kit to help make up for two or three. My wife recently bought me a piece of modern gear with the same concept as the cloak. It's a sleeping bag that turns into your coat, and I used it extensively when we were trekking in Nepal and in Joshua Tree national park. It's a very handy piece of kit to have with me and perfect for both traveling and camping. Stay tuned to our YouTube channel for a video review on the sleeping bag soon.

Now I wasn't lying about the hoodies being a modern tunic. If you look at the tunic from history you find many different shapes and sizes. Some were long and came down to the knees while others stayed just below the waist. But there are a few common themes: it was a thicker garment to be worn to keep warm, it had long sleeves, and usually a hood, though sometimes the hood could be a separate, detachable piece from the tunic. It was a comfortable garment that you were inclined to usually throw on daily. The modern hoodie shares the same qualities of the tunic and, while usually shorter than knee length, it is still a piece of outer wear that we throw on many days without thinking about it when we want to be warm and comfortable. And man does that hood sure help out.The marsupial pouch on the front was added much later of course but the shape and fit remain the same. Wool and linen were most commonly used as materials for tunics but as cotton became cheaper and cheaper to produce for clothing, we eventually made the switch to producing modern hoodies using cotton. For those of us that enjoy going our into the woods and don't want the draw backs associated with cotton, you can now find hoodies made with better materials. There are down or synthetic puffy zip-up hoodies for those wanting lightweight and pack-ability, and wool hoodies that are lined with silk or fleece for those wanting a bomb-proof, no nonsense hoodie. And lets not forget, making your own jacket or hoodie out of a wool blanket is a merit badge that we hold dear in the bushcraft community.

In the old days men usually wore belts on the outside of their clothing, and not usually to keep their pants up. Suspenders were for that purpose while a belt was to help hold gear and important items to the body. You carried everything on your belt, be it your blades, your gun, pouches for items, or even your coin purse. Well carrying everything like that became too easy for pick pockets to start coming by and Stealing your coin purse so men started to think of ways to hide their coin carrier. They would wear longer tops, coats, vests, ect. and would cut hidden slits into the side of these garments where they could casually slide coins in and out of the coin purse underneath without attracting attention. Eventually clothing makers started sewing the coin purses to the inside of there garments and the pockets were born. Today we love the handle little pouches and usually keep five to ten on our pants alone. Naturally as our pockets moved onto our pants, the belt that had once carried our coin purse moved to still carry it, and clothing makers started making the belt loops on pants and the suspender started to fade. I cant say I prefer one way over the other really, I like to use suspenders to hold up my pants and use a belt to hold my gear, but pants have to be specially made to receive proper suspenders now a days so wearing your kit on a pair of regular ol' pants is just more common. Still, in my experience we have the advantage of combining both the old way of carrying gear and important items with the new. We can carry important tools on both our belts and in our pockets now making it had to have an excuse for not having a crucially important tool with you when you're in the woods. You can fit a few lighters and ferro-rods right in your front pocket!

Clothing has evolved with us and will keep changing as we figure out better technology and fabrics, but I find that many items we simply can't part with. They have too many purposes, have proven themselves too reliable, and we have too many fond human memories with them. We all have a favorite hoodie, or a favorite blanket that we just can't dream of getting ride of, because they work well for us and we favor them for it. I'm a lover of the old way of doing things in the woods and that transfers to the clothing I choose to wear out there, but it does excite me to see where these most basic items of human need are going and what they are changing into, and how they will change our experience out in the woods.

Update: I'm sorry for the lack of posting on the blog the last few weeks. We took a trekking trip in Nepal and the wifi was never strong enough to do any updates. I did get a lot of new blogs written and am excited to do a multi-part series on travelling and trekking in Nepal, so be on the look out for those coming soon! I'm glad to be back at it and as always, feel free to check out our other social media outlets, links for those are at the top of the page.