clothes

Articles made to cover the human body. Clothes can be worn simply for warmth, but they have almost always had the additional purpose of indicating sex and status or of enhancing the appearance.

The earliest clothes were animal skins, replaced by textiles after the discovery of weaving and spinning. Simple woollen clothing predominated in the northern hemisphere but the ancient Mediterranean civilizations made sophisticated use of linens, cotton, and silk. Apart from changing fashions, the main developments in the history of clothing are the mass-production of textiles from the early 19th century and the invention of synthetic materials in the 20th century.