---
node: fashion_north_america
type: fashion
slug: north_america_fashion
title: "Fashion history of North America"
lead: "North American dress began with the tailored hide and fur of Indigenous peoples and the cotton and featherwork of Mesoamerica; after Europeans arrived, transplanted Western dress became the mainstream. Modern America became a centre of practical, mass-produced clothing — jeans, ready-to-wear — and of global casual fashion."
published: 2026-07-28
updated: 2026-07-28
image_file: north_america_fashion.jpg
image_source: "https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_Catlin_-_Sha-c%