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 A sumptuary law passed in Florence in 1356 forbade servant women to wear buttons above the elbow. Stella Mary Pearce uses this as a window through which the state of mind of Florence, not only towards buttons and servant girls, but also towards the highly-complicated phenomenon of emergent humanism might be examined. 
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 A crash course introduction to the Renaissance. An amusing introduction to some of the complexities of a fascinating period of history.  In this essay, I hope to analyze the issue of women’s economic status from a different perspective. I will use a variety of sources – guild records, population surveys, and literary evidence – to explore the lives of working women in Renaissance Florence and their relation to paid employment. By looking at this one aspect of the lives of working women in one city, I hope to illuminate broader questions of women’s economic power, although obviously the plight of working class women ought not to be equated with that of women of other classes, and the direction of change in one city does not preclude different developments in other areas of Europe. Furthermore, access to paid employment is not only, or even the most important, determinant of economic power. As scholars continue to work on this subject they will undoubtedly considered class, property rights, marriage relationships, and many other social and economic factors before they can arrive at any broad interpretations of the economic and social status of Renaissance women. Read the essay here: LINK
At what point did it begin to matter what you wore? Ulinka Rublack looks at why the Renaissance was a turning point in people’s attitudes to clothes and their appearance
http://historytoday.prod.acquia-sites.com/ulinka-rublack/renaissance-fashion-birth-power-dressing The male dress style of the higher classes of European society was revolutionised in the early years of the Renaissance. The codpiece was introduced into the male tunic. The codpiece had proportions that were at times grotesque, and so extreme that the question of the purpose of its use arises. Art gallery guides speculate that the codpiece represented a statement of the virility of the individual and could be looked on as a sex promotion object. This is clearly the impression gained from, for example Holbein’s portrayal of Henry VIII, arms akimbo, broad shouldered, groin thrust forward, the very epitome of a lusty male. The codpiece, however, may have been a disguise for underlying disease. Italy was the leader in many concepts of the new fashions in the Renaissance. For men, there was a change from the narrow-waisted vertical line to the more horizontal. Among the wealthier, the trend in the very late fifteenth century appears to be towards longer hose and shorter doublets leading to a space in which the male genitals may have been exposed if not covered. In Italy, assuming that paintings of the time accurately reflect the dress of the day, artists included the display of the codpiece as a dramatic element of male costume. In Italy, the codpiece was called a sacco and in France, a braguette.
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