Architecture of Gothic Period and Its Effect to Clothing Design

Root of the word Gothic comes from a German tribe which lives in region of the Gotland of Scandinavia. Gothic period is a movement which ends the Midde Age and opens Renaissance. Although seen in all branches of the art, Gothic is widely a style of architecture. Having been originated from the Roman architecture, Gothic Architecture come out in the second half of the 12th century and continued its existence until the half of the 16th century when classical architecture come out. In Europe, Gothic painting, sculpture and architecture were dominant and preserved its popularity until the Renaissance. Fashion means all the temporary new styles which come out in a certain period of time with the desires of dressing up, being different, wearing the most desirable. Although seen as two different design field, when we examine closely, we can see that fashion and architecture has many common point from the past to present. As man is the common point of this two field, they naturally affect each other. Gothic architecture inspired clothing designs, which is enough to show how much they affected each other. In this study, our purpose is to reveal effects of the Gothic architecture on the clothing designs. The style used in the Gothic period architecture and models and styles in clothing designs was presented with the help of table of specification. According to this, both fields' sharing common aesthetic concern and same theoritic and ideologic base was accompanied by stylistic and structural similarities accordingly. Designers in this two different fields turned even to themselves for inspiration and technical strategy. Environmental and cultural factors affect both fashion designers and architects. When seen as a part of historical process, clothes and buildings with their important cultural and economic conditions are priceless anthropological buildings which show technological developments within the period.