The Tailor’s Tale: The Dress of Love

The Portrait of the Tailor

There was a tailor who was traveling alone to Canterbury.  On a search for something, he was driven in his determination to find what he sought.  He worked for a lord and served him dutifully.  Ever faithful and loyal to him was this tailor.  Though the tailor had humble beginnings, the duties he was asked to perform by his lord caused him to have sights for something greater than himself.  As he was not in the immediate presence of his lord on this journey, he wore modest clothes.  He wore a tunic that fell to his knees and modest trousers.  His shoes were leather, tied over top the foot by a thong.  Though the shoes were clearly worn, they were not shabby.  He carried with him an outer tunic made of wool and a warm cloak.  All of his clothes were the colors of the earth, not wanting or needing to attract undue attention his way while on his journey.  He kept mostly to himself, though believed the telling of his story might help him in his quest to find the thing he sought.  Not wanting to reveal himself, however, he told the story as though he were discussing a colleague, a friend of his who had been given his ultimate task or else that his story was one of tailor lore that circulated among the field.  His story goes like this.

The Tailor’s Tale

As a tailor, he was used to the feel of fabric.  Living wholly in a material world, feelings and emotions, being intangible, were entirely unfamiliar.  Because of this, it came as an entire shock when the tailor’s lord requested the fashioning of a garment for his daughter.  The garment was to be The Dress of Love.  The lord wanted it to be representative of the love he held for his daughter who had just come of age and the love she would soon share with her suitors.  For her he wanted a way to show the world the love he had for her, the desire he had for her happiness.  But it was important still to show that she was no longer solely his and that she would soon also belong to the worthy man she may choose.  And so to his tailor the lord turned and requested a garment of Love.

           Being given the lord’s request, the tailor hurried home, distraught by the task at hand.  How, he wondered, was he to fashion a Dress of Love?  Of what fabric would such a gown be made?  What color, styling, or ornaments would be deserving of application to a dress meant to represent Love?  And not just one aspect of Love, but amorous love coupled with the familial as well.  Such a task the tailor had never been given.  Never before had the bar been set so high or so much been expected of the humble tailor.  Until recently, he had been working as an apprentice in the shop of a local tailor who catered mostly to tradesmen’s needs and those mostly involved alterations or reparations.  He was confident in his ability to compose a dress or any garment or article that the lord might request, but this was different.  With the stigma of Love attached to the dress, the tailor drew nothing from the furthest creative reaches of his mind but confusion.  What is Love?  For if he has no notion of what Love is, he certainly can have no concept of what a physical representation of it might be.  With this weighing question on his mind, the tailor fell asleep at his workbench, praying that an answer come to him to appease his lord’s request.

           He dreamed that he woke up in a place very unfamiliar to him, though beautiful.  He found himself on the floor of some room.  The carpet was the first thing that he noticed as it was what his face rested on.  The carpet was green, made of velvet, the softest velvet he had ever felt.  Having found his footing, now standing, the tailor took the opportunity to observe his surroundings.  All around him he saw rack upon rack of clothes.  Dresses of all sorts, shapes, and colors riddled the walls.  Where he was standing appeared to be halfway down a hall of sorts.  Down one end, the tailor heard soft humming, so he proceeded in that direction.  All the way, he stopped to admire the dresses that stood out most on the rack either because of their color or pattern or material.  When he finally reached the end of the Hall of Dresses, he came upon a stunning sight.  The hall emptied to a circular room from which branched off many other hallways much like the one he had just been down.  In the middle of the room sat what looked like a naked winged child at a table, sewing one blue fabric to another of red color.  The needle with which he worked was the loveliest of gold and though with each stitch made by the child the two fabrics appeared bound tighter and tighter, there seemed to be no thread attached to either the needle or the fabrics.  It was as though the fabrics were sewn together by air.  The tailor believed to recognize this seemingly magical creature.

           “Cupid?” asked the tailor.

           “The very one,” responded Cupid without looking up.

           “Where am I?”

           “Isn’t it obvious?” answered Cupid, nonchalantly.  “You are standing in the middle of the Closet of Human Emotion.”

           “What is that?” asked the tailor, bewildered by this revelation.

