Last month we considered how belts, girdles and braces have secured and improved the fit of clothes. Over time various types of fastening developed, and before buttons, elastic and modern zips were invented, many dress items utilised bands, garters, laces and ribbon ties.

Throughout ancient and early-medieval Europe, loose trouser-like leg-coverings were typically held in place with cross-gartered leather strips or narrow fabric bands. The Anglo-Saxons also used circular garter-like shin bands to anchor closer-fitting hose and by the 900s ladies often bequeathed in their wills valuable gold-embroidered headbands for wear with veil-like headdresses. Subsequently, clothes grew more styled, requiring sophisticated ways of shaping and fitting materials to the body and from the late-1000s onwards, fashionable tunics and gowns were often laced at the sides. Plain, plaited or embroidered fabric bands, braids and narrow leather thongs continued throughout the Middle Ages, as laces, ties and leg garters, short cords also being used as cloak fasteners.

From the 1500s, Tudor portraits display men’s decorative knee garters and delicate silk or gold threads tying the neckline of the fine linen shirts protruding above the doublet.

Following exaggerated Elizabethan and Jacobean modes, gentlemen sported extravagant stocking garters embellished with rosettes, courtly ladies adding coloured silk bows to their gowns. Expensive fripperies such as feathers, silk ribbon, fringe, bows and rosettes were supplied by London ‘millinery’ shops, so-called because many luxury dress trimmings were imported from Milan.

Stuart dress was more restrained, yet the 1620s and 1630s witnessed a trend for displaying the decorative tips, ‘points’ or ‘aglets’ of the ribbon ties fastening men’s doublets to their hose/breeches. Throughout the 17th and 18th centuries, prominent laced ribbons were often used to secure the separate central stomacher section of the female bodice, while sets of bows also helped to hold together the complex bodice arrangement.

Knee garters remained relevant for as long as men wore breeches, while Georgian women’s stocking garters were sometimes revealed provocatively in art. Laced leather shoes grew fashionable for men in the later 1700s, shoelaces then comprising paired strings of leather, cotton, hemp or jute passing through eyelet holes and finished at each end with stiff aglets.

Victorian and Edwardian ladies’ fine lingerie often featured pretty pastel-coloured ribbons threaded through the openings of petticoats, camisoles and drawers, while technological advances made an impact in the 1800s: for instance, tighter corset lacing became possible once metal or rubber eyelet rings helped prevent delicate fabric from tearing. Today among our many modern fastenings, some laces, ribbons and other ties still play a role.

Jayne Shrimpton is a professional dress historian and picture specialist, and author of several family photo and dress history books. Read her features on the Edwardian home and Edwardian photos in Issue 8 of our print edition, out now – see discoveryourancestors.co.uk