Clothing probably developed primarily as a protection against or adaptation to climate. In hot climates, the 
customary dress has been loose-fitting draped garments. In cold climates fitted and sewn multi-layered garments are more common.
Introduction |
Ancient |
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Renaissance |
17th Century |
18th Century |
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Clothing probably developed primarily as a protection against or adaptation to climate. In hot climates, the customary dress has been loose-fitting draped garments. In cold climates fitted and sewn multi-layered garments are more common.
In the first millennium AD, invaders from northern and eastern Europe forced the Romans to 
withdraw from the western Mediterranean. As Roman influence lessened, their traditions were abandoned. During the Dark Ages, the Greco-Roman styles were radically influenced in the eastern Roman Empire by the more sumptuous clothing styles of the Persian Middle East. In the West, the fitted-and-sewn styles of the northern and eastern Europeans, who migrated across the remains of the Western Roman Empire, affected the styles worn there.
By the 8th century, most of the migration in Europe had stopped, and the process of intermingling traction was well under way. Later the Muslim expansion into the Eastern Roman Empire and into southern Europe had an effect on Western dress. The Christian Crusades into the Middle East, where new fabrics and luxuries were discovered and brought back to Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries, had a much larger effect.
Roman tradition in ecclesiastical dress and the establishment of relations with the tradition-bound Byzantine Empire had a very strong influence on Western aristocratic and ceremonial costume, much of which is still "in fashion" today.
Until relatively recently, fashion was the prerogative of the aristocracy. The clothing of ordinary people did not change much. The history of clothing has largely been taken from portraits of important people in their finest and most impressive attire. But even among the upper classes, clothing was costly enough to be cared for, reused, and passed from one generation to the next. Radical changes in fashion occurred infrequently until the Industrial Revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries made the production of both cloth and clothing far easier and less expensive.
[Introduction] |
[Ancient] |
[Classical] |
[Medieval] |
[Renaissance] |
[17th Century] |
[18th Century] |
[19th Century] |
[20th Century] |
[Non-Western] |
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