Early Western travellers, traveling to Persia, Turkey, India, or China, often commented on the lack of change in fashion in their respective places. The Japanese shogun’s secretary boasted (not entirely accurate) to a Spanish visitor in 1609 that Japanese clothing had not changed in over a thousand years. However, there is considerable evidence in Ming China for rapid changes in Chinese fashions. Dress changes often occurred at times of economic or social change, as occurred in ancient Rome and the medieval caliphate, followed by a long period of no major changes. In 8th-century Muslim Spain, the musician Ziryab introduced to Córdoba sophisticated styles of dress based on the daily and seasonal fashions of his native Baghdad, modified by his own inspiration.

Similar changes in fashion occurred in the 11th century in the Middle East following the arrival of the Turks, who introduced clothing styles from Central Asia and the Far East. The beginning in Europe of continual and ever more rapid changes in clothing styles can be dated fairly safely. Historians, including James Laver and Fernand Braudel, date the beginning of Western fashions in clothing to the mid-14th century, although it should be noted that they tend to rely heavily on contemporary images and illuminated manuscripts were not common before. of the fourteenth century. The most dramatic early change in fashion was a sudden and drastic shortening and tightening of the male garment from the calf to barely covering the buttocks, sometimes accompanied by padding on the chest to make it appear larger. This created the distinctive western outline of a tailored blouse worn over leggings or pants. The pace of change accelerated considerably in the following century, and women’s and men’s fashion, especially in the form of dress and hair styling, became equally complex.

Art historians can therefore confidently and accurately use fashion to date images, often to within five years, particularly in the case of images from the 15th century. Initially, changes in fashion led to a fragmentation among Europe’s upper classes of what had previously been a very similar style of dress, and the subsequent development of distinctive national styles. These national styles remained very different until a contrary movement in the 17th and 18th centuries imposed similar styles once again, mostly originating from the Ancien Régime of France. Although the rich used to lead fashion, the growing wealth of early modern Europe led the bourgeoisie and even peasants to follow trends at a distance, but still uncomfortably close to the elites, a factor that Fernand Braudel sees as one of the main engines of fashion change. .