What we wore
A guided tour, 43,000 BCE – 1940 CE, in 19 stops.
The story of clothing, from the first bone needles of the ice age to woven linen, silk, togas and kimonos, the cotton that started the Industrial Revolution, blue jeans and nylon.
The stops
Needle and thread (43,000 BCE)
The oldest eyed needles, carved from bone, turn up in Siberia some 45,000 years ago. With them people could sew close-fitting clothes of hide and fur and live through ice-age winters far to the north. (Lice that live only in clothing hint that people were wearing something much earlier still.)
The first woven cloth (26,000 BCE)
By about 28,000 years ago people were twisting plant fibres into string and weaving it: impressions of netting and cloth survive in fired clay at Dolní Vestonice in Moravia. The Venus of Willendorf, carved nearby, may wear a woven cap.
Ötzi's outfit (3,300 BCE)
The Iceman, who died high in the Alps about 5,300 years ago, wore a coat and leggings of sheep and goat hide sewn from strips, a bearskin cap and shoes stuffed with grass. His clothes had been patched and mended many times. This is a reconstruction.
The secret of silk (2,700 BCE)
Chinese farmers learned to unwind the cocoons of the silkworm and weave the thread into silk at least 5,000 years ago; legend credits Leizu, wife of the Yellow Emperor. For thousands of years China kept the method secret and traded the cloth across Asia. Court ladies preparing silk, in a 12th-century copy of a Tang painting.
Linen of the Nile (1,350 BCE)
Egyptians wore linen spun from flax, the finest so thin it was almost see-through. The oldest woven garment known, the Tarkhan Dress, is a linen shirt made in Egypt over 5,000 years ago. Here Nebamun, an official of Thebes, hunts in the marshes about 1350 BCE.
Draped, not sewn (530 BCE)
Greek clothes were rectangles of wool or linen, pinned and belted rather than cut to shape: the peplos and chiton for women, a tunic and cloak for men. Statues like the Peplos Kore (about 530 BCE) were painted in bright colours; this cast shows how hers may have looked.
The toga (13 BCE)
Only a Roman citizen could wear the toga, a great semicircle of white wool wrapped round the body without pins. It was hot and heavy, and by the time of the empire it was kept for formal occasions. Augustus’ family in procession on the Ara Pacis, 13 to 9 BCE.
Purple and silk (547 CE)
In Byzantium, purple dye from sea snails and silk from China were worth more than gold, and the deepest purple was kept for the imperial family. Around 552 monks smuggled silkworm eggs to Constantinople, and the empire began weaving its own silk. Empress Theodora in mosaic at Ravenna, 547.
Dressed in wealth (1434 CE)
Wool was medieval Europe’s great industry, and Flanders wove the finest. Clothes showed rank, and laws set what each class might wear. In Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait (1434), the green gown lined with fur and gathered in deep folds is a show of wealth; the bride is not pregnant, it is the fashion.
Cloth of the Inca (1500 CE)
In the Andes, cloth was prized above gold. The Inca state filled storehouses with it, paid and rewarded people in it, and its finest weavers made tunics of alpaca wool and cotton in dense geometric patterns. Checkerboard tunics like this one are thought to have been worn by soldiers.
Ruffs and pearls (1588 CE)
Elizabethan nobles wore stiff starched ruffs, padded sleeves and bodices sewn with pearls and gold thread. In the Armada Portrait, made after the Spanish Armada was beaten in 1588, the queen’s dress is a display of England’s power and riches.
The kimono (1690 CE)
In Edo-period Japan everyone wore the kosode, the ancestor of the kimono, and rich townspeople spent fortunes on dyed and embroidered silks, even as the shogunate passed laws against luxury. Hishikawa Moronobu’s Beauty Looking Back, about 1690.
Indian cotton (1700 CE)
India had grown and woven cotton for thousands of years, and its bright, washable painted and printed chintz became the rage in Europe. In 1700 and 1721 Britain banned most Indian cotton cloth to protect its own weavers. A painted chintz bed cover from the Coromandel coast, 18th century.
A scandal in muslin (1783 CE)
When Marie Antoinette was painted in 1783 in a simple white muslin dress, people were shocked that the queen appeared in what looked like a petticoat, and the painting was taken down. Within a decade, light cotton dresses were what fashionable women all over Europe wore.
Cloth from machines (1835 CE)
Britain’s cotton mills started the Industrial Revolution: the spinning jenny, the water frame and the power loom made cloth cheap enough for everyone. Much of the raw cotton was grown by enslaved people in the American South. Power-loom weaving in a mill, 1835.
The crinoline (1855 CE)
Hooped petticoats, and from 1856 a cage of steel hoops, let skirts swell wider than ever. The sewing machine and the first synthetic dye, mauve, discovered in 1856, changed how clothes were made and coloured. Empress Eugénie and her ladies, painted by Winterhalter in 1855.
Blue jeans (1873 CE)
In 1873 Levi Strauss and the tailor Jacob Davis patented work trousers of blue denim strengthened with copper rivets, for miners and labourers. A century later jeans were worn all over the world.
Short skirts and straight lines (1926 CE)
After the First World War clothes changed faster than ever: corsets gave way to loose, straight dresses with hems at the knee, and designers like Coco Chanel made plain jersey and the little black dress fashionable. A Paris fashion plate, 1926.
Clothes from chemistry (1940 CE)
Rayon, made from wood pulp, and then nylon, the first fully synthetic fibre, changed what clothes are made of. When nylon stockings went on sale in 1940, four million pairs sold in four days. Today most of the world’s clothing contains synthetic fibres.