Fashion in Medieval France

Twelfth- and thirteenth-century medieval French texts reveal the presence of a developed fashion system long before the previously accepted birth of Western fashion in the mid-fourteenth century. How are we to distinguish between a culture organized around fashion, and one where the desire for novel adornment is latent, intermittent, or prohibited? How do fashion systems organize social hierarchies, individual psychology,creativity, and production? Medieval French culture offers a case study of