           Sighing, Cupid responded, “It is said that any internal feeling felt by anyone is caused by that individual donning a certain article of clothing.  Not physically, of course—or at least not necessarily.  But when one becomes sad, it is because his or her soul has dressed himself with the tunic of Sorrow or the trousers of Despair or the shoes of Longing, for example.  Sometimes the soul can remove these garments, but often times once put on, they are not removed.  This closet, the very place you are standing, is where these garments reside.”

           Further bewildered, the tailor could not think of the question most appropriate to ask next.  Though Cupid’s story was very intriguing and invoked much curiosity in the tailor, he decided it best to ask directly for what he sought.  “Might there be a garment of Love, then?” he asked.

           With this question, Cupid looked up for the first time, a half smile coming across his face.  “No garment exists for Love, no,” he said.  The rest of his answer indicated he was ready for such a question, as if his answer had been rehearsed, or that he may get this question a lot.  “Love is not a singular emotion; it is a state of being.  Falling in Love is not as simple as putting on a dress or a pair of shoes.  Love is comprised of countless human emotions that mesh and overlap and blend to produce a bond with another human being.  Love is devotion and loyalty and lust and greed and service.  It is pride and sacrifice and happiness and acceptance and comfort and constancy and courtesy and…”

           At this point, the tailor spotted a quill and paper on a table that appeared from nowhere and thought it prudent to write down all of these components of Love so that he could use them in his creation.  Cupid proceeded to list dozens of human emotions that comprise Love and even when he finished admitted that Love is too complicated of a state to possibly list all of its components.  With his list as complete as possible, the tailor asked of Cupid “Will you show me the garments that accompany each of these emotions?”

           “I can do that,” replied Cupid, “but for what reason do you ask?”

           “I have been required to construct a garment of Love for my lord and am lost in how to go about this,” said the tailor.

           “Ah,” said Cupid.  “And so you wish to fashion something using each of the articles that correspond with the emotions I have stated.”

           “If you think that would be best, I suppose I shall.”

           Cupid did not give further insight as to whether this was, indeed, the best way to create the Dress of Love.  Instead, he simply said “Follow me.”  Cupid then took the tailor to each part of the closet to show him the garments that represented each of the emotions the tailor had been able to write down.  This involved going down each of the hallways that branched off from the central circle room.  The tailor learned that each hallway of clothes was organized according to the type of garment (dress, tunic, trousers, etc.) and then by the beneficence or malevolence of the emotion it represents.  The Tunic of Lust, for example, might find itself halfway down the Hall of Tunics because of its nature to invite both Love and Sin, two extremes of a spectrum.  It should also be mentioned that each emotion had both male and female counterparts.  For example, though there is a Dress of Happiness, there are also the Trousers of Happiness.  It can be deduced, then, that men and women wear their emotions differently.  With each garment that Cupid showed him, the tailor took it off the rack to examine later, often making trips back to the center room to deposit the heavy load of Emotion Garments he carried.  Even though this all was rather overwhelming for the tailor, he did notice one very important thing: though each garment is in its own right unique, they are all beautiful.

           When Cupid was finally done showing the tailor what all was reasonable for the completion of his task, the tailor set to work on the construction of the Love garment.  The tailor’s intent was a noble one: to assemble only fractions of each garment together in one cohesive piece.  Diligently he cut and sewed, being ever mindful that the pieces of each original article corresponded with its placement on the Love construct.  He knew, too, that the colors needed to work together.  No garment could represent nor invite Love that did not look pleasing to the eye.

For days the tailor worked, combining part of the sleeve of Desire with a part of the shoulder of Contentment.  In the final hours of his work, the tailor truly became worried that his garment was not coming together.  In spite of all the care he had taken, the colors were not working well together.  Each piece of fabric did not agree with the other pieces to which it was now attached.  The whole garment looked sloppy and the more the tailor appraised his creation, the sorer the sight became to his eyes.  The concoction was a failure.  He abandoned the monstrosity more confused than ever before.  He sought Cupid’s help again.  Again Cupid was found in the center room sewing two fabrics together with his golden needle and invisible thread.

“Cupid,” cried the tailor in desperation, “the garment has failed.  It is nothing like I imagined.”

“You mean the garment you fashioned out of bits of other garments that comprise Love?” asked Cupid.

“The very one.”

“Of course that didn’t work,” said Cupid.

“What do you mean?” asked the tailor, perplexed.  “I thought if I combined bits of all the garments you mentioned, I could at least come close to sewing the Dress of Love as requested by my lord.”

