A common question historical reenactors hear this time of year is, “Don’t you get hot in all those clothes?” While, yes, people two hundred years ago did wear more clothing and layers than we do today, and, yes, anyone would get hot in 95 degrees F, there is a reason people who wear historical dress usually answer, “No.” It lies in the materials from which their clothing is made.
Clothing prior to the twentieth century was made from natural fibers like flax, linen, cotton, wool, and silk. During various seasons, people were conscious of the materials of their clothing. Wools and silks tended to keep a person warmer, and cottons and linens, the fabric woven from flax, tended to keep a person cooler. In fact, unless an article of clothing has been chemically treated to wick moisture away like some athletic and hiking clothing is now, these historical fabrics work better to keep a person cool in summer than modern clothes, which are generally made of polyester. While polyester is very economical, it’s also a type of plastic, which doesn’t absorb moisture. Both cotton and linen absorb sweat from the skin rather than trapping it in like polyester. This helps keep people comfortable in the heat. But how does this work?
Image: Harvey Barrison, Creative Commons 2.0
When you get hot, you sweat. This is the body’s natural way of carrying heat away from the body. You sweat and, in theory, that sweat and heat is carried away from the skin on the hairs of your body and the moisture evaporates into the air. People started introducing another factor into this equation, however: clothing. Clothing disrupts this natural process by creating a layer between the air and your body. Depending on what your clothing is made of, the moisture from your skin can be wicked away or trapped inside. Plastics tend to repel liquid. That’s why they are great for raincoats, dishes, and washable surfaces. But if they are forming a barrier between you and the air, it means your sweat is trapped, to an extent, within your clothing. This, of course, depends on the weave of the fabric, but today we generally prefer things with a tight weave of fine fibers that you can’t see through. This means air can’t flow through the fabric as easily, and, likewise, moisture can’t evaporate easily. You as the wearer stay sweaty.
Linen and cotton are natural fibers from plants that need moisture to survive. Their function is to absorb and transport fluid. Their cells and the spaces between their cells hold moisture, and their fibers transport moisture through the plant. This same plant “technology” lets the fibers absorb sweat from your skin and carry heat away from your body. This is why undergarments like shirts and shifts were traditionally made of linen and cotton and why bedsheets and towels still are. Even between cotton and linen, however, there are differences in how cool each will keep you.
The fibers of linen are longer and thicker than those of cotton. This means that when the fibers are spun and woven into the fabric, the weave of linen is looser and more open than that of cotton. The more open weave allows for moisture to evaporate more quickly because air can flow through the fabric. This keeps the wearer cooler and drier. Cotton wicks moisture away and absorbs it like linen, but its fibers are finer and can have a tighter weave. This means the fabric holds onto moisture, which can leave the person wearing it feeling more damp. Prior to the mid-nineteenth century in the US, linen was the most popular choice for undergarments and shirts because people’s experience over hundreds (even thousands) of years showed it to be superior to cotton at keeping people clean, dry, and cool. This quickly gave way to cotton, however, due to the combination of southern enslavement and northern industry. Cotton became the more “economical” choice.
A wealthy man’s linen shirt from the 1830s. Image: Aukland Museum, Creative Commons 4.0
Both poor and rich families would wear shirts and shifts from the same materials, but they would be made from different weaves. According to the “Lady” who wrote The Workwoman’s Guide in 1838, “Shifts are general made of fine Irish linen or calico, for the upper classes, and of stout linen, or strong, but soft calico for poor children” (pg 46). The same guide advises that “Shirts for laboring men are general made of stout linen called shirting-linen… shirts for men of lighter occupations are sometimes made of calico with linen collars and wristbands” (pg 137). While it is probably that people of the time didn’t know the scientific reasons as to why linen would keep a working person cooler than cotton, linen was more economical than cotton because a large piece of fabric would use less raw material due to the larger fibers of linen, up until cotton became mass-produced through the combination of the Industrial Revolution and the machine of enslavement that fed it in the United States.
I’ve discussed undergarments, but what about outer clothes and dresses themselves? Summer day dresses were most often made of cotton in the 19th century, though evening wear for wealthier people would probably still have been made from silk. (Like today, people two hundred years ago also suffered for fashion and conspicuous consumption.) Silk is a very fine thread and when woven creates a very tight fabric that doesn’t allow for air flow. It also doesn’t absorb moisture as well as cotton and linen do. This coupled with price is why you won’t see many historical reenactors at museums wearing silk gowns as they greet visitors in the summer heat. Even with a silk dress, however, the layers of cotton petticoats, linen or cotton stays, and linen shifts that women wore all would have air and moisture-wicking materials between the wearer and the silk, which would keep her cooler than if she were just to wear a silk dress or blouse as we do today, with minimal layers.
A woman’s day dress from the 1830s made of cotton with a linen and cotton lining. Image: Valerie McGlinchey, Creative Commons 2.0
While we have new clothing technology that allows us to treat polymer-based fabrics with things that will allow for more breathability and moisture-wicking, and you won’t find me hiking on a hot day without my special hiking clothes. People throughout history didn’t just sit and suffer in the heat. They chose clothing that allowed them to adapt to the heat and that let them live their lives fully. And their natural fiber clothing was a lot more environmentally friendly and sustainable than our plastic polymer-based clothing as well. (Though if we were to switch to all-natural fibers, these days with the amount of clothing people own and the size of populations, there would be serious sustainability questions as well.) Maybe take a page out of history on the next hot day and reach for a linen shirt rather than a cotton/poly t-shirt to stay cool!
To learn more from someone who worked at Colonial Williamsburg, check out dress historian Abby Cox’s YouTube video about what she learned from dressing in historical clothing!
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Click through to read all of “Don’t You Get Hot? Linen and Historical Clothing in the Summer” at GeekDad.If you value content from GeekDad, please support us via Patreon or use this link to shop at Amazon. Thanks!
