4 ms·

What were the poor people wearing? How did women earn these - were linen garments a form of payment to effective prostitution? YES: Source; Kimono.

monkeynotes 5y ago
I imagine poor people wore rags, discarded material crudely sewn together.
xyzzyz 5y ago
The poor would typically make their own clothes. This was of course very labor intensive, but back in the day, benefits from division of labor weren’t that huge, and the poor often did not have better employment opportunities (that’s why they were poor in the first place).
- ajuc 5y ago
  90%+ worked in farming, and in farming depending on the climate over the year you had months with nothing to do vs months with 16 hours of work a day. The whole system was designed around making sure few people starved and work was distributed around somewhat sensibly with such wild seasonal swings of labour shortage and surplus. So yeah, DIY all the way.
  - burntoutfire 5y ago
    Yep. My grandmother's family in rural Poland was still making all their their clothes (from their homegrown linen and sheep) in 1930s.
vkou 5y ago
> What were the poor people wearing? Dollar analysis like 'how much did X cost in a pre-industrial economy' is incredibly unsuitable for answering these kinds of questions. The answer is - most people weren't wage workers. Most people didn't have money. Most people were subsistence peasants, and they paid taxes, rent, and for many services in goods. What money they had would usually go towards buying things they couldn't make. Most people wore homespun. Clothing a typical Roman peasant family[1] would take ~3,000 hours of domestic labour a year - every year, most of it devoted to spinning flax. Being domestic labour, done by the family, for the family, most of it, was, of course, unpaid. Being the kind of labour that you can do on-and-off throughout the day, as you are waiting on other tasks, it was mostly done by women. [2] [1] https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-iii-spin-me-right-round/ https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-t... [2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/distaff https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/distaff
- samstave 5y ago
  Thank you. There was a post on HN `2013 or so, about a wiki for instructions on how to rebuild civilization through plans to start with primitive farming equipment up through more modern equipment... We need this.

monkeynotes 5y ago

I imagine poor people wore rags, discarded material crudely sewn together.

xyzzyz 5y ago

The poor would typically make their own clothes. This was of course very labor intensive, but back in the day, benefits from division of labor weren’t that huge, and the poor often did not have better employment opportunities (that’s why they were poor in the first place).

ajuc 5y ago
90%+ worked in farming, and in farming depending on the climate over the year you had months with nothing to do vs months with 16 hours of work a day. The whole system was designed around making sure few people starved and work was distributed around somewhat sensibly with such wild seasonal swings of labour shortage and surplus. So yeah, DIY all the way.
- burntoutfire 5y ago
  Yep. My grandmother's family in rural Poland was still making all their their clothes (from their homegrown linen and sheep) in 1930s.

vkou 5y ago

> What were the poor people wearing? Dollar analysis like 'how much did X cost in a pre-industrial economy' is incredibly unsuitable for answering these kinds of questions. The answer is - most people weren't wage workers. Most people didn't have money. Most people were subsistence peasants, and they paid taxes, rent, and for many services in goods. What money they had would usually go towards buying things they couldn't make. Most people wore homespun. Clothing a typical Roman peasant family[1] would take ~3,000 hours of domestic labour a year - every year, most of it devoted to spinning flax. Being domestic labour, done by the family, for the family, most of it, was, of course, unpaid. Being the kind of labour that you can do on-and-off throughout the day, as you are waiting on other tasks, it was mostly done by women. [2] [1] https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-they-make-it-part-iii-spin-me-right-round/ https://acoup.blog/2021/03/19/collections-clothing-how-did-t... [2] https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/distaff https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/distaff

samstave 5y ago
Thank you. There was a post on HN `2013 or so, about a wiki for instructions on how to rebuild civilization through plans to start with primitive farming equipment up through more modern equipment... We need this.