The Black Prince A Stitch in Time

'Clothes are the ultimate form of visual communication.

'By looking at the way people dressed,

'we can learn not only about them as individuals,

'but about the society they lived in.'

I'm Amber Butchart, fashion historian.

And, in the words of Louis XIV,

I believe that fashion is the mirror of history.

'So, taking historical works of art as our inspiration...

'..traditional tailor Ninya Mikhaila and her team will be recreating

'historical clothing using only authentic methods.'

Oh, look at that, it's changing colour in the air.

'And I'll be finding out what they tell us about the people

'who wore them...'

I'm assuming the king wouldn't be dressing himself, though, right?

'And the times they lived in.

'And seeing what they're like to wear.'

The Black Prince, hero to the English, villain to the French.

A warrior who's premature death in a 1376 denied him the crown

by just 12 months.

Here he lies in his tomb at Canterbury Cathedral,

immortalised by a gilded copper effigy.

It's really powerful.

You can see why you would want this monument to be your effigy,

to be the worldly reminder of who you were.

I've chosen the Black Prince's effigy here

as our inspiration for a number of reasons.

The 14th century is really important in terms of fashion history.

It's a period where we start to dress differently.

It a period that some historians think the actual idea

of fashion itself really begins, this idea

of perpetually changing styles.

Having won his first battle at only 16,

this warrior prince chose to be represented in death

as the heroic military leader. Dressed in full armour,

covered with a type of Tabard known as a jupon,

richly embroidered with his personal heraldry.

The jupon is a fascinating garment.

It's a military item, but also a very fashionable item as well.

People tend to think that there's this distinction

between military dress and fashionable dress, but in reality,

the relationship between the two is much more symbiotic.

What's also fascinating is that we actually have an extant version

of the Black Prince's jupon.

It was hung here in Canterbury Cathedral for centuries.

So, having that extant garment as evidence is going to be invaluable

in terms of recreating this piece.

Armour was worn by the most fashionable men of the day,

but it's not an area I usually study,

so I'm been given a tour of the Arms and Armoury Department of the

Wallace collection by curator Toby Capwell.

When people tend to think of armour, they think of metal,

they think of the plate armour and they think of mail.

But actually, textiles are a fundamental aspect

of a suit of armour.

Yeah. Armour is just anything protective that you wear.

It is not necessarily made out of metal.

In the 14th century, they couldn't make big pieces of iron and steel

yet, so they had to find other ways of protecting the human body.

Padded textile is the most important form of armour.

It's the most fundamental form of protection.

It is what you need before you have anything else.

We always fixate on the metal bits because those are what survive.

So, in the time of the Black Prince,

what's the role of heraldry in these kind of garments?

When you've got lots of guys in armour with their faces obscured

and big shields on horses running around,

you need to be able to tell who is who,

and this was hugely important for leaders like the Black Prince.

Seeing the leader on the front lines has an extraordinary effect

on morale. Imagine being a common soldier,

and your leader fights on the ground with you, right next to you.

That's an extraordinary statement.

One early 15th century writer,

not long after the death of the Black Prince,

wrote that men follow their leader like a candle in the dark.

-Right.

-And the heraldry is the flame of the candle.

As a piece of textile armour,

the extant jupon would have been padded.

This means it differs slightly from the one depicted on the effigy,

which, although it would have been identical in terms of colours

and embroidery, was silk and purely for heraldic display.

In his will, the Black Prince asked to have his military jupon

hung above his tomb. It was clearly a significant garment for him,

so, Ninya has decided to make our jupon to its exact specifications.

I think it would be really fascinating to see how the garment

looks in real-life as the complete new thing,

because I think it will give us a real sense of the man.

Tell me about this embroidery.

How difficult is it going to be to recreate this?

It is a challenge, because, of course, it would all be done by hand,

by professionals who worked in the Royal wardrobe.

And there aren't nearly so many professional hand embroiderers

around today. But I do have a team of hand embroiderers

that I have worked with before who've always done

really lovely work, and I'm sure we can send something to them.

So, the whole thing, it's padded.

What's inside this?

These kind of padded armours could be stuffed with sheep's fleece,

with tow, which is like a raw linen flaxy fibre, but also cotton.

And I've got some, actually, down here.

-Oh, right. Oh, yes.

-So, that's just the raw cotton fibre.

You can see how this would make fantastic stuffing, can't you?

