1400–1500 in European fashion

Fashion in 15th-century Europe was characterized by a surge of experimentation and regional variety, from the voluminous robes called houppelandes with their sweeping floor-length sleeves to the revealing giornea of Renaissance Italy. Hats, hoods, and other headdresses assumed increasing importance, and were draped, jeweled, and feathered.
As Europe continued to grow more prosperous, the urban middle classes, skilled workers, began to wear more complex clothes that followed, at a distance, the fashions set by the elites. It is in this time period that fashion took on a temporal aspect. People could now be dated by their clothes, and being in "out of date" clothing became a new social concern. National variations in clothing seem on the whole to have increased over the 15th century.
With England and France mired in the Hundred Years War and its aftermath and then the English Wars of the Roses through most of the 15th century, European fashion north of the Alps was dominated by the glittering court of the Duchy of Burgundy, especially under the fashion-conscious power-broker Philip the Good (ruled 1419–1469). Having added Holland and Flanders to their dominion, the Dukes of Burgundy had access to the latest fabrics of Italy and the East and to English wool exports through the great trading cities of Bruges and Antwerp. Purchases of fabrics through Italian merchants like the two cousins both named Giovanni Arnolfini amounted to a noticeable proportion of all government expenditure. Especially in Florence, where sumptuary laws prevented the citizens from wearing the most luxurious cloths on which the city's fortunes were built, the materials of men's clothing in particular often appear plain in paintings, but contemporaries who understood the difference in grades of cloth very well would have appreciated the beauty and great expense of a very fine grade.
At all levels of society, wool continued to be the predominant material for fabrics, exceeding by far the next most important textile sources, linen and hemp. Wool fabrics were available in a wide range of qualities, from rough undyed cloth to fine, dense broadcloth with a velvety nap. High-value broadcloth was a backbone of the English economy and was exported throughout Europe. Wool fabrics were dyed in rich colours, notably reds, greens, golds, blues, and even shades of pink and purple, although the actual blue colour achievable by dyeing with woad (and less frequently indigo) could not match the characteristic rich lapis lazuli pigment blues depicted in contemporary illuminated manuscripts such as the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry.
Silk weaving was well established around the Mediterranean by the beginning of the 15th century, and figured silks, often silk velvets with silver-gilt wefts, are increasingly seen in Italian dress and in the dress of the wealthy throughout Europe. By the 14th century, floral designs featuring pomegranate motifs had reached Europe from (northern) China and Central Asia, becoming dominant in the stately variations designed by the silk weavers of Florence, Genoa, Venice, Valencia, and Seville and in the Ottoman silk-producing cities of Istanbul and Bursa, from this period and into the 1400s.
Towards the end of the 14th century, Italian silk and velvet manufacturers were applying their advanced weaving skills to achieve ever more complex designs. By the 15th century, they were creating bold and intricate variations on an undulating "pomegranate pattern" (a name applied later, to encompass any design incorporating the pomegranate motif, even where the motifs came to more closely resemble flora such artichokes, thistles, lotus and palmettes). These grand, symmetrical, vegetal designs were seen most frequently in Europe between 1420 and 1550, almost to the exclusion of other pattern types.
Fur was worn, mostly as a lining layer, by those who could afford it. The grey and white squirrel furs of the Middle Ages, vair and miniver, went out of style except at court, first for men and then for women; the new fashionable furs were dark brown sable and marten. Toward the end of the 15th century, wild animal furs such as lynx became popular. Ermine remained the prerogative and hallmark of royalty.
Slashing is a decorative technique that involved making small cuts on the outer fabric of a garment in order to reveal the sometimes brightly colored inner garment or lining. It was performed on all varieties of clothing, both men's and women's. Contemporary chroniclers identify the source of the fashion for slashing garments to the actions of Swiss soldiers in the aftermath of the Battle of Grandson in 1476. Supposedly the Swiss plundered the rich fabrics of the Burgundian nobles and used the scraps to patch their tattered clothes. In reality, images appear of sleeves with a single slashed opening as early as the mid-15th century, although the German fashion for "many small all-over slits" may have begun here. Whatever its origin, the fad for multiple slashings spread to German Landsknechts and thence to France, Italy, and England, where it was to remain a potent current in fashionable attire into the mid-17th century.
