Clothing and Personal Care

From the ninth century to the Mongol conquests of 1237–1240, people across the Rus lands wore garments made chiefly from linen, wool, and leather. Rus was a medieval world of towns and principalities across territories that today lie in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia, connected by river routes and trade. Political unity weakened during the twelfth century, but many clothing forms continued in successor principalities. Dress helped meet practical needs and marked wealth, rank, and, in some cases, distinctions within local communities.

Excavated fabrics, shoes and ornaments complement images and descriptions of clothing. Novgorod’s waterlogged soil preserves leather and other organic materials particularly well, making it a major source for the physical details of medieval dress.

On this page5 sections

Local cloth and imported fabrics

Much clothing was made from cloth woven at home. Linen, both bleached and unbleached, was common, and coarse wool, especially sheep’s wool, was widely used in rural areas. Novgorod has yielded many woollen textile fragments, although these include both locally sourced wool and imported cloth. Woollen fabric and rougher materials provided practical options for garments worn over lighter layers.

People with greater resources could obtain finer and more costly textiles. Silk, patterned cloth, brocade, gold-woven fabric, and decorative ribbons arrived from Byzantium and eastern regions through trade, gifts, or tribute. A Rus–Byzantine treaty of 944 set a limit of 50 gold nomismata for the Byzantine silk cloth a Rus merchant could buy. Such luxurious fabrics were not everyday choices for most people. Imported woollen textiles gave buyers further choices alongside locally woven cloth.

Fur served both as material and as a valuable commodity. It could trim hats or line winter garments, and written sources name furs including marten, squirrel, ermine, otter, beaver, sable, and fox. The fur trade brought income, and pelts could also serve as a means of small payment during periods when coin was scarce. Archaeological fabric colours require care in interpretation because buried textiles often darkened. Identified colours include red, white, black, yellow, blue, and green; blue-dyed garments are among the finds.

Layers, garments, and ways of fastening them

A long shirt was a basic garment for both men and women. Men’s shirts were generally straight-sided and tunic-like, reaching to the knees or lower. Some had a simple neck opening; others had a low standing collar, sometimes stiffened with bark or leather and closed with one or two buttons. Coloured silk or gold embroidery could make a collar more ornamental. Men also wore narrow trousers, adjusted at the waist with a cord, and descriptions identify long under-trousers as another layer.

Women’s shirts were similar in cut. Above them, women probably wore a lower-body garment made from one or more joined lengths of cloth. Fragments of checked fabric found around the waists of women buried in tenth- to thirteenth-century graves support this reconstruction. Upper garments for women appear to have included forms also worn by men, such as fur coats.

Over a shirt, a person might wear a close-fitting woollen garment known as a svita. Some outer garments opened at the front and fastened with buttons or loops; others were made in different cuts. Finds from Gnezdovo, for example, include remains of open-front garments fastened with bronze buttons. A thirteenth-century woollen coat from Iziaslavl had a lined upper section and a collar edged in denser cloth. Fur-lined coats, called kozhukhs, provided additional warmth; written sources use the term for garments that could take more than one form.

Cloaks were especially associated with wealth and public display. They could be secured on the shoulder with a brooch, or fibula, or with a button; some were tied with a cord. The long cloak called a korzno was worn over other clothing and is particularly associated in written accounts with princes. Other cloaks could be made from coarse wool or plant-fibre cloth. These differences in cut, material, lining, and decoration made outerwear a visible sign of a wearer’s means.

Adornment and distinctions of status

Clothing communicated social position as well as providing warmth. Wealthy people could wear imported cloth, fine furs, and garments decorated with gold or silver. Images and written descriptions preserve more detail about elite dress than about everyday peasant clothing. Rural people and poorer townspeople relied more heavily on coarse wool and simply made garments, while urban clothing drew on the same broad materials as village dress alongside access to trade goods.

Metal ornaments included silver and bronze pieces, with gold used less often. Women’s adornments could include necklaces of glass or coloured-paste beads, bracelets, rings, and pendants. Crescent-shaped pendants, known as lunnitsy, were worn from the eleventh century into the early fourteenth. Small temple rings were attached to braids or to headwear, though their precise manner of wearing could vary. Christian crosses also became part of personal adornment. Materials, motifs and ways of attaching ornaments contributed to differences in wealth and local style.

Footwear and the changing shape of shoes

Leather footwear included boots, low shoes, and simple shoes made from one piece of leather. The latter were drawn together around the foot with a leather strip passed through holes. Cloth wraps or stockings could be worn beneath shoes; some depictions and finds suggest that more elaborate leg coverings were associated with wealth. Many early leather shoes had soft soles. Boots had taller uppers and were made from joined leather pieces; some shoes and boots were decorated with stitching, pressed patterns, or embroidery.

Footwear changed around the end of the thirteenth and beginning of the fourteenth century, when shoes with thicker soles and firmer backs became more common. Finds from the thirteenth century also include low shoes reaching partway up the lower leg. Some thirteenth-century burials contain thin, unworn shoes without practical fastenings. These are interpreted as special funerary footwear, not as evidence for ordinary daily shoes.

Bast shoes may have been used by poorer rural people, but their medieval distribution is uncertain. A chronicle entry for 985 uses a word associated with people wearing bast shoes in contrast to boot-wearers; the earliest archaeological finds described in the evidence date much later. The written reference suggests an association with poverty.

Hair, head coverings, and bodily care

Men’s appearance varied: images show men with beards, moustaches without beards, and no facial hair. After the Christianisation of Rus, beards probably became more prominent under Byzantine influence and Christian ideas about masculine appearance. Legal texts also show that facial hair could carry social weight. Provisions of the Russkaya Pravda, a collection of Rus laws, set fines for damage to a man’s beard or moustache; another church statute prescribed a fine for cutting a person’s beard or head hair. These rules concern injury and appearance, not everyday grooming routines.

Combs were practical grooming tools. Novgorod finds include bone and antler combs assembled from separate pieces, as well as wooden forms. Double-sided varieties became increasingly common during the eleventh and twelfth centuries. Teeth drawn through the hair separated strands and helped remove tangles; combs also offered surfaces for carved ornament.

Girls and unmarried women are associated with braided hair, sometimes decorated with small metal ornaments. Married women probably covered their hair. Archaeological evidence supports several possible ways of wearing a long cloth head covering, including wrapping it around the head or laying it over the hair and securing it with a band. The word ubrus, often used for this kind of covering, is recorded as a garment term only in much later sources, rather than securely identifying the name used by medieval wearers. Richer headwear could include metal ornaments and embroidered or beaded cloth.

The early twelfth-century Primary Chronicle describes heated wooden bathhouses at Novgorod within its legend of the Apostle Andrew’s journey. Bathers undress, use young branches against the body and finish by pouring cold water over themselves. The supposed apostolic visit is legendary, but the chronicler’s description presents a recognisable practice of heat, washing and cooling familiar to his readers. It gives a medieval account of bathing without relying on much later folklore.

For the wider setting, see Kievan Rus daily life.