Yeah. It's actually very, very soft,

but once it's forced inside these tightly worked rows of quilting,

then it becomes very robust. I think what we are going to have to do,

is a few experiments with different ways

that we could carry out to the quilting.

-Sort of trial and error?

-Yeah.

-Yeah.

-Experimental archaeology.

-Love it.

-Excellent. Excellent.

The son of Edward III and father to Richard II,

the Prince himself remains an enigma.

I'm meeting historian David Green in the Black Prince's chapel

at Canterbury Cathedral to find out more

about this intriguing and complex man.

Where does this name come from?

Was he known as the Black Prince during his lifetime?

No. The first mention that we've got of him as the Black Prince

is mid-16th century.

There are two main theories.

One is his so-called arms of peace.

They are essentially his tournament arms.

They're the three ostrich feathers on a black field,

and so there could be a connection there.

Or it could be a much more negative association,

perhaps one that comes from France.

He wages some extremely brutal military campaigns.

In particular, there's one in 1355, the so-called grande chevauchee.

A chevauchee is a sort of deliberate piece of socioeconomic warfare.

In the course of that, he's said to destroy something like 500 towns,

villages, castles and other settlements,

so this is really calculated stuff.

It's aimed at the peasantry.

It's aimed at those who are in many ways least capable of defending

themselves. It's designed to undermine the credibility

of the French monarchy, but also to undermine the French king's ability

-to put troops into the field.

-That's brutal, isn't it?

Oh, yeah, it's absolutely brutal.

So, it's not impossible that that sort of reputation

gets associated with the Prince, and he gets this name.

I get the feeling, from what I've learned about the Black Prince,

that he might enjoy that kind of representation.

I think in some ways,

and I think the tomb is an interesting representation of this,

probably one of the best ways of getting some sort of insight

-into the character of the man.

-He was quite a fashionable man.

Is that fair to say?

Yeah, very much so. And particularly, perhaps,

when he marries a Joan of Kent.

Their court at Bordeaux from 1363 until he comes back in 1370

is extremely lavish.

And in fact, the first person who gets commissioned to come over

and join him is essentially his tailor and dressmaker.

Oh, fantastic.

Now, the effigy itself, as an artwork and as a memorial as well,

how important would it have been for it to be lifelike

as a representation?

Not as important as we might think of it today.

Most effigies seem to have much more concern given to things

like heraldry and arms and armour

rather than a personal representation.

But I hope it looks a bit like him.

He has a very splendid moustache.

He does, indeed.

The quilting is an essential feature of our jupon,

as it would have played an important part in withstanding attack from

arrows, crossbows and swords.

Without any record of how the original was made,

Ninya and Harriet still aren't sure which method to use.

I've tacked my square all the way round,

and I'm going to sew channels.

I'm trying a different method where I've got a big cushion

of the wadding in here, and I'm going to sandwich the layers

together and then stitch the lines.

Oh, my God!

It doesn't look as if it's going to be quite so successful

as the other method.

There's no other way of properly understanding how these things

worked than to begin the process of making them.

It's the only way to ask the right questions, really.

You can't possibly think of all the questions until you begin to try and

reconstruct something.

Because these were items that are worn,

you have to experiment like that, or else...

Because it's not just a piece of art.

I have had so many experiences of trying to fathom out an original set

of instructions for doing something and thinking,

"Surely that's not, that can't be right, that can't be right,"

-and then trying it and going, "Oh, it was right!"

-SHE LAUGHS

"They did know what they were talking about."

And it can really surprise you,

even when you're quite experienced and you think you know how something

will turn out. Until you've given it a go, often you just can't tell.

-It's almost comical, your piece, I think!

-LAUGHTER

How rude! How rude!

But it looks quite rude itself.

I think the whole thing's just going to be completely dense and still

-very...

-Cushiony.

-Yeah, still very fat and just not very defined.

I've now finished my piece,

but it's not very satisfying because it looks

a bit stiff and not very defined.

So far, this method is making me think, "Yeah, I can do that."

The only difference is that this one is fat underneath the stitching

lines, and that one goes straight down.

But then I put a lot of stuffing in there.

-There's probably...

-I think there is too much stuffing.

-..too much.

But even so, there's no way you can get down to the base, which creates

that lovely sausagey definition.

I did have great hopes for that, and it's nicely strong.

I could stand in that while being shot at by arrows, possibly.

But that just makes the velvet look nicer.

Hung above the Black Prince's tomb after his funeral,

the jupon stayed there until World War II.

Due to its extremely delicate state,

it's now carefully conserved at Canterbury Cathedral.

Garments, textiles this old are so incredibly rare, and it's very

unusual that you're going to be able to get access to see them.

You have to have a very special reason.

And so this is really a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.

I'm very excited!

Yeah, I'm really excited to see it.

Since the jupon was taken off display,

only a handful of people have been allowed to see it.

One of these is textile historian Lisa Monnas.

-Oh!

-Wow!

Oh, look at that!

Oh!

That's incredible, isn't it?

Considering it's over 600 years old, it's rather magnificent.

-Wow.

-It was the most magnificent velvet, originally,

which was one of the most expensive materials you could buy at the time.

It was an incredible status symbol,

because it was very labour-intensive.

They used the finest materials, and it was also a personalised design

made especially for him. You can still see the fleur-de-lis,

which were part of the Royal arms of France, and the leopards of England.

These are so important for the jupon because, of course,

they represented the arms of the Black Prince.

The black and fleur-de-lis and lions that you see are all made with gold

thread. The whole thing might have cost £20, and that would be a whole

year's salary for one of the senior officers in the King's household.

Wow! So this is absolutely something that speaks of wealth, magnificence,

status, royalty.

-Yes, it's ostentatious in every way, in fact.

-THEY LAUGH

What I really would love to know is, would this have been created

specifically for the funeral,

or would it have actually likely to have been

in the Black Prince's wardrobe?

I think this was undoubtedly something that he would have worn

himself, which is very thrilling.

Wow.

Um...because it's so high-quality,

and it is so... the details are so fine.

So, what can this jupon tell us, essentially, about the Black Prince?

He was a man who liked

to project a splendid image,

but who wanted to be seen as someone who was a man of action,

who was a chivalrous warrior.

And it can also tell us that he was

quite tall and very lithe from its

-measures.

-Right.

-So you would expect that from a man who was an energetic

-man of action.

-Following their experiment,

Ninya and Harriet believe the best method for the quilting is to sew

channels and then fill them.

But having been able to study the actual garment, Lisa's not so sure.

-As far as one can tell...

-Yeah.

-..I think that it would be

the second construction,

which feels a bit softer but which does have the advantage that the

cotton wool padding goes right through, because when it's stuck in

like this, not only is it rigid,

but you have points of vulnerability where the channels go right through

to the linen.

So this may have

a deceptively better defensive

quality to it, and it's possible that it was

this method that they used.

OK, so this is the one, this is the one we're going with?

Yes, yes, definitely. That's the better one.

That is fantastic to know. Great.

It's incredible that what is essentially just some velvet and raw

cotton could be tailored into a garment which may well have helped

save the Black Prince's life.

And so, although our jupon will never be worn on the battlefields,

I do feel a responsibility to get this absolutely right.

Here's our big pile of cotton...

-Yeah.

-..and you just want to pull bits off and put them in the basket

-until we get to 106.

-106, OK.

It's quite a lot, actually, isn't it?

-It is a lot. What have you got there?

-44.

-Yeah.

-It's loads! LAUGHTER

There's so much that goes into it, isn't there?

-Yeah.

-No wonder it's such a protective

-piece of clothing.

-Yeah.

-How's that? 106.

-Perfect.

-Perfect.

So, this amount goes in here, yeah?

One half of a body.

We just separate it out a little bit.

What we're aiming to do is get as even a distribution of the cotton

over the pattern piece as possible.

So, we lay it out kind of relatively thinly within these lines.

So, if you'd like to take some and have a go as well.

What we'll do is we'll layer it,

-rather than trying to put it all down in one go...

-Yeah.

..which would make lumps and troughs,

we'll do one thin layer and then we'll go back and do another one,

and hopefully our little patches overlap and kind of

-even out a little bit.

-Right.

I see. OK. OK.

I can, I can get on board with this.

This is quite enjoyable. LAUGHTER

When we've got all of this on,

we can actually put the layer of velvet.

I've got the piece of velvet ready here to put on the top.

-Yeah.

-And I can start the quilting.

But if you have a look at what Hannah's doing, she's actually

nearly finished, actually, I think, one of her body pieces,

and you can see how it looks at the next stage.

OK, great. So you're doing the quilting process.

-I am.

-How's it going?

-It's going quite well, to be honest.

I started with this line here. This was my very, very first line.

-Yeah.

-And then I worked this line, and then that one.

-Oh, I see, to keep it even...

-So, all the time I'm spreading...

-Yeah.

-..yeah, evenly spaced.

Would you like to have a go at quilting?

I would love to have a go at quilting, yeah, definitely.

So...

-..going in here?

-Yeah. That, about that size?

-Yeah, that's perfect.

-OK.

-It is quite hard to push all the way through.

-Yeah. OK.

Now, it's this coming back, it's difficult to know...

You can't sense exactly where you're going to go.

-No.

-It's only when you get into a rhythm.

Oh, that's, that's my finger! LAUGHTER

Oh...no.

So, if we just have a look underneath to see how

-straight that line is.

-Oh, God!

It is really hard to sort of sense how straight you're pushing the

needle through the fabric, and the wadding and then the velvet as well.

-Yeah. So my attempt here is not too bad?

-Not too bad.

-OK. LAUGHTER

Good.

Knights like the Black Prince would have started their military

education around the age of five,

so Toby Capwell is giving me some armour training to help me

understand this fighting prince.

I am wearing trackie Bs and I'm wearing sneakers,

which has never happened before.

So, I'm feeling pretty, pretty prepped, pretty ready for it.

A knight would have worn 20kg of armour,

which would have had a huge impact on mobility.

I don't know what I was expecting, but, of course,

of course you can feel weight absolutely all over you.

-These muscles especially...

-Yes.

-..right on the outside.

They're not used to having to lift so much weight,

but when you're fighting, too.

Those muscles are not used to doing anything, I'll be honest! LAUGHTER

We do now have the helmet.

-Right.

-This is exactly what we see in the effigy - open-faced,

no visor, high, sharp point to

deflect weapons,

and the aventail of mail.

-We'll put you in here and you'll be, you'll be ready to go.

-OK.

Hopefully.

SHE LAUGHS

There you go. It's a little bit deep for you...

-Yeah.

-..but you want...

-Oh, my God!

-..you want it to come as close to

your eyes as possible to keep your brow protected, so...

I feel like if I...if I leant over, I'd just keep going.

So, how much does all of this weigh, that I'm wearing now?

-It might be at ten or 12.

-That's all?!

-Something like that.

-So, I'd have another, like, eight to ten...

-Yeah.

I'd have, like, twice this again?

Yeah, well, you'd have the mail shirt and the leg armour which is

going to get you up to 20 kilos or more.

Now imagine, not only do you have to just hold yourself upright,

you need to be able to fight, you need to be able to run,

jump on your horse, climb siege ladders, cross rivers.

You need to be able to do, physically,

quite strenuous activity.

Yeah, I guess you need to wear it so much that it becomes second nature,

like a second skin.

-Yeah.

-The 14th-century French knight Boucicaut recorded his training

regime, which included leaping on to a horse while wearing armour.

Fortunately, Toby's not going to make me do that, but he is going to

teach me the range of movements a knight would need to perfect.

Can you raise the sword in the air to strike?

-That's pretty good! That's pretty good.

-SHE GROANS AND LAUGHS

-Some armour won't let you move that much.

-Oh, really?

That's, that's a decent level of movement.

-SHE GRUNTS

-Yeah.

And then, of course, you know, if you're fighting me, with no

equipment, any part of your body will hurt me.

-Oh, I see.

-Then you can strike with...

If you're in tight and you feel you can't move,

-you can still strike with your elbow, strike with your head.

-Yeah.

You know, you can slam someone with the breastplate.

I feel like that would do a lot of damage.

If it's what you've got, use it, you know?

I mean, the armour is turning your whole body into a weapon.

-Yeah, yeah.

-You just have to know

what the limits of the equipment are.

Part of being a knight is to be managing the situation with your

kit, so it all looks effortless and you never look clumsy.

-Yeah.

-It's very tough.

-It's very, very tough.

I've never felt less graceful, I'll be honest. LAUGHTER

You could get there, you could get there.

Ooh!

SHE LAUGHS

Ooh!

Well, unsurprisingly, that was really difficult.

I'm ridiculously sweaty.

I feel like I've been working out for hours.

You can really tell how much training I would need to not only

get used to this as a kind of second skin,

but also be able to operate it in a knightly way,

with grace and decorum.

There's not much that you can see, and you're kind of really aware that

there could be people all around you, there could be people anywhere.

I was expecting to feel very powerful,

but I actually felt quite small and felt quite vulnerable.

The quilting process creates a certain amount of shrinkage, and

Ninya's estimated she needs to allow an extra 10% of material.

It's now time to see if her calculations are correct.

-That's actually pretty amazing. So this is...

-Phew!

-LAUGHTER

..this is the original pattern size, as it should be.

This started out 10% wider.

And that's pretty close.

-Shrunk to where we want it. Good.

-Yeah.

Having taken the embroiderers 900 hours to complete,

the leopards and fleur-de-lis need to be cut out and sewn on.

Hmm, they've not filled in this section here.

-Oh, wow. No, they haven't. It's a hole.

-Yep.

So, all the embroidery's been worked on white linen,

which is as the original was.

They've missed out a few little stitches, and so there's a tiny

little white patch that shouldn't be a white patch, and we're wondering

whether to cut it out so that it

will be a little red patch underneath, or...

-It would look wounded, then.

-Or leave it, but I think that little

-white patch will offend the eye.

-LAUGHTER

So I think the better thing to do

is to actually just over-sew it

with this colour thread, because

it's luckily quite a small area,

and I don't think it will be

noticeable, really.

We've worked out, at the rate we're going at the moment,

it's looking like ten days' work

for one person to just sew the embroidery on.

And, yes, we've done one,

and a little tiny bit.

This is the first time in my life

I've had to be trained to wear an outfit.

But the fact is, even if I'd been born in the Black Prince's time,

I'd still never have worn this jupon.

It was made for a prince, it was made for a warrior.

Oh, my God! Look at how much gold there is! The colours!

That's so amazing!

-It's a lot of gold, isn't?

-It's so much. I just love it. LAUGHTER

I can't believe how bright, how vibrant it is.

It's just completely brought it to life.

-Yeah.

-Like, compared with, you know,

the actual 600-year-old jupon that we saw,

just to see it like this is just incredible.

With the armour underneath it as well, it just looks so majestic.

It really does. There's no mistaking who this person is.

Absolutely no mistaking. LAUGHTER

You can really feel how much protection that would give.

I imagine it really would. I think you'd feel quite safe in there.

Yeah, definitely.

Definitely. This, the fleur-de-lis embroidery, is absolutely exquisite,

-isn't it?

-There's just something about the gold on the blue that is

just stunning, isn't it? Really, really beautiful.

Yeah, really beautiful.

I feel like I shouldn't be allowed to touch it.

-Do you want to try it on?

-Absolutely.

I really, really do.

So, how many people would it have taken to get the Black Prince ready

-like this?

-Well, he probably would have had at least three, actually,

at this stage, getting him ready.

Royal members of the household all had their own personal,

what were known as body servants,

people who were actually allowed to touch the king's body,

-or the prince's body...

-Mmm.

..in order for it not to take a painfully long time.

-Are you in?

-I'm in. I am in.

Does it feel incredibly heavy, now that everything's on?

Yeah, it does feel really heavy.

It's just, it's such an unusual feeling.

It's kind of turning yourself into a kind of robot.

It's like...

..you know, like a war machine, really. SHE LAUGHS

You do look almost twice the size.

Yeah. It's just such a different stature. LAUGHTER

You know, you go through life, inhabiting your body,

and I'm used to, you know,

not only being female but being small.

-I'm short and I'm small.

-Yeah, yeah.

LAUGHTER

This is something incredibly alien for me.

When I did the armour training, there's a certain lack of mobility,

and I thought that the jupon on top would

really increase that, but it didn't actually make it any more difficult

to move around.

However, it was a lot heavier.

You've got this padded velvet, you've got the metallic thread.

It's a lot of extra weight that you're carrying around.

You can see that so much training would have been necessary to

actually wear this.

This has taught me a lot about the Black Prince and about how

he would have wanted other people to perceive him.

This item is so in-your-face,

he's really turning himself into a human target.

This is completely different to our contemporary idea of camouflage in

warfare. He's saying, "This is me, and you simply can't ignore me."

And, at the same time, he's a fantastic rallying point for the

troops, as well. He's really there on the battlefield,

leading his men in this incredibly garish, bright piece of clothing.

As a historian, you're always trying to imagine the past and imagine it

as accurately as you possibly can, based on the evidence.

I spend a lot of time in museums, looking at dress in cabinets

underneath glass, and being able to touch this and feel it and know

that it's the same textures, the same materials that would have been

felt in the 14th century is really incredible.

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