A second result of the defeat at Grandson was the decline of Burgundy as a fount of culture and fashion. The heiress Mary of Burgundy married Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor but died young. In the last decade of the 15th century, Charles VIII of France invaded Italy and was briefly declared King of Naples. As a result, the French nobility were introduced to the new fabrics and styles of Italy, which would combine with German influence to become mainstream fashion of the nobility in France (and later spread to England) in the first half of the 16th century.
Women's fashions of the 15th century consisted of a long gown, usually with sleeves, worn over a kirtle or undergown, with a linen chemise or smock worn next to the skin. The sleeves were made detachable and were heavily ornamented. The long-waisted silhouette of the previous period was replaced by a high-waisted style with fullness over the belly, often confined by a belt. The wide, shallow scooped neckline was replaced by a V-neck, often cut low enough to reveal the decorated front of the kirtle beneath.
Various styles of overgowns were worn. The cotehardie fitted smoothly from the shoulders to the hips and then flared by means of inserted triangular gores. It featured sleeves tight to the elbow with hanging streamers or tippets. The tight fit was achieved with lacing or buttons. This style faded rapidly from fashion in favor of the houppelande, a full robe with a high collar and wide sleeves that had become fashionable around 1380 and remained so to mid-15th century. The later houppelande had sleeves that were snug at the wrist, making a full "bag" sleeve. The bag sleeve was sometimes slashed in the front to allow the lower arm to reach through.
Around 1450, the dress of northern Europe developed a low V-neck that showed a glimpse of the square-necked kirtle. The neckline could be filled in with a sheer linen partlet. Wide turn-backs like revers displayed a contrasting lining, frequently of fur or black velvet, and the sleeves might be cuffed to match. Sleeves were very long, covering half of the hand, and often highly decorated with embroidery. Fine sleeves were often transferred from one dress to another. The term robe déguisée was coined in the mid-1400s to describe garments reflecting the very latest fashions, a term which endured into the 16th century.
In Italy, the low scoop-neck of the early decades gave way to a neckline that was high in front with a lower V-neck at the back at mid-15th century. This was followed by a V-neckline that displayed the kirtle or gamurra (sometimes spelled camorra). Sleeveless overgowns such as the cioppa were popular, and the gamurra sleeves displayed were often of rich figured silks. The cotta was a lighter-weight undergown for summer wear. A sideless overgown called the giornea was worn with the gamurra or cotta. Toward the end of the period, sleeves were made in sections or panels and slashed, allowing the full chemise sleeves below to be pulled through in puffs along the arm, at the shoulder, and at the elbow. This was the beginning of the fashion for puffed and slashed sleeves that would last for two centuries.
The partlet, a separate item to fill in a low neckline, appeared in this period, usually of sheer fabric (linen or possibly silk) with an open V-neckline. Some partlets had a collar and a back similar to the upper part of a shirt. Burgundian partlets were usually depicted worn under the dress (but over the kirtle); in Italy the partlet seems to have been worn over the dress and could be pointed or cut straight across at the lower front.
Two uniquely Spanish fashions appeared from the 1470s. The verdugada or verdugado was a gown with a bell-shaped hoop skirt with visible casings stiffened with reeds, which would become the farthingale. The earliest depictions of this garment come from Catalonia, where it was worn with pieced or slashed sleeves and the second new style, a chemise with trumpet sleeves, open and very wide at the wrist.
The sideless surcoat of the 14th century became fossilized as a ceremonial costume for royalty, usually with an ermine front panel (called a plackard or placket) and a mantle draped from the shoulders; it can be seen in variety of royal portraits and as "shorthand" to identify queens in illuminated manuscripts of the period.
