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Fashion in 15th-century Europe was characterized by a series of extremes and extravagances, from the voluminous robes called houppelandes with their sweeping floor-length sleeves to the revealing doublets and hose of Renaissance Italy. Hats, hoods, and other headdresses assumed increasing importance, and were draped, jeweled, and feathered.
As Europe continued to grow more prosperous, the urban middle classes, skilled workers, began to wear more complex clothes that followed, at a distance, the fashions set by the elites. It is in this time period that fashion took on a temporal aspect. People could now be dated by their clothes, and being in "out of date" clothing became a new social concern. National variations in clothing seem on the whole to have increased over the 15th century.
