---
node: fashion_sa_inca
type: fashion
slug: inca_empire_fashion
title: "Fashion in the Inca Empire"
lead: "In the Inca Empire, cloth was the highest wealth and power itself: men wore the tunic (unku), women a wrapped dress fastened with large pins (tupu), and the finest cumbi cloth was state-controlled treasure that the ruler gave as gifts."
published: 2026-07-28
updated: 2026-08-15
image_file: inca_empire_fashion.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tupa-inca-tunic.png"
image_author: "Inca all-tocapu tunic (uncu), 15th–16th c"
image_license: "Public domain"
---

## Overview

The Inca ran an empire on cloth. Textiles were the state's principal store of value, its currency of obligation and its instrument of favour — accumulated in warehouses, issued as payment, given as reward and burned as offering. No other empire made clothing so directly an arm of government.

## Key garments and style

Men wore the unku, a rectangular tunic pulled over the head, with a loincloth and a mantle; women the aksu, a long cloth wrapped around the body and pinned at the shoulders with tupu, large metal pins with flattened heads, under a lliclla shawl also pinned at the chest.

Cloth was graded. Awasqa was the ordinary household weave; cumbi, tapestry of extraordinary fineness, was made by specialists — the aqllakuna women in state institutions, and male cumbicamayoc weavers — and was reserved to the ruler to wear and to give.

The decoration was administrative. Tocapu, small square geometric motifs arranged in bands or all over a tunic, encoded status and affiliation, and a tunic covered entirely in tocapu belonged to the very top of the hierarchy. Vicuña, the finest fibre in the world, was taken in state-controlled hunts.

## Transition

The Spanish conquest broke the system that gave the cloth its meaning, and Andean weaving continued as a household and community tradition rather than a state one.