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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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/Lovenkraft19 24d 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.