Anauved (ah-NOOV) - Burgundian Gown

15th century Burgundian

I decided to make a Burgundian gown for fun, not to enter as an SCA A&S project but because I'd always secretly wanted to wear one. One gown turned into a gown and a partially-lined supportive under-kirtle-- and then there was a hennin for my head, with a frontpiece, and a veil, and I modified some costume jewelry...the project grew a little bigger than I'd initially intended. I took some pictures along the way, but this project was really about blowing off steam and taking a break from the Early Period work in which I invest more seriously. So this is not a heavily researched project, there's no references list, and I'm not sharing the step-by-step, it's more like a travelogue of a little four-month side-quest.

My laurel friend Countess Gwen in Meridies helped me with the torso patterning. I played with muslin mockups a bunch trying to get the fit just right, made five different muslin versions before I was happy with it enough to continue. The shoulders and arms could be better. Late period patterning is hard.

The bottom hems of all the pieces except the two front panels are angled slightly, to make the shorter front meet up with the longer train in back. Gwen convinced me to make a separate linen under-kirtle first, lined on the torso with linen canvas, which replaces a modern bra to give a more period silhouette. I wound up learning to sew eyelets because it needed 30 eyelet holes.

Choosing fabric was a process -- I was given instructions to look for a damask or brocade. But the choices for those wound up being either plastic fiber content or prohibitively expensive, especially because I needed six yards --three times what an early period garment requires! In the end I found a set of remnants on Etsy that were natural fiber but not an accurate design for the Burgundian period. The difference between the blue and the green colors in the flowers was subtle, which downplayed the design and made it less noticeable from ten feet away. I decided it would have to do; I wasn't going to wear plastic.

I made the outer gown a half-inch bigger than the underkirtle all around, so it would fit over the kirtle comfortably. The outer gown has a big triangle train piece in the middle of the back, missing from the underkirtle.

I lined everything but the sleeves on the outer gown. I love the way the skirt moves with that extra layer of linen under the damask.

I happened to have a wide leather belt already, modeled after Germanic early period belts, and I just wore that belt backwards. The non-Burgundian buckles on my spine were covered by a long veil.

Don't get me started on how awful it is to sew silk velvet, which I had never done before. It was like trying to stitch a caterpillar. That's still alive. A zombie caterpillar. I did the velvet on the collar and cuffs and abandoned my original plan for velvet trim on the 6+ yards of hem.

I may make a separate post about the experience of making this hennin. It has a base of buckram, covered with felt and then silk, and it's lined with linen. The brim is reinforced with copper wire.

I added three pearls to an $8 Ebay brooch to make it look a little more like this portrait of Mary of Burgundy from the Leopold Museum in Vienna. I also made an anchoring headband with a forehead loop in front that I did not wind up wearing because I made the loop comically large by mistake.

If I had it to do over, I'd make the velvet frontpiece more narrow and longer. It looks right in this picture but when I wore the frontpiece, the sides flopped around like beagle ears and it added to my problems overheating. It might have helped to pin it together behind my neck. This is a place where I could have used to do a little more research; by this point I was rushing to get done in time for the event.

The final product included a rectangle silk organza veil pinned to the top of the hennin. If you're counting, that's four layers on my head: anchoring layer, hennin (which includes felt and heavy silk), velvet frontpiece, veil. It was hot. In addition, counting the dress linings, there were four layers on my torso: two of midweight linen, one of canvas linen, and one of damask.

I wore this to attend the inaugural Highland Hearthglow event in January of 2025 with my friend Aelwen. Unbidden, she suggested doing a portrait where she pretended to be my lady in waiting. I found this idea so preposterous that I was cracking up the whole time. So it's not ideal, as portraits go, but this is absolutely the best photo I have of the dress.

The event was inside, and after working on this outfit for four months, I managed to wear it for three hours before I was too hot and had to take it off. I also ate so much at the five-course feast that, between my engorged stomach and the tight-laced dress, I could not draw breath to sing as part of the after-dinner performances. It might have been that there were unusual foods in the feast that made me bloat, I have sensitive digestion...I wanted to sample everything though, and there were five courses! I may wear this dress again sometime, as long as I can wear it outside, in the cold. And maybe I'll be more careful with what I eat.

My inspiration was this image of Anne de Memere from a manuscript hours book, here

I found this blog helpful for thinking about some things and giving me courage.

When I first started doing reenactment in the 1980s, I thought Burgundian gowns were pretty--they are the stereotypical "pretty princess" dress! However, I quickly realized my friends were all doing a more rough-and-ready Early Celtic style of garb, and a Burgundian Gown is not practical for camping. So I put the dream of this dress away. I didn't let go of it entirely though, and it was exceedingly satisfying to be able, more than 30 years later, to achieve this long-held dream, just for a day.