Renaissance Fashion Research Paper

The Renaissance was a time period with many unique fashion and beauty trends that inspire some of the trends in current society. In contrast, there was also many different methods of fashion in the Renaissance time period that were definitely special for that time era. This time period brought about clothing, hair, body and cosmetic trends for both women and men. Renaissance style generated from a blend of roman and barbarian style (Johnston).
Clothing was a major divide between social classes. Many times, robes, tunics and gowns with many different fabrics, colors, longer, fuller and with more layers were worn by the wealthy class because of the costly expense of fabric. But for the poor class, robes and tunics were often found short and

The lower class also used the concept of hand-me-downs and used patches to repair holes or tears. If the clothing piece was not in good condition, then they would use the fabric to remake new clothing articles (Bleiberg). The lower class did not care about fashion, but for the more wealthy class, it was a way of life. They invested their money into pricey handwoven clothing and expensive but luxury fabrics (Bleiberg). A new popular fabric to the Renaissance time period was silk. This type of fabric was very expensive so it was a sign of wealth. Another sign of wealthy was embroidery.This was very expensive because it took a long amount of time to stitch the embroidery designs into fabric. Another type of clothing than showed that a person had a lot of money was fur lined clothing because the fur was very pricey (Johnston). Colored fabric was also had high very high prices and some of the favorite colors consisted of deep red, green and black (Bleiberg). Court fashion also played a major role in the upper class. There many new, key inventions in the court fashion realm. A popular trend in the Renaissance was to exaggerate with clothing pieces. One key and popular new clothing product was a farthingale. A farthingale

About once a week, hair was washed with soap and then combed out. A very popular trend for women was to exaggerate the depth of the hairline by plucking hairs with tweezers (Johnston). The most common hairstyle for grown women was two long braids. For young girls, they wore their long hair loose with a fillet or barbette. A fillet is a metal or cloth band that runs around the head horizontally and a barbette is a vertical band made from cloth that runs underneath the chin. Then for special events, such as summer holidays, girls would wear flower garlands. One of many special hairstyles that women wore was two braids curled around and pinned on the side of their head like ram horns. The pins that held the two braids in place were made out of bone or brass wire (Johnston). There was not much to mens hairstyle either. Men typically wore their hair at a length between their ears and shoulders. If a mans face was shaved, then it was a sign of wealth because lower classes did not have the money for a trip to the barber. Then Monks always had their head shaved