Power of dressing during Renaissance period
During renaissance, fashion from Italian and german designers had a great influence on European clothing. It became a new status symbol, and even a bigger status symbol in that period. Darker colors of fabrics became popular to show off and some jewels that were sewn onto the clothing. The more elaborate the tailoring and craftsmanship, the more expensive the clothing was and helped establish a reputation of wealth for the owner
During the evaluation of women clothing, such as silk, velvet and cotton, it’s the richer you wear the more the fabric. Cotton was very expensive then and was more expensive then and was heavily taxed import goods, mainly in India. Because clothing would retain value and had significant societal importance, people could pawn them if hard times came.
Womens hair covering went from the pointed cone style with no hair allowed to show, to the more popular light weighted type with flowers like a cap style. In later years it became more optional to wear head or hair covering at all. Age determined if you cover the head. Older women wear caps or coverings, the younger ones didn’t.
Men’s renaissance clothing was also over hauled several times to keep up with the latest trends fashion. In European renaissance the intial focus was towards richer fabrics which later gave way to more square fashion and then to barrel fashion. Legs were covered with breeches and hosiery, shoes were square toed, and wide hat to complete the look. Later the barrel look became in style, tailors started to view the human body as only having two parts, the shoulders and the hips. Horse hair was used for the padding and embroideres would change by the thread count of their work.
References
Renaissance fashion,(2005), Real armor of god, retrieved from, http://www.realarmorofgod.com/renaissance-fashion.html