TRYING to imagine what life was like for ordinary Scots in 1314 is not easy.

Television dramas and films depicting medieval Europe tend to feature lead actors with salon-fresh hair and alluring clothes. If Sophie Marceau as Queen Isabella of France had turned up to meet Mel Gibson in Braveheart with spotty skin and manure of dubious origin stuck to her shoes, it might have distracted audiences from laughing at the liberties Gibson was taking with Scottish history. So you end up with dazzling nobles and royals with impeccable hair, skin and clothing, and grey peasants in grey sackcloth with grime daubed on their faces. Is that in any sense a reliable guide to how medieval people lived, looked and dressed? And if not, what did people really look like ... and did they have any concept at all of fashion?

A good person to help answer these questions is Malin Heen-Allan, manager of the Clanranald Trust, a Scottish charity which aims to increase awareness of Scottish culture and heritage by truthfully recreating Scotland's past through re-enactments and hands-on displays.

Heen-Allan is overseeing the Bannockburn battle re-enactments for Bannockburn Live on June 28 and 29 and has worked on films featuring medieval battle scenes. She knows what it feels like to wear medieval dress all day (more comfortable than you might think, apparently).

So first things first: what did ordinary people wear in 14th-century Scotland? Apparently, women wore a smock or chemise - a long tunic down to their ankles with a draw-string at the neckline - and over the top they put a sleeveless dress. Loose-fitting sleeves could then be attached, meaning that a woman could ring the changes, which was cheaper than having a new dress. A woman would typically have two dresses, one for everyday wear and the other for Sundays and festivals, and they would be looked after and mended repeatedly to eke out their useful life.

Men wore long tunics over basic, very loose knee-length breeches or "braies" like primitive board shorts, which later became shorter like boxer shorts. Over the top of those went hose-like garments, a bit like cowboys' chaps or very loose-fitting stockings, covering the leg up to the groin and attached by cords to the waist of the braies. "You could have one green leg and one red leg and you could change them about so it looked like you had lots of different trousers," explains Heen-Allan. Over all that, men wore a long super tunic which got shorter over the course of the century, morphing eventually into a rather short, tight fitting coat or doublet (a padded coat) that showed the legs.

Leather shoes and boots were used, but could be ruined by rain or puddles, hence the alternative of wooden clogs and thick wooden detachable platform soles on leather shoes.

Animal leather such as sheepskin helped keep you warm and dry, especially with the fleece still on, but it was not the only outerwear option. "The Barbour jacket concept came very early," says Heen-Allan. "You could have a garment of wool or linen and saturate it with beeswax, giving an oil-cloth effect, which was particularly good against drizzle."

In Scotland, the most common fabrics were linen and wool. Linen, made of the stems of flax plants, is strong, durable and relatively stain-resistant. Flax could be cultivated quite easily. If you wanted to turn raw wool or flax into cloth, however, you had to do it yourself. It was women's work and girls learned it pretty much universally, including noble ladies, starting as young as seven. "Most women would walk around with a drop spindle in their hand because it took so long to spin yarn," says Heen-Allan. "They would use it with any down time they had." Using a drop spindle, a device like a child's wooden spinning top with a long shaft, involved taking a ball of fluffy raw fibre and drawing out a thin line of it by rubbing it between your fingers before attaching it to the shaft of the spindle. You would then drop the spindle in mid-air and make it twist. As it span, it would twist the line of fibre, putting tension into it and creating strong yarn.

The preponderance of linen and wool did not mean that medieval peasants lived in a world of browns and greys, though; far from it. "In Scotland, we were quite lucky. We had roots, leaves and heather which create quite nice colours," says Heen-Allan. "You had a lot of clear bright clothes, even for normal people. It was a colourful environment."

Blaeberries produced blue; whin, gorse bark and broom made green; bracken and heather a yellow colour; white crotal (a lichen) made red; alder bark and dock root made black; dulse (a common seaweed) dark crotal or red clay gave you brown. To bleach things, meanwhile, you had to soak them in urine.

Tartan's association in Scotland with particular clans may have had loose origins in localised dyeing habits. "It depended on where you lived and what dyes were available to you," says Heen-Allan. "People tended to wear the same colours. So if you grew up in a remote part of Scotland then you and everyone who lived there would match. They didn't dress in identical tartan but they would blend in together."

As for fashion, it was a very real concept, even among the uneducated classes. There were rules about who could wear what. Cloth of gold and the colour purple, for instance, were reserved for royalty, and velvets, satins, sable and ermine were only to be worn by the daughters and wives of nobles, but style could not be reserved only for the rich.

"There was absolutely a concept of style, and clothing was a status symbol," says Heen-Allan. "Kings and queens were the celebrities of the day: whatever they wore, people would copy them, if they had the means. If you saw a queen or noble lady riding past on market day, you would look at what she was wearing and think, wow, I could make that. If you were a peasant girl who was good with a needle and thread, and could make something nice for yourself, it would be a case of 'who do you think you are?'"

The century was one of revolutionary change when it came to style. Ian Mortimer, author of The Time Traveller's Guide To Medieval England, notes that "the 14th century sees greater changes in clothing styles than any previous period of 100 years". The loose-fitting silhouette of the early Middle Ages, with little difference between men's and women's clothing, gave way to more fitted and shorter styles, and greater differences between the sexes, in Scotland as well as England. Heen-Allan believes the change began in the previous century, with the appearance of lace-up bodices, a slim, long waist and swan neck.

But what about underwear? It was long assumed that medieval women wore none except for bindings around their breasts to give support, but that view has changed a little following the discovery a few years ago of astonishingly bra-like garments from the 15th century in an Austrian castle. It is unlikely Scottish peasants would have been wearing them, however. As for knickers, they had none. So what happened during a woman's time of the month? "You would have rolled up material, soft fabric with wool inside, and you would bind it to your body with fabric, almost like a thong," explains Heen-Allan. "If we look at Egypt, they had tampons [natural sponges or rolls of papyrus with cords attached] when we were still living in caves."

Heen-Allan confirms that clothes worn close to the body did get washed when they got a bit grimy (by being pounded in water, sometimes with white clay or ash) and often people would bathe in rivers while still in their undergarments, giving both it and themselves a wash.

Baths were far from an everyday occurrence, however, so though hands and faces were regularly washed, medieval life was pungent. "Everyone smelled and townships and cities stank," says Heen-Allan. "The more rurally you lived, the less smelly it was. Every court in Europe would be absolutely heaving and not in a good way. People would relieve themselves behind big brocade curtains hung in castles because there were no toilets for the courtiers so they just crouched and did their business. There were rushes on the floor to absorb it. At least we had cludgies here in Scotland, but in the big palaces, the garderobe [a primitive toilet] was only available to the family. People needed those platform shoes. Ordinary people would have a midden. You dug a pit, created a seat by putting a couple of big stones and a board across, so it was cleaner. You had to wade through s*** to get to the royals."

So the high and mighty weren't quite so high and mighty. Still, life was toughest for the poorest, whose life was one long graft. Making and maintaining clothes was just a small part of it. As Heen-Allan says: "It gives you a lot of respect for people back then."