(Vitruvian Man by Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519), [Public Domain] via
Creative Commons. Modified with diaper.)
Sorry—that is misleading. In
the Middle Ages, there was a fancy fabric called diaper. It was a cloth
decorated with a repeating pattern, like diamonds, floral patterns or geometric
shapes. The diaper pattern was sometimes used with silk fabric, and even gold and
silver threads would be sewn into clothing or linens in the diaper fashion.
Around the 15th century,
however, the fabric was being widely used in a new way. Enough people were
using the diaper-decorated fabric as nappies for their young children that the
cloth became irreconcilably connoted with baby excrement. Consequently, diaper
fabric fell out of fashion on anything but babies and toddlers.
In books before the 15th
century, however, there are plenty of references to grown people, and everyday
objects, being clothed in diaper fabric. An example from Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales is included
below—now it should make more sense to the average reader.
“And with Arcita, so the
poets sing,
Went great Emetrius the
Indian king
On a bay steed whose
trappings were of steel
Covered in cloth of gold from
haunch to heel
Fretted with diaper.”
- From The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, translated by Nevill Coghill (Penguin Classics edition, 1977).
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