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by bluGill 221 days ago
It would not surprise me. Clothing took a lot of labor to make. A large part of the labor was women's labor which history doesn't record much of. When you are doing that much effort it isn't that much more to die in bright colors, and people like colorful clothing (some like the Amish make non-color part of their identity of course, but they like colors they are just rejecting them anyway because they think that helps them get to heaven). Colors were limited to what they could make so probably not as bright as modern, but not dark in general.
2 comments
WalterBright 221 days ago
> A large part of the labor was women's labor which history doesn't record much of

Women spent much of their lives making textiles. It likely wasn't recorded much because it was so ubiquitous.

For example, my family photographs when I was growing up were nearly all about documenting unusual events, like birthdays, holidays, and vacations. The humdrum ordinary things were not photographed. For example, there was only two photos with the family car incidentally in the frame. No photographs of the neighborhood. One photo of the school I attended. No pictures of my dad at work. No pictures of my mom cleaning the house. And so on.

It gives a fairly skewed vision of life then.

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bluGill 221 days ago
That too, but we know more about men's work that was just as ubiquitous. Though the vast majority of history is about those in charge - the 0.0001%.
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WalterBright 221 days ago
> the 0.0001%

The ones who can read and write expect to be paid, and the wealthy and powerful will commission them to write about what interests the wealthy and powerful - i.e. themselves.

This state of affairs persisted until the advent of the printing press, which made for a mass market of ordinary people.

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AlotOfReading 221 days ago
Bright colors fade more noticeably over time, so bright clothing was a good indication of new, regularly replaced clothing. The dyes themselves could also be phenomenally expensive. The scarlet red of Catholic cardinals was historically made from Kermes, an especially lightfast dye. Kermes was in turn a cheaper alternative to the Tyrian Purple worn previously.

Daily clothing would have been more pastel than the saturated colors we associate with "colorful" today.

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