“You have tried to oversimplify emotion,” said Cupid.  “It is not as easy mish-mashing many different things to intentionally create something you know to be a mix of those things.  It is far more complicated.  One could not, for example wish to combine two opposite emotions: Despair and Happiness.  Even if he cut both tunics in half and sewed the opposite halves together, he will have fashioned a garment that allows its bearer to be neither fully happy nor fully sad.  To lack the ability to be fully either is not beautiful.  It is evil.  It is no wonder, then, that your noble attempt at the Dress of Love is a failure.  It simply cannot be created in the way you were going about it.”

“How, then, can it be done?” inquired the tailor.

“With this,” said Cupid as he reached down to the table in the middle of the center room and grasped at what looked like nothing.  He held up both his hands as if he held a rope or piece of fabric between them, though there appeared to be nothing there.

“With what?”

“Here.  Feel,” said Cupid as he held out what was in his hands.

“Feel what?”

“This!” sighed Cupid in frustration and he grabbed the tailor’s hand and thrust something into it.

“What is thi…” began the tailor, but then he felt what was in his hand.  He could feel it, but not see it.  It felt like a fine thread that left his hand feeling tingly and splendid.  The feeling crept up his arm and filled him with warmth.

“That is the thread of Love.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“The greatest thing in the world.”

“So all I need is to use this to sew a garment?” asked the tailor.

“Love is the thread that binds us together,” said Cupid.

“Could I take this back to my lord to fashion his daughter’s garment?”

“It’s yours,” said Cupid.

All of a sudden, Cupid and all of the surroundings melted into a blur and the tailor stirred awake back at his workbench.  Gathering his wits, he remembered the gift he had received from Cupid and began frantically to search for the Thread of Love.  Being invisible, however, he could not find the thread.  In his despair, he sought his lord and told him that if given the opportunity, he could find the thing he needed to make the garment for his daughter.  The lord granted the tailor his wish and sent him off on a journey, a pilgrimage.  The tailor was to return in a year and a day with the Love Dress ready for the lord’s daughter.  To the road the tailor took to seek something he was not quite sure existed outside of his own fantasy.

Critical Discussion

           I chose a tailor because I wanted a profession that could come from a third estate class, but serve a first estate client.  The dream vision was a good vessel to explore the concept of love, a concept important to all people, across the estates.  The nature of the tailor’s profession allows for him to experience love in a way unique to his class. 

The story is a dream vision because the protagonist falls asleep and wakes up in a fantastic, romantic setting.  He does not need to be led to the closet, because that is where he wakes up.  After a little exploration on his part, he finds Cupid who serves as his guide.  Cupid is the only personified character, but lack of persons is made up for in the thousands of garments that represent human emotion throughout the closet.

Since the story involved a tailor, I wanted him to be mostly concerned with clothes.  This is why his task was to make an impossible dress and he wakes up in a closet instead of a garden.  Unfortunately, the research I did on costumes of the time period was wholly unsuccessful.  Not only did the research provide insight into what kinds of garments would be appropriate for which human emotions (which was my ultimate hope), but it didn’t provide me with enough variety in outfits or garments.

Another reason why the tailor was most appropriate for what I was trying to accomplish is that he fits nicely into the third estate.  I didn’t want a character that was looking for love for himself.  As most members of the lower, poorer estates do not get to experience love because they are too busy working.  Likewise, the tailor does not get to experience love, but he works so that a member of a higher class may. The dramatic principle, then, is applied, making sure that the tailor’s tale and the tailor’s profession match.

I modified my tale from Chaucer’s in that my portrait for the tailor was a mix between a portrait and a prologue.  It was also mostly self-serving, creating a frame story of sorts and allowing for the story to come full circle at the end, explaining why the tailor was on the “pilgrimage” in the first place.  The portrait, instead, served more as an opportunity to reveal more inner qualities of the tailor that weren’t able to be presented in the body of the story.

Bibliography

Ashe, Geoffrey. The Quest for Arthur’s Britain. New York: Frederick A. Praeger Publishers, 1968.

Burns, E. Courtly Love Undressed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

Racinet, A. The Historical Encyclopedia of Costumes. New York: Facts on File, 1988.

Saul, Nigel. The Oxford Illustrated History of Medieval England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Strayer, Joseph Reese, ed., Dictionary of the Middle Ages. 13 vols. New York: Scribner, 1982-89.