Wait, wait…. Is that seriously it? How their clothes go?

that genuinely is it

yeah hey whats up bout to put some fucking giant sheets on my body

When you’re carding, spinning and weaving everything from scratch, using the big squares exactly as they come off the loom must seem like a fucking brilliant idea. 90% (or more) of pre-14th century clothing is made purely on squares (and sometimes triangles cut from squares). 

How did they get the fabric so fine it draped like that? Was that something medieval europe forgot? Or do I just have a completely misguided image of historical clothing?

Medieval Europe also had incredibly fine weaves, though the ancient world tended to have them beat. Linen was found in Egypt woven with a fineness that we’re still trying to replicate, and there was a kind of cotton woven in India called ‘woven wind’ that was supposedly still translucent at eight layers, and wool shawls so fine that the entire thing could be drawn through a wedding ring. 

The way they could get away with pinking and slashing doublets in the 16th century was partially because the fabrics were so tightly woven that you could simply cut a line on the bias and nothing would fray. 

Modern fabric machining sucks ass in terms of giving us any kind of quality like the kind human beings produced prior to the Industrial Revolution. 

*yells about textile history*