Bliaut

What it is

A bliaut is a loose-skirted outer garment, put on over other clothes. Women's versions are the ones described most fully. The body sits close from the bust down to the waist or just below it, and the fabric across the belly is drawn into creases that run sideways. Below the hips the skirt widens. The sleeves are the clearest marker of the style: narrow from the shoulder to about the elbow, then opening out so that the fabric hangs as far as the floor or close to it. Long trains of sleeve drape at the wrist in many pictures.

Tracing the style

The garment belongs to Western Europe and is found mainly where French taste travelled. A figure in the Bayeux Tapestry wears something with the long sleeve that later marks the type. A twelfth-century miniature known as the Ladder of Virtue shows it too, and a nun named Claricia painted herself wearing one in a psalter made in southern Germany around 1200, now held in Baltimore. Earlier carvings, such as one at Angers Cathedral, show a single piece of cloth cinched at the natural waist, with lacing visible at the sides. Statues carved at Chartres between the 1130s and 1160s show the later, two-part form.

Two forms, two sexes

The later women's version has its own name, bliaut girone. It was made in two parts: a fitted bodice, the cors, and a skirt, the girone, pleated onto a low band and falling in straight folds. A belt or ceinture could sit across the stomach, drawing attention to the womb. Women at court wore this form, and it appears on the personal seals of high-ranking women. Men wore a bliaut too, but a roomier one, cut as a single piece with a skirt that flared outward. Wedge-shaped panels, called gores, were set into that skirt so it fell in vertical creases.

Cloth and making

Only three kinds of cloth were within reach: wool, linen and silk. A smooth wool or a silk suits the garment best, because linen holds dye poorly, and the pictures that survive are full of colour. How the horizontal folds were produced is still argued over by people who sew historical dress. Some suggest a pattern that is long from the under bust to the waist or hip, which creases when worn. Others propose a tight-fitting body, side lacing pulled to create tension, or a gathered, honeycomb effect worked on the inside. Skirt fullness might come from a seam at the hip or from added gores.

Later revivals

Interest in the garment returned in the nineteenth century. Members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood looked to the Middle Ages and the Renaissance for their subjects and their costumes, and women in their paintings often wear a bliaut as the artists then understood it. The Accolade, painted by Edmund Blair Leighton, is probably the best-known example. A pleating method called plissé, in which fabric is stitched, dampened and then dried under weight so the folds set, has been found on linen undergarments from tenth-century Viking graves at Birka.

How Bliaut is kept

Wearing it began with underclothes, over which the bliaut went. On women the upper part sat close to the body and a girdle could be wound around the middle. The skirt hung from a low band or a seam at the hip, falling in folds. Sleeves were long and heavy, and images show them hanging free, knotted or gathered to free the hands. Men's bliauts were cut more loosely, in one piece with a flared hem. Today the garment is studied through carvings, manuscript paintings and seals rather than surviving examples; re-enactors and costume historians reconstruct it and debate how its folds were made.

When and where

The bliaut belongs to the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. It was not tied to one date in the year. Carvings of the later, two-part form are usually dated between the 1130s and 1160s, while the manuscripts and seals that show it cluster in the twelfth century and around 1200.

The bliaut is found across Western Europe, above all in regions under French influence. Works made further away still show it, or show a version in transition, as far off as Rome and what is now Germany. Within France, statues at Angers and on the west front of Chartres Cathedral carry some of the fullest examples.

What Bliaut means

On the later form a belt lay across the stomach, and the folds and low band drew the eye to the womb, so the dress pointed to motherhood and family line. Since it was worn at court, it stood for rank as well as taste. Women of high standing had themselves carved and painted in it, which is how the garment survives. Later artists returned to it for their own pictures, reading it as a sign of the medieval past.

Questions people ask about Bliaut

See also

LederhosenLeather breeches that began as work wear and now belong to Alpine festivalsBullfightingA ritual contest between a bullfighter and a bull, kept in Spain and Latin AmericaTwelfth NightThe closing evening of the Christmas season, kept with cake, carols and wassailMos TeutonicusA medieval European funerary custom of boiling bones to return nobles home for burial

Good reading and sources

• Bliaut on WikipediaEncyclopedia
• More photos on Wikimedia CommonsPhotos and video
• Wikidata recordOpen data

It may contain mistakes. Traditions differ from one family, village and community to the next, and the people who keep them know them best. If something is wrong, tell us. Last refreshed 2026-10-10.