Women’s Clothing In The Americas: A Brief History Of Women’s Clothes
admin 
Towards the end of the 5th century some Greek women began to wear a long linen tunic called a chiton.
Women also wore cloaks called himations.
Women wore jewelry like necklaces, bracelets and anklets. In cold weather they wore cloaks or shawls. Just think for a moment. Viking women spun and wove cloth indoors and made the families clothes. You see, women wore a dress like garment called a shift made of linen or wool. For instance, clothing was held in place by brooches. It is over it they wore a dress open at the sides, held with shoulder straps. They wore a long tunic and over it another garment, a gown. They did not wear knickers. In the 12th and 13th centuries clothes were still quite basic. Women wore a nightielike linen garment. Wool will be fine and expensive or coarse and cheap. From the mid14th century laws lay down which materials the different classes could wear, to stop the middle classes dressing ‘above themselves’. In the Middle Ages both sexes wore clothes created from wool but it varied in quality. For the poor clothes had to be tough and practical.
For rich Tudors fashion was important and their clothes were very elaborate.
It varied in quality.
The rich wore fine quality wool. All classes wore wool. Sleeves were held on with laces and might be detached. Women wore a kind of petticoat called a smock or shift or chemise made of linen or wool and a wool dress over it. In the late 16th century many women wore a frame made of whale bone or wood under their dress called a farthingale. You have to use a chemical called a mordant to ‘fix’ the dye. Accordingly the Tudors used mostly vegetable dyes just like madder for light red, woad for blueish or walnut for dark brown. Certainly, poor people often wore light brown, yellowish or blueish. It’s a well-known fact that the most expensive dyes were bright redish, purple and indigo. Therefore, this was called a pomander and it disguised the horrid smells in the streets! As a result, Undoubtedly it’s a myth that in Tudor times people were personally dirty. Generally, women who could afford it should hang a container of sweet smelling spices on their belt. Different classes of Aztecs wore different clothes.
Aztec Women wore wrap around skirts and tunics with short sleeves.
Upper class Aztecs wore cotton clothes.
Ordinary people wore clothes created from maguey plant fiber. However, ordinary people wore coarse alpaca wool but nobles wore fine vicuna wool. Then, inca women made clothes from wool or from cotton. Seriously. Dress was in two parts the bodice and the skirt. Over it they wore long dresses. In the 17th century women wore a linen nightie like garment called a shift. Upper skirt was gathered up to reveal an underskirt. Sometimes women wore two skirts. Then again, in the 18th century women’s clothes were basically almost identical to before.
In the 18th Century both men and women wore wigs. Women wore stays and hooped petticoats under their dresses. Front of the skirt was flat but the it bulged outwards at the back. That said, in the 1830s they had puffed sleeves. In the 1850s they wore frames of whalebone or steel wire called crinolines under their skirts.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRqIV5c8WnY
In the early 19th century women wore light dresses. In the late 1860s Victorian women began to wear a kind of half crinoline. About 1800 women started wearing underwear. Originally women wore a pair of drawers they’ve been actually two garments, one for every leg, tied together at the top. They have been called drawers. Zip fastener was invented in 1893 by Whitcomb Judson. Certainly, the electric iron was invented by Henry Seely in 1882 but it did not become common until the 1930s. Thomas Hancock invented elastic in The safety pin was invented in 1849 by Walter Hunt. It was not acceptable for women to show their legs.
In 1900 women wore long dresses.
From 1910 women wore hobble skirts.
They were so narrow women could only ‘hobble’ along while wearing them. As a result, in the mid and late 1920s it was fashionable for women to look boyish. You should take this seriously. At that time women began wearing knee length skirts. The biggest changes was the availability of artificial fibers. Nylon was first made in the 1935 by Wallace Carothers and polyester was invented in 1941 by John Whinfield and James Dickson. In the second half of the 20th century fashions for both sexes became so varied and changed so rapidly it would take too long to list them all. It became common in the 1950s.
