Steel Fashion

• The earliest knights wore mail armor made of linked steel rings. In the 13th century, they began augmenting their mail with metal plates. By the 15th century, knights were encased from head to foot in steel plates. Knights were fashion conscious dandies and medieval armorers catered to their every whim. They added a blue tint to the plates with careful heating, engraved or etched designs into them and decorated the edges with gold plating. The shape of the plates often followed contemporary fashions. For example, 16th century Maximilian armor featured ridges called fluting that imitated the style of civilian jackets.
  
  

Parade Armor

• Knights in parades wore fancy armor embossed or etched with designs depicting scenes from history, legend and scripture. Helmets were topped with ornate crests and elaborate plumes. In the 16th century, some open-faced parade helmets took on grotesque shapes such as stylized roaring lions or monstrous heads with gaping mouths that seemed to swallow the wearer's head. The visors on some helmets were designed in the shape of bird heads, scowling faces and other fanciful designs.
  
  

Tournament Armor

• Knights showed off their skills in events called tournaments. Tournament armor featured specialized parts for each event. For example, when knights participated in a joust, where two knights charged each other with spears called lances, they wore extra armor over the left side of the body, which faced the opponent. They also wore a special helmet with curved surfaces that helped deflect the lance point. When they took part in a contest called foot combat, which featured knights exchanging blows with swords, axes or other weapons, they only wore armor on their heads, arms and torso. The knights' legs remained unarmored because blows below the level of the barrier that separated the combatants were illegal. The visors on some helmets for foot combat could be locked shut to prevent them from popping open during the contest.
  
  

Suiting Up

• A knight couldn't put on his armor by himself. He was assisted by a young knight in training called a squire. First the knight put on tights called hose, leather shoes and a special jacket called an arming doublet. The arming doublet featured leather straps called points that secured the plates to the body. The squire carefully dressed his knight from the feet up starting with metal shoes called sabatons, metal shin-guards called greaves, metal knee-guards called poleyns and metal thigh-guards called cuisses. He covered his knight's torso with a metal back plate and breastplate that were strapped together at the waist and shoulders to form a cuirass. He protected his knight's arms and shoulders with shoulder-guards called pauldrons, arm-guards called vambraces, elbow-guards called couters and metal gloves called gauntlets. He protected his knight's neck and chin with a bevor. Finally he protected his head with a helmet.