Later Middle Ages—Romanesque and Gothic

Some influences from the East, mainly a diversity and richness of material, reached Europe with the Moorish invasion of Spain and southwestern France and through the Norman conquest of Sicily, but the great and startling effect on fashion occurred in the 1100s, after the start of the Crusades. Crusaders, including women, brought back not only new materials but also new styles. Luxurious Oriental fabrics such as silks, damasks, and velvets were introduced, in bright colors and elaborate weaves. Hose took the place of trousers, and garments were embellished with jewels, embroidery, and fur trimming.

Men's Clothing

What men wore on their legs has long been a topic of debate. Then, as now, men wore breeches and hose (trousers and stockings). The relative length of the one compared to the other has caused the confusion, the hose having become so long in the High Gothic period as to almost eliminate the breeches. Until the advent of knitted material, almost unknown in the Middle Ages, hose were made of wool or linen cut to shape for a relatively tight fit. At no time could they have presented the smooth appearance, subsequently achieved by knitted fabrics, shown from pictures of the period. In the 1100s, the hose reached midthigh and were made to cover the short breeches or drawers. Earlier, the breeches of the wealthy were cut narrower and those of laborers fuller, both usually cross-gartered below the knee. The styles of the early 1100s were marked by their length, and the overtunic was replaced by an Oriental import known as the bliaut. Everything, including the sleeves, was long, full, and trailing. Men's clothing in the remainder of the 1100s and during the 1200s displayed variations of length, fullness, and decoration and different names for what were essentially the same garments. A notable change was that the hood became a separate garment. Later in the period, the hood—with its pointed end, the liripipe, and short shoulder cape—became a hat worn by putting the head into the hole originally intended for the face and wrapping the extended liripipe around the head in turban fashion. Later still, the hat was hung over the shoulder by the liripipe as a badge; its ultimate manifestation became the cockade on the livery hat of the 1800s or the doorman's hat of the 1900s. Another even more curious derivation of the hood is the small tab sewn in the back of an English barrister's gown, an appendage from the time when a client would drop money in the hat if a case was thought to be going well.

In the 1300s the tunic was narrowed and shortened to a more tailored look and evolved into what came to be called the doublet. Over the doublet the old overtunic, now with a collar and called a cotehardie, was still worn. The houppelande, an outer garment with a long, full body and wide, flaring sleeves, was worn until the end of the century and survived into the 1400s and 1500s in the dress of the professional classes and older men. It survives in the academic and legal gowns and robes of today.

The doublet developed into a fully tailored, frequently padded garment, which in varying forms survived as the basic male outer garment through the middle of the 1600s. Its modern derivation is the waistcoat or vest worn with a suit.

Women's Clothing

Women also adopted the bliaut, as well as another Oriental garment with long wide sleeves, the Oriental surcoat. The bliaut, made of fine material crimped or pleated, was long, full, and trailing like the garments of men. A new development of the period was an early form of the corset that emphasized the female figure. Throughout the Middle Ages, a woman's ankles were never exposed to view. Indeed, through most of the period, skirts fell long on the floor in front, possibly to avert cold and drafts while sitting in the chilly homes of a time before the invention of central heating. Skirts were carried in front of the body when walking. This led to a feminine posture characteristic of the Middle Ages—a rather stately leaning-back carriage of the body, emphasized in the later centuries by fantastic, tall headgear and trailing veils worn over long trains.

Until the 1400s, women's garments were less extravagantly shaped than men's, the clothing being tight-fitting and full-skirted with tight sleeves. Over the gown a cotehardie and then the sideless gown was worn. Early in the period the hair was veiled in a wimple, a cloth draped over the head and around the neck up to the chin. In cold weather and for state occasions a very full, three-quarter round or even full circular cloak was worn. With the abandonment of the wimple an even more fantastic and elaborate style of headgear developed. At first, width was emphasized, followed by an emphasis on height, with results that were subsequently equaled only by the high wigs and deliberately representational head adornment of the late 1700s.

In the 1300s, women's clothing, like men's clothes, became tighter-fitting and more tailored and, in the 1400s, more elaborately fitted and padded. New and elaborate methods of weaving also were developed in the 1400s, and a whole range of new fabrics and materials became available. This led to the richness and complexity that emerged with the dress of the Renaissance period.

Renaissance clothing evolved in Italy and was brought to the rest of Europe following the invasion of Italy in 1494 by Charles VIII of France. Why the rather simpler styles of Italy evolved independently from the rest of Europe is not clear, but seems likely to have been a result of the warmer climate. The low-necked tunic and chemise for men and the similarly simple and low-necked gowns of the women, called Juliet gowns, had a very rapid if short-lived effect on the evolution of European clothing in general. By the 1620s, simplicity had vanished, but the vertical look of medieval garments had completely given way to the horizontal effects of Renaissance dress. Concurrently with this rapid change in style, the craze for slashing burst upon Europe. Probably originating in southern Germany, and surviving well into the 1600s, this fashion involved cutting slits in the outer fabric and pulling the lining fabric through the hole to create a decorative contrast.

Perhaps the most interesting development of this period was the use, or at least exposure, of clean linen chemises, by both men and women. Once exposed, the chemise was, of course, decorated; the lace edges and frills at the neck and sleeves developed in less than 50 years into the starched and elaborate ruffs worn for another 100 years. Starched or soft, these collars developed into the lace fall, or jabot, and eventually became the cravat and then, finally, the necktie.

The only basic change in men's clothing during the Renaissance, other than in decorative emphasis, was the lengthening of breeches, which were, as always, elaborately decorated once exposed. Women, on the other hand, endured increasingly restrictive garments. Early in the Renaissance there appeared a long, rigid, almost cone-shaped corset reaching well below the waist to a V in front and with little or no adaptation to the woman's natural form. Corsets had been used before to emphasize but never to distort the feminine form. The breasts were forced upward above the corset and remained there until fashions changed with the French Revolution in 1789. Styles varied enormously from that time, but the basic emphasis on distortion did not. Some of the rigidity was relieved when whalebones replaced metal stays in clothing, but in general discomfort was increased because of the widespread practice of artificially shaping the skirts with underpinnings varying from bags of bran to elaborate metal cages.

While the basic garments remained much the same as they had been in the Middle Ages, a relatively natural look was replaced with elaborate shapes, lacing, padding, and rigidity. This is ascribed to the extreme formality of the tradition-bound Habsburg courts of the Holy Roman Empire, especially those in Austria and Spain. The rare attempts to overthrow this rigidity in European fashion were not followed in the Spanish court, as evidenced by the huge panniered skirts shown in the royal portraits by the baroque painter Diego Velázquez.