INGENUITY AND LUXURY 



reaching to the ground behind her. Sometimes her 

 hands protruded from the sleeves; or again they might 

 be concealed in long flowing sleeves similar to those 

 of her lord, and reaching to her ankles. 



On the whole, however, the women were perhaps 

 less extravagant in their dresses than the men. But 

 both sexes exhausted their ingenuity in devising new 

 and outlandish costumes. Meanwhile the moralists 

 and satirists, ably assisted by the clergy, were waging 

 ceaseless war upon the fashions, although their com- 

 bined efforts apparently had little effect. 



The Oriental custom of wearing wide flowing 

 trousers gathered about the ankles seems never to have 

 been popular, at least for any length of time, among the 

 Western nations. The leg, from knee to ankle, was 

 almost invariably clothed in some kind of tight-fitting 

 hose, no matter what fantastic garments were worn 

 above. Wide trousers, several yards in circumference 

 were worn at times during the fifteenth, sixteenth, and 

 seventeenth centuries, but these were gathered at the 

 knee or just below it. In those centuries, also, the 

 thighs were frequently puffed and padded, and the 

 hips were sometimes surrounded with puffs of enor- 

 mous dimensions. 



The Italians were the last to give up long monk- 

 like garments for hose and trousers. Possibly their 

 proximity to the Orient had something to do with this. 

 But, whatever the cause, long robes resembling skirts 

 were worn by Italian gentlemen long after such gar- 

 ments had been abandoned by other European coun- 



[72] 



