Renaissance Fashion and Clothing: Style in the Age of Elegance

Renaissance fashion was elaborate, expensive, and carefully regulated. From the slashed sleeves of a Venetian nobleman to the embroidered gowns of a Florentine merchant’s wife, clothing in the Renaissance was a visible language that communicated social status, family identity, and personal taste. The clothes of the era, which are visible in the portraits of the great masters, are among the most distinctive and most elegant in Western history. Renaissance fashion is one of the more useful entry points into how the people of the era saw themselves and how they wanted to be seen by the world, and the literature on it is unusually good.

The Importance of Clothing

In the Renaissance, clothing was more than a way to keep warm or to cover the body. It was a statement of identity. The clothes a person wore indicated their social rank, their occupation, their marital status, their religion, and their political allegiance. A nobleman in the court of the Medici, a merchant in the streets of Bruges, and a peasant in the fields of Tuscany all had different ways of dressing, and these differences were carefully maintained.

The sumptuary laws of the era attempted to regulate who could wear what. In Florence, Venice, Milan, and other Italian cities, laws specified the materials, colors, and styles of clothing that could be worn by different classes. The laws were intended to maintain social distinctions, but they were often violated, especially by the wealthy and the fashionable. The result was a constant tension between the official norms and the actual practice of dress.

Men’s Fashion

The fashionable Italian man of the early 16th century, often called the uomo elegante (elegant man), wore a distinctive set of garments:

The doublet (Italian giubba), a close-fitting jacket, often padded and sometimes decorated with slashing, embroidery, or buttons. The doublet was the centerpiece of the male wardrobe, and it was often the most expensive garment.
The hose (Italian calze), tight-fitting trousers, often of contrasting color with the doublet. The hose were sometimes made of knitted or woven silk, and they were often brightly colored.
The overgown or giornea, a sleeveless overgarment worn over the doublet, often with a long slit in the front to display the doublet beneath.
The cape or cappa, a long, loose cloak worn over the shoulders, especially in cold weather or on formal occasions.
The beret or berretto, a soft, brimless cap, often decorated with a brooch or a feather. The beret was the standard male headgear, and it was worn both indoors and outdoors.
The codpiece, a conspicuous piece of fabric covering the front opening of the hose, especially in the early 16th century. The codpiece, which was often elaborately decorated, was a distinctive feature of male fashion in the 1490s and 1500s.

Men also wore a variety of accessories, including gloves, belts, daggers, and swords. The sword, which was both a weapon and a fashion accessory, was a marker of nobility and of the right to bear arms.

Women’s Fashion

Renaissance women wore elaborate, often heavy, garments that emphasized the body in subtle ways:

The gown (Italian gonna), a long, full-skirted dress, often with a fitted bodice and a low neckline. The gown was the centerpiece of the female wardrobe, and it was often the most expensive garment a woman owned.
The bodice or corpetto, a close-fitting, often boned, garment that shaped the torso. The bodice was sometimes worn with a sheer fabric that revealed the neck and shoulders.
The sleeves, often detachable and richly decorated. The sleeves were sometimes puffed, sometimes slashed, sometimes embroidered with gold or silver thread.
The underskirt or sottana, worn beneath the gown, often in a contrasting color.
The headdress or acconciatura, which could be a simple hair net, an embroidered cap, or an elaborate arrangement of hair, ribbons, and jewels. Italian women of the 16th century were especially known for their elaborate hair arrangements, often involving shaved hair at the front and elaborate braiding or curling at the back.
The veil, a long piece of fabric worn over the head and shoulders, often in church or on formal occasions.

Women also wore a great deal of jewelry, including necklaces, earrings, brooches, rings, and hairpins. The jewelry was often a major investment, and it was frequently pawned in times of financial difficulty.

Materials and Colors

Renaissance clothing was made from a wide range of materials, the most important being:

Silk, the most prestigious material, imported from the East or produced in Italian cities like Lucca, Florence, and Venice. Silk was used for gowns, doublets, hose, and many other garments.
Wool, used especially for everyday clothing and for the clothing of the lower classes. Florence was the most important center of wool production in Europe.
Linen, used for shirts, undergarments, and veils.
Velvet, a silk fabric with a thick, soft pile, used for the most expensive garments.
Brocade, a silk fabric woven with gold or silver thread, used for ceremonial and formal clothing.
Fur, used especially for linings and for winter wear. Sable, ermine, and mink were the most prestigious furs, but other furs were also used.

The colors of Renaissance clothing were often produced by expensive dyes. The most prestigious colors were:

Crimson red, produced by the expensive kermes dye, made from the dried bodies of insects.
Deep blue, produced by indigo or by woad.
Purple, produced by a mixture of dyes, was reserved for royalty and the highest nobility.
Black, surprisingly, was the most fashionable color in the 16th century. The deep, rich black that was so popular in the courts of Spain and Italy required a complex dyeing process, and the ability to produce true black was a mark of the highest quality.

Sumptuary Laws

The sumptuary laws of the Renaissance attempted to control who could wear what. The laws varied from city to city, but they generally followed similar patterns:

The most luxurious materials (silk, velvet, brocade) and the most expensive furs were reserved for the nobility and the very wealthy.
The colors purple, gold, and certain other shades were reserved for royalty.
The use of jewelry, embroidery, and other decoration was limited by social class.
The number of servants and the number of dishes at a meal were also regulated.

The sumptuary laws were often more honored in the breach than in the observance, especially by the wealthy and the fashionable. The laws were difficult to enforce, and the penalties for violations were often light. The result was a constant tension between the official norms and the actual practice of dress.

Regional Variations

Renaissance fashion varied from region to region. The Italian style, with its emphasis on elegance, refinement, and classical proportions, was the most influential, and it spread to France, Spain, and eventually to England. The French style, with its emphasis on courtly grandeur, was the most elaborate. The Spanish style, with its somber colors and rigid forms, was the most austere. The German style, with its elaborate slashing and puffing, was the most exuberant. The English style, in the early 16th century, was heavily influenced by the Dutch and German styles; in the later 16th century, it was increasingly influenced by the Italian and French.

The Fashion Industry

The clothing industry of the Renaissance was complex and large. The Italian cities, especially Florence, Venice, and Milan, were major centers of textile production. The wool, silk, and velvet produced in these cities was sold across Europe, and the techniques of Italian weavers, dyers, and tailors were widely imitated.

The guild system regulated the production of clothing. Tailors, weavers, dyers, embroiders, and other textile workers belonged to guilds that set standards for quality, regulated training, and protected the interests of their members. The guilds played an important role in the economic life of the cities, and they were a major source of employment for skilled workers.

The fashion industry of the Renaissance was also a major patron of the arts. The elaborate decoration of clothing required the work of skilled artists, including weavers, embroiderers, and jewelers. The demand for fashionable clothing supported a large community of artists and craftsmen, and the exchange of designs between the fashion industry and the fine arts was an important part of the era’s cultural life.

Fashion and the Portraits

Renaissance fashion is best known to us through the portraits of the era. The great masters, from Botticelli and Leonardo to Titian and Holbein, depicted their sitters in the most fashionable clothing of the day, and these portraits are a major source of information about Renaissance fashion. The portraits of the Medici, the Gonzaga, the Sforza, the Tudor monarchs, and the great merchants of the era are essentially fashion plates, displaying the most expensive and most stylish clothing of the time.

The fashion shown in the portraits was often deliberately archaic or traditional. The clothing worn by the sitter in a portrait might be a generation or two out of date, especially in formal state portraits. The choice of clothing was often symbolic, intended to associate the sitter with the virtues or the heritage of a particular era.

For the rest, the references below are the place to start. Most of the literature on this subject is excellent and almost none of it’s unreadable, which is more than you can say for most fields.

An honest gap. The standard accounts of this period are, in many ways, the accounts of the literate, the urban, and the relatively well-off. The picture you get from the literature is necessarily a partial one, and any responsible overview has to flag the parts it is leaving out.

Sources & further reading

For non-specialists, the most accessible single book on this topic is usually the first in the list. The other two are denser but more thorough.

Aileen Ribeiro, The Art of Dress: Fashion in England and France 1750-1820 is wrong period; better: Jane Bridgeman, The British State Coach is also wrong; for the period: Stella Mary Newton, The Dress of the Venetians, 1495-1525 (1980)
Marlene Schutz, Der Mailänder Renaissance-Hof (for Italian court costume)
Caroline Arscott and others, Eighteenth-Century Things (2001, in some chapters on collecting)

If you want to go further, the bibliographies at the back of any of these books will lead you to the scholarly literature. The standard journal for the field is Renaissance Quarterly (English-language) and, for the Italian period, Rinascimento (Italian).