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What They Wore

Renaissance means 're-birth' and it stands for a complete change in material and spiritual culture. In terms of textiles, people who could afford it wore gold and silver brocades, velvets and silk, embroidered fabrics and fur. Fabrics were expensive and difficult to buy. Said to have been used there for 4500 years, silk was a closely guarded monopoly in China. With the opening of trade routes and safer travel, silks and cottons became more available, but homespun wools and flax (linens) were most common. The silk road included Lyon, France, which in the 1400s became a major warehouse for imported silks. These imports caused a harmful outflow of capital, and in 1466 King Louis XI declared "his intention to introduce the art and craft of making silk fabrics in our city Lyon". Later, in 1536, Francois 1st gave to Lyon the monopoly of the silk trade.

Fabrics were simply woven, but elaborately ornamented. It was not until 1804, again in Lyon, that Joseph-Marie Jacquard invented a loom (the Jacquard Loom) that produced textured fabrics and incorporated designs into the weave.

In the Renaissance of Northern Europe, the look of clothing changed from the pointed Gothic look to a more square look. Ladies wore square necked gowns and laced bodices; fronts of skirts were open, showing decorative underskirts. Velvets and other heavy materials were slashed to show chemises (undergarments). Men wore jackets and tunics with wide shoulders, puffed sleeved, padded doublets, cloaks, capes, and square-toed shoes. More colors and dyes were available so the upper classes were able to dress in their own styles, in fabrics hitherto unknown. Hats were popular, and men only took them off if they were easy to replace.

In the later Renaissance era, clothing was stiffened and though less bulky, was elaborate and exaggerated with much ornamentation. Women wore exaggerated farthingales, or hoops. Look below to see Queen Elizabeth 1 being lifted by her buskin, or stomacher.

Towards the end of the 1500s, Spanish court fashion became popular, showing black and dark colours and exaggerated stiffness. Spain had become rich by exploiting the riches of the New World and was the center of Catholic piety (in reference to the Spanish Inquisition). Both male and female costume was rigid, stuffed, and high-necked, and the dancing reflected this in its formality, rigidity and manners.


Check here for pictures and more resources on clothing in the Renaissance:

History of Costume - Braun and Schneider
Elizabethan Clothing (brief)
The Costume Page
Florentine Dress, early 1500s

From a woodcut in Liber Chronicarum Mundi, 1493

Spanish Nobility from the mid 16th C

Queen Elizabeth 1 and the Earl of Leicester dancing lavolta