The garment in art: When silk whispers the history of men
The golden light of an October afternoon filters through the stained glass of London’s National Gallery. Before The Arnolfini Portrait, a visitor stops, transfixed. Not by the faces, nor even by the convex mirror reflecting a mysterious scene, but by the green fabric draping the woman. This deep, almost liquid green is no mere colour: it is a declaration. A gown of fine wool, lined with fur, that speaks volumes of the wealth, ambitions, and perhaps even the secrets of a 15th-century Italian merchant. A few rooms away, Manet’s Olympia stares down the viewer with calculated impudence. Her naked body is not the scandal—it is the black ribbon around her neck, the golden slippers carelessly discarded, the orchid in her hair. Details that turn a courtesan into an icon, and a canvas into a manifesto.
By Artedusa
••11 min readIn art, clothing has never been a mere accessory. It is a language. A weapon. A mirror held up to the societies that produced it. From the silken folds of Roman togas to the geometric silhouettes of Mondrian dresses, every pleat, every stitch tells a story of power, desire, and rebellion. What if we followed the thread of this history? Not as one flips through a fashion catalogue, but as one deciphers a palimpsest—where each layer of fabric reveals a stratum of meaning.
01The fabric of the gods: when linen was worth more than gold
Picture ancient Egypt, where linen was so precious it served as currency. Priests wore tunics so fine they seemed woven from mist, while peasants made do with coarse garments dyed in earthy ochres. In the tombs of Saqqara, the mummies of nobles are wrapped in shrouds so delicate that even after three thousand years, the meticulous pleats of the kalasiris—those fitted robes that clung to the body like a second skin—remain visible.
Egyptian artists did not depict fashion: they sculpted eternity. Look at the statues of pharaohs: their pleated kilts, their ousekh collars of faience beads, their sandals of plaited papyrus. Every detail is a code. The nemes, that striped blue-and-gold headdress, was not just an accessory—it was the divine attribute of the sovereign. And those sandals? They never touched sacred ground. A servant carried them before the king to spare him the defilement of the earth.
In Rome, the toga became a political tool. Only free citizens were permitted to wear it, and its colour spoke volumes of their rank. Immaculate white (toga candida) for election candidates, purple (toga picta) reserved for the emperor. When Julius Caesar was assassinated, it was partly because of his toga—too ostentatious, too regal, a garment that ultimately betrayed him. Artists, meanwhile, knew how to play with these symbols. In the frescoes of Pompeii, Roman matrons appear draped in brightly coloured stolae, while slaves wear dark, almost invisible tunics. Clothing here is not a matter of taste: it is a border.
02The theatre of appearances: when the Renaissance invented the costume of power
Florence, 1460. A young man presents himself before the Duke of Milan, dressed in a crimson velvet doublet, slashed at the sleeves to reveal a yellow silk lining. This is no ordinary outfit—it is a declaration of war. The young man is Lorenzo de’ Medici, and he knows that every detail of his attire sends a message. The slashes in the fabric, inspired by Swiss mercenaries, are a nod to military strength. The velvet, imported from Bruges, proves his wealth. As for the yellow lining, it is a provocation: in medieval Italy, this colour, associated with Jews, was forbidden to Christians. But Lorenzo does not care. He wears yellow like a banner.
The Renaissance marked the height of clothing as a tool of propaganda. The portraits of the Medici court do not show faces: they display wardrobes. In Leonardo da Vinci’s Portrait of Ginevra Benci, the young woman wears a black dress so austere it becomes scandalous. At a time when noblewomen flaunted their brocades and pearls, this deep black is a provocation. A way of saying: "I need no adornment to shine." And then there are those almost invisible details—the transparency of the veil covering her shoulders, the black ribbon coiled in her hair. Elements that turn a dress into a poem.
Artists, meanwhile, became virtuosos of fabric. Look at The Virgin of the Rocks: the folds of Mary’s robe do not obey the laws of gravity—they dance, they float, as if the cloth were alive. Leonardo spent hours studying the movement of fabrics, even tossing wet sheets into the air to observe their pleats. For him, clothing was not an accessory: it was an extension of the body, a second skin that revealed the soul.
03The law of luxury: when the state regulated fashion
Paris, 1676. A royal edict has just been issued: common women are no longer permitted to wear robes à paniers, those structures of wood and horsehair that gave skirts their exaggerated proportions. Only duchesses and marchionesses may now display these cages of fabric that distort the silhouette. The reason? King Louis XIV, anxious to preserve social hierarchies, had decreed that luxury must remain the privilege of the aristocracy.
Sumptuary laws did not begin in the 17th century. As early as the Middle Ages, European states attempted to control what their subjects were allowed to wear. In 1363, King Edward III of England forbade the bourgeoisie from dressing like nobles. In 1563, Queen Elizabeth I of France (later the wife of Henri IV) was ordered to renounce her French-style gowns, deemed too ostentatious for a foreign princess. And in 1633, the Paris parliament fined a bourgeois woman for daring to wear a silk dress—a fabric reserved for the nobility.
These laws were not mere whims. They reflected a deep-seated fear: that of seeing social classes mix, borders blur. In Les Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, the illuminations systematically contrast peasants in coarse tunics with aristocrats in golden brocades. The message is clear: the order of the world is read in clothing.
Yet these laws were regularly circumvented. The wealthiest bourgeois bought letters of nobility to gain the right to wear furs. Common women sewed silk ribbons onto their woollen dresses, hoping to pass for ladies. And artists played with these prohibitions. In Raphael’s Marriage of the Virgin, the figures wear clothing that did not exist in biblical times—Renaissance gowns embroidered with floral motifs, turning a sacred scene into a fashion show. Here, clothing becomes a deliberate anachronism, a way of saying: "Art has no laws."
