Freaky Fashions
Okay, I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that an entire page just on Renaissance clothing is a complete waste. Well, you're wrong. The Renaissance was the height of creativity, imagination, inventiveness, and art, but what the rich folks were wearing was practically unbelievable. Think gargantuan frills, shoes you could barely walk in, and wigs that were made of everything from human hair to sheep wool.
What? Did you think the Renaissance was just about the good things that happened? Nope! This page is dedicated to some fashions that are weird, uncomfortable, silly, or just plain dangerous to your health!
Left: This is what the average middle-class person wore back in the 1500s. Not too showy, but not too casual. Unfortunately, the Renaissance sparked a time when fashion fever also went a little bit out of control.
Wacky Apparel
In the 1500s, during the earlier years of the Renaissance, people liked dressing fancy. Look at a picture of Queen Elizabeth I to the right. Look at her super-wide dress! Look at the neck-frill that makes her look like one of those frilled lizards! Elizabeth, along with many other queens, made it popular to wear huge, exhuberant apparel.
Men and women alike were OBSESSED with frills back then. It was originally a style from India, where men would wear ruffs on their shoulders to protect their silk clothes from the oils of their hair. But it soon went from being practical to just plain pointless as collars started growing bigger, and bigger - and frillier too. The largest ones were as big as wagon wheels! They had to invent special elongated spoons just so that food would be able to reach someone's mouth.
Women also apparently thought that they'd look more attractive if they looked like a walking sofa. But how did having really wide, poofy dresses become such a fashion craze? Well, there was once a queen who found out that she was pregnant, and she knew the king was definately NOT the father. So in her later months of pregnancy, she hid her bulging stomach by wearing thick, wide dresses - sometimes up to two feet wide. Naturally, all the other women wanted to look like her, so they followed suit, and the farthingale was born!
My, What Big Hair You Have!
Rich folks in the Renaissance era were absolutely crazy about hair - the bigger, the better. Some women wore poufs that were three feet high! Girls had to sleep standing up, and because it took hours on end to gussy-up your hair, they would leave their hairdos like that for weeks. Yes, you heard me correctly. WEEKS. Women's hair soon became infested with bugs and even rats that happily made their homes in the icky flea-ridden hair that so many women chose to wear. Also, women's hair began to become very heavy, because they were so huge, and this caused strain on their necks. But still, beauty is pain, and that's what many upper-class women hoped to achieve!
The woman who more or less invented the hairdresser was King Louis of France's wife, Madame de Pompadour. In the 1700s, in the Late Renaissance, Madame de Pompadour would host theme parties. Women dressed their hair depending on the theme. If it was "nature", then a women would have a live bird in a birdcage in her hair (I'm not joking!). One widow even had a model of her husband's tombstone erected in her hair. The sky was the limit.
And men weren't safe from the freaky fashion fever either. Most rich French men would shave their heads bald and order a hairdresser to make the fanciest wig he could imagine. Poorer folks couldn't afford wigs made out of human hair, so instead had wigs made of yak hair, or even string! A man's hair was huge, although not as big as a woman's.
Luckily, the hair-craze didn't really hit Italy or Spain as much as it hit France. Can you imagine what Leonardo da Vinci would look like with a three-foot tall wig on? I shudder at the thought!
The Strangest Shoe Styles Ever
In the 1400s in Europe, when everyone was waking up from the nightmare that was the Dark Ages and welcoming the Renaissance, there were some pretty weird shoes. Take the Crackowes, named after the Polish city that they originated from. These shoes made everyone look like an elf from ancient lore. The toes became longer and longer, much longer than the picture on the far left shows. At the maximum, these shoes were a whopping two feet long!
Unfortunately, these strange shoes were hazardous to your health. In 1344, Duke Leopold II of Austria was running for his life from assassins. But he was wearing those goofy old crackowes, and he kept tripping over his feet! His shoes literally were the death of him.
There were also shoes that were ridiculously wide, called bear paws. They were very popular for men, and they literally made you look like a duck! They ranged from five to a whopping nine inches wide! Think about how hard it would be to walk if your shoes were almost as wide as three normal shoes side by side.
Toward the middle of the Renaissance, people went back to wearing relatively normal shoes. But in Venice, Italy, where there was always so much water and mud everywhere, some smarty decided to create a new kind of woman's shoes, called chopines (look to the left). These were basically normal sandals with unbelievably high heels. The tallest were a giraffe-like EIGHTEEN INCHES! Women would need someone walking beside them to make sure that they wouldn't fall over.
I'm Glad It's Over!
Hair has been shaved, and wigged, or poofed up and decorated. People have worn giant collars and dresses that made them look like they were hiding hippos under them. We've had shoes that were long and pointy, flat and wide, or so tall that you looked like you were a relative of a tree!
Yeah, Renaissance apparel was crazy. But fashion will always be around. All we can do is walk about with our current styles and trends and wonder if future generations will look back on us and think that we looked just as silly.
