CHAPTER XVII
THE RENAISSANCE
Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries
HE marked departure is necks cut square, if low, and elaborate jewelled chains draped from shoulders, outlining neck of gown and describing a festoon on front of waist, which is soon to become independent of skirt to develop on its own account.
As in the fifteenth century, when necks were cut low off the shoulders, they were on occasions filled in with tuckers.
The skirt now registers a new characteristic; it parts at the waist line over a petticoat, and the opening is decorated by the ornamental, heavy chain which hangs from girdle to hem of gown.
One sees the hair still worn coiled low in the neck, concealing the ears and held in a snood or in Italy cut "Florentine" fashion with fringe on brow.
Observe how the wealth of the Roman Empire, through its new trade channels opening up with the East (the result of the crusades) led to the importation of rich and many-coloured Oriental stuffs; the same wealth ultimately established looms in Italy for making silks and velvets, to decorate man and his home. There was no longer simplicity in line and colour scheme; gorgeous apparel fills the frames of the Renaissance and makes amusing reading for those who consult old documents. The clothes of man, like his over-ornate furniture, show a debauched and vulgar taste. Instead of the lines which follow one another, solid colours, and trimmings kept to hem of neck and sleeve and skirt, great designs, in satins and velvet brocades, distort the lines and proportions of man and woman.
The good Gothic lines lived on in the costumes of priests and nuns.