04The rebellion of fabrics: when fashion became a weapon
Paris, 1789. A woman walks through the streets wearing a red Phrygian cap, the symbol of freed slaves in antiquity. Around her, men have traded their silk breeches for coarse linen trousers. They are not sans-culottes—they are fleeing aristocrats who have adopted the clothing of the people to escape the guillotine. Fashion, at the end of the 18th century, is no longer a matter of taste: it is a matter of survival.
The French Revolution marked a turning point. For the first time, clothing became a tool of subversion. The Incroyables and Merveilleuses, those young people who defied convention under the Directory, wore coats so tight they became grotesque, cravats so high they hid the chin. Their clothes were not beautiful—they were provocative. As if, after centuries of hoop skirts and powdered wigs, the youth wanted to burn it all.
And then there were the women. Olympe de Gouges, in her Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen, demanded the right to wear trousers—a garment reserved for men. George Sand, a few decades later, adopted the frock coat and cigar, scandalising all of Paris. In La Dame aux camélias, Marguerite Gautier wears a white dress stained with red—a symbol of tainted purity, but also of rebellion against bourgeois codes.
Artists captured this effervescence. In Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People, the allegorical figure of the Republic wears a torn yellow dress, a bare breast, a Phrygian cap. She is not a goddess—she is a woman of the people, her clothes speaking of struggle, passion, anger. And when Manet painted Olympia in 1863, he did not merely shock with a realistic nude: he turned a courtesan into an icon. Her naked body is not the scandal—it is the black ribbon around her neck, the golden slippers, the orchid in her hair. Details that say: "I am the mistress of my image."
05The body as canvas: when fashion became art
New York, 1938. A woman enters Elsa Schiaparelli’s couture salon, dressed in a black dress so simple it becomes revolutionary. Schiaparelli, fascinated, proposes a collaboration. A few weeks later, the dress is exhibited at the MoMA—not as a garment, but as a work of art. Its name? The Lobster Dress, inspired by a painting by Dalí. The lobster, hand-painted on the silk, seems to crawl across the fabric. The woman who wears it is no longer a client: she becomes a living sculpture.
Schiaparelli was not the first to blur the boundaries between fashion and art. As early as the 1920s, the Surrealists seized upon clothing as a playground. Marcel Duchamp created readymades with corsets and hats. Meret Oppenheim imagined a fur-covered teacup—an object at once absurd and deeply erotic. But it was Schiaparelli who pushed the idea furthest. Her dresses were not garments: they were manifestos. The Skeleton Dress, with its raised bones, turned the body into an allegory of death. The Dress with Drawers, inspired by Dalí, made the bust a chest of drawers where each compartment revealed a secret.
In the 1960s, Yves Saint Laurent took the next step. In 1965, he presented The Mondrian Dress—a jersey dress in white, crossed by black bands and primary-coloured squares. This was not a dress: it was a Piet Mondrian painting worn on the body. Saint Laurent did not copy art—he democratised it. "I wanted women to be able to wear a painting," he later said. And that is precisely what they did. The Mondrian dress became a symbol, worn by women who wished to combine elegance and avant-garde.
Today, the boundaries have nearly vanished. Designers like Iris van Herpen use 3D printing to sculpt dresses that seem straight out of a science-fiction film. Artists like Nick Cave create Soundsuits—costumes made of buttons, beads, and feathers that transform their wearers into hybrid creatures. And museums, at last, recognise fashion as an art form in its own right. In 2018, the Metropolitan Museum of New York devoted an exhibition to Heavenly Bodies, exploring the links between fashion and religion. Valentino gowns stood alongside medieval chasubles, papal vestments conversed with Jean Paul Gaultier’s creations. Here, clothing is no longer an accessory: it is a prayer.
06The legacy of folds: what our clothes say about us
Paris, 2023. A young woman enters the Yves Saint Laurent Museum, dressed in a black trouser suit. Around her, 1960s dresses, tuxedos, embroidered capes. She looks at the Mondrian dress, then down at her own suit. She does not know it, but she is wearing a legacy. Those trousers, those clean lines, that absence of jewellery—all of it comes from afar. From Beau Brummell, who invented the modern men’s suit in the 19th century. From Coco Chanel, who liberated women from the corset. From Saint Laurent, who dared to dress women in men’s clothes.
Clothing, today, is more than ever a language. Jean-Michel Basquiat’s dreadlocks, David Bowie’s androgynous costumes, the dashikis worn by civil rights activists—every sartorial choice is a declaration. And artists continue to play with these codes. In the 1990s, Cindy Sherman photographed herself as Marilyn Monroe, as a 1950s housewife, as a decaying Hollywood star. Her clothes are not disguises: they are masks. Ways of asking: "Who are we when we dress?"
Today, fashion is everywhere—and nowhere. Influencers wear clothes that will disappear in six months. Luxury brands sell €1,000 sneakers. Younger generations mix eras, styles, cultures. And yet, something endures. In the ateliers of great couturiers, hands still sew dresses by hand, taking hundreds of hours. In museums, visitors stop before Olympia, fascinated by that black ribbon, those golden slippers, the orchid in her hair.
Because in art, clothing has never been a mere matter of fabric. It is a question of identity. Of power. Of desire. And if we looked at our own clothes with the same attention we give to a Manet painting? What would we say about ourselves? What would our pleats, our seams, our choices reveal? Perhaps, simply, that we are all, a little, works of art in motion.