A variety of hats and headdresses were worn in Europe in the 15th century. The crespine of Northern Europe, originally a thick hairnet or snood, had evolved into a mesh of jeweler's work that confined the hair on the sides of the head by the end of the 14th century. Gradually the fullness at the sides of head was pulled up to the temples and became pointed, like horns (à corné). By mid-15th century, the hair was pulled back from the forehead, and the crespine, now usually called a caul, sat on the back of the head. Very fashionable women shaved their foreheads and eyebrows. Any of these styles could be topped by a padded roll, sometimes arranged in a heart-shape, or a veil, or both. Veils were supported by wire frames that exaggerated the shape and were variously draped from the back of the headdress or covered the forehead.
Women also wore the chaperon, a draped hat based on the hood and liripipe, and a variety of related draped and wrapped turbans.
The most extravagant headdress of Burgundian fashion was the hennin, a cone or truncated-cone shaped cap with a wire frame covered in fabric and topped by a floating veil. Later hennins featured a turned-back brim, or were worn over a hood with a turned-back brim. Towards the end of the 15th century women's head-dresses became smaller, more convenient, and less picturesque. The gable hood, a stiff and elaborate head-dress, emerged around 1480 and was popular among elder ladies up until the mid-16th century.
Women of the merchant classes in Northern Europe wore modified versions of courtly hairstyles, with coifs or caps, veils, and wimples of crisp linen (often with visible creases from ironing and folding). A brief fashion added rows of gathered frills to the coif or veil; this style is sometimes known by the German name kruseler.
The general European convention of completely covering married women's hair was not accepted in warmer Italy. Italian women wore their hair very long, wound with ribbons or braided, and twisted up into knots of various shapes with the ends hanging free. The hair was then covered with sheer veils or small caps. Toward the 1480s women wore chin-length sections of hair in loose waves or ripples over the ears (a style that would inspire "vintage" hair fashions in the 1620s and '30s and again in the 1840s and 1850s). Blonde hair was considered desirable (by Botticelli for one), and visitors to Venice reported that ladies sat out in the sun on their terraces with their hair spread out around large circular disks worn like hats, attempting to bleach it in the sun. Chemical methods were also used.
Women from the 14th century wore laced ankle-boots, which were often lined with fur. Later in the 15th century, women began to wear long-toed footwear styled on men's poulaines. They used outer shoes called pattens—often themselves with elongated toes during this era—to protect their shoes proper while outside.
The basic outfit of men in this period consisted of a shirt, doublet, and hose, with some sort of over garment (robe worn over clothing).
Linen shirts were worn next to the skin. Toward the end of the period, shirts (French chemise, Italian camicia, Spanish camisa) began to be full through the body and sleeves with wide, low necklines; the sleeves were pulled through the slashings or piecing of the doublet sleeves to make puffs, especially at the elbow and the back of the arm. As the cut of doublets revealed more fabric, wealthy men's shirts were often decorated with embroidery or applied braid.
Over the shirt was worn a doublet. From around the mid-15th century very tight-fitting doublets, tailored to be tight at the waist, giving in effect a short skirt below, were fashionable. Sleeves were generally full, even puffy, and when worn with a large chaperon, the look was extremely stylish, but very top-heavy. Very form-fitting hose, and long pointed shoes or thigh-boots gave a long attenuated appearance below the waist, and a stout, solid one above. The Houppelande/gown was often elaborately pleated. The pleats being achieved by various means. In Italy both shirt and doublet were often high, tight and collarless at the front of the neck; sometimes they are shown higher at the front than the back.
Men of all classes wore short braies or breeches, a loose undergarment, usually made of linen, which was held up by a belt. Hose or chausses made out of wool were used to cover the legs, and were generally brightly colored. Early hose sometimes had leather soles and were worn without shoes or boots. Hose were generally tied to the breech belt, or to the breeches themselves, or to a doublet.
As overgarments became shorter, hose reached to the waist rather than the hips, and were sewn together into a single garment with a pouch or flap to cover the front opening; this evolved into the codpiece which only begins being exposed formally after the 1480s in art.
The hose exposed by short tops were, especially in Italy late in the 15th century, often strikingly patterned, parti-coloured (different colours for each leg, or vertically divided), or embroidered. Hose were cut on the cross-grain or bias for stretch.
The Houppelande, in Italy called the cioppa, was the characteristic overgarment of the wealthy in the first half of the 15th century. It was essentially a robe with fullness falling from the shoulders in organ-pipe pleats and very full sleeves often reaching to the floor with, in the beginning of the 15th century then at the start of the 16th century, a high collar. The houppelande could be lined in fur, and the hem and sleeves might be dagged or cut into scallops. It was initially often worn belted. The length of the garment shortened from around the ankle to above the knee over this period. The floor-length sleeves were later wrist-length but very full, forming a bag or sack sleeve, or were worn off the arm, hanging ornamentally behind. This style of sleeve appeared towards the 1430s and it is at this time, that in French, the term "houppelande" gets replaced by the word "robe" or gown. A side-less and sleeveless houppelande, called a giornea in Italy and a journade in France, was popular. It was usually pleated and was worn hanging loose or belted. Young men wore them short and older men wore them calf- or ankle-length.
These houppelandes, giorneas and gowns were pleated thanks to different techniques but the most common ones were using a fabric ring and fastening the gown to it in a way that pleated the garment and adding a layer of interlining (either densely woven linen or low-quality fulled wool) which would have been pleated as any other garment. The outer fabric and lining would have been sewn over this inter-lining in order to take the pleat's shape but without a visible seam line.
The middle of the 15th century in Burgundy saw what seems to have been the earliest occurrence of the male fashion for dressing all in black, which was to reappear so strongly in the "Spanish" style of the mid-16th–17th century and again in the 19th–20th centuries. This was apparently begun by Duke Philip the Good and his court. we have records of him buying black gowns for his retainers. In Venice, the patrician class, after the age of joining the Great Council, wore their long red robes as a uniform virtually unchanged throughout the 15th century. In contrast, the young men and the famous courtesans of the city dressed very extravagantly.
In the last decades of the 15th century, a new style of gown appeared; this was of various lengths, generally worn unbelted, and featured wide turned back revers and collar.
Short or long cloaks or mantles were worn overall for ceremonial occasions and in bad weather; these typically fastened on one shoulder.
Early in the 15th century, the hood remained a common component of dress for all classes, although it was frequently worn around the neck as a cowl or twisted into the fantastical shapes of the chaperon. Felt hats of various styles—tall-crowned with small brims or no brims at all, hats with brims turned up on one side for variations of the coif, or low-crowned with wider brims pulled to a point in front—began to compete with the draped chaperon, especially in Italy and after the 1460s in France/Flanders. A brimless scarlet cap became nearly universal for young Florentines in particular, and was widely worn by older men and those in other cities.
In mid-15th century, a bowl haircut with the hair shaved at the back of the neck was stylish. In Germany, and briefly in Venice, a wide shock of frizzy blond hair was often seen on images of lovers (and angels) in the later part of the 15th century—less often in portraits. By the end of the 15th century, shoulder-length hair became fashionable, a trend that would continue into the early 16th century.
The "Polish" fashion of long-toed poulaines, pikes, or crakows in the previous century continued, prompting sumptuary taxes, regulations, ecclesiastical censure for vanity, and even—in France—outright bans. Outer pattens and the sabatons of the period's armor followed suit, reaching such awkward extremes in the second half of the century that they fell entirely out of fashion in favor of the duckbill shoe supposedly prompted by the extra toe of France's Charles VIII.
Children's clothing during the Italian Renaissance reflected that of their parents. In other words, kids dressed exactly like the adults and looked like miniature versions of them. As babies and toddlers, children were all put in dresses to make the potty training process easier for parents or maids. Then, around the age of 6 or 7, boys would receive their first pair of hose (called breeching).