---
node: fashion_sa_conquest
type: fashion
slug: european_conquest_south_america_fashion
title: "Fashion at the European Conquest"
lead: "At the European conquest, Spanish and Indigenous dress clashed: the conquerors in armour and doublets, the Inca people keeping their traditional textile dress, as conquest and disease gravely damaged that world."
published: 2026-07-28
updated: 2026-07-28
image_file: european_conquest_south_america_fashion.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atawallpa_Pizarro_tinkuy.jpg"
image_author: "Felipe Guamán Poma de Ayala — Atahualpa and Pizarro (c. 1615)"
image_license: "Public domain"
change: "Created as a fashion sub-page under the history section, with a period image (south_america region)"
requester: internal
reason: "Per the owner's decision, fashion lives under each history era"
---

## Overview

In the conquest from the 1520s, two worlds of dress met and clashed violently.

## Key garments and style

The Spanish conquerors brought Western clothing — armour, the doublet, the brimmed hat. Andean people still kept the traditional tunic and mantle, but the textile wealth of the ruling class was plundered, and dress suffered with the collapse of society.

## Transition

In the colonial era, under Spanish caste society, dress became a mark of rule and resistance.