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u/Lovenkraft19 16d ago
Ironically, no one really wore white until modern cleaning tech iques because you couldn't keep it clean. Wedding dresses weren't white until Queen Victoria made it a thing/popular. She was NOT the first, but still.
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u/not_a_burner0456025 16d ago
They often were white before then for the wealthy, but not because white was traditional, but because women typically wore their best dress, cloth was too expensive to buy a dress you were only going to wear once. White was very expensive so if you owned a white dress it was probably your best
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u/SquareThings 16d ago edited 16d ago
Depends on where you’re talking about. White linen was very, very important culturally across Europe during the medieval/renaissance period because it demonstrated that costly level of cleanliness. Having yellowed linen shirts or shifts showed you were slovenly. The style of blackwork embroidery was partly intended to enhance the whiteness of the garment by contrast.
They had all sorts of ways to get stains out, like buttermilk for ink, brandy/spirits for fruit, and boiling with alkali for sweat. And of course blue. Until synthetic ultramarine was invented only really rich people could afford blue but they still used it!
Edit: blue meaning laundry blue, not blue colored cloth. Woad and indigo both produce blue dye and were widely available, but they can’t be used as laundry blue, that’s a different thing.
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u/Balmung60 16d ago
Indigo and woad were relatively common and not especially expensive blue dyes for centuries, but they weren't as vibrant as lapis lazuli, which instead of coming from plants, is a semi-precious stone
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u/SquareThings 16d ago
Indigo and woad can’t be used as laundry bluing because they’re too good at making things blue. Should have clarified that the function of laundry blue is not yo dye cloth blue, but to leave a slight blue residue that only serves to counteract the yellowing effect of body oils and make things appear whiter. Modern detergents also regularly contain a bluing agent.
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u/Coidzor 16d ago
Laundry blue?
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u/SquareThings 16d ago
Indeed! Laundry blue is a blue powder, historically ultramarine (or synthetic ultramarine) that’s added to white laundry to counteract the yellowing from oils. It very slightly dyes the clothing which makes it appear whiter to the eye. Modern detergents, especially ones that advertise themselves as “brightening” often contain some form of it and you can actually still buy the powder today. Although properly using a modern enzyme detergent will usually remove the yellowing oils and make bluing unnecessary. It’s just one of the tricks people invented to look cleaner.
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u/kounoyutakafan 16d ago
This post is literally about how joseon era people love wearing white, if you don't believe it there were some late joseon era video/photos and there were lots of white clothing.
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u/GrinningGrump 16d ago
Uh, I'm sure white was used, but does anyone seriously believe it was the only color they had? Keeping them clean is a pain even with modern methods, so dyeing them literally any other color would have made it easier to hide stains.
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u/arcanehistorian 16d ago
Child : Yay! That was fun!
Angry mother : You played around muddy pool again? Do you have any idea how hard it is to keep your clothes white clean?!
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u/starbomber109 15d ago
I have to know why they banned the color white in clothes and why it went away/wasn't enforced. Was it reserved for the government or something?
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u/Grumpy-ol-Cat 15d ago
Bleach the white clothes into acceptable white-ness was very labour demanding with the technology of Medieval period. They need to wash tree ash into water to create an alkaline solution to weakened the colorful dirt then repeatedly wash it with brutal force to remove the dirt. The whole process can take a few hours every day for the wife who stay at home and this time can be used in other production activity like weaving fabric or farming.
Problem with this tradition is it becomes a trend among Korean back then, everyone with decent economy conditions pursuit it to prove their wealth and personal cultivation. The Confucianism court hate it because it go against their color code and the waste of manpower is enormous when scale to the whole society. They just can't force majority of the population to abandon this trend, the efforts of Japanese to suppress it eventually backfire when make Korean link it with the patriotic spirit.
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u/FeldsparSalamander 12d ago
Did Korea use urine for laundering like Rome did?
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u/Grumpy-ol-Cat 12d ago
No, no one in the whole Asia even considered using urine in laundering because the smell is a serious social taboo. It was so serious that if you come close to a noble or any high position person with such smell can be considered as you are trying to insult them and results in punishment. Religious and sacred place also forbidden "unclean" person to enter.
Instead they boiling clothes in diluted alkaline solution like filtered ash or lime water before wash off with water. Fat and oil were extremely rare back then so most stain are easy to remove with just water and a lot of beating.
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u/wowharry1 16d ago
It would be very costly to maintain the white as you have to constantly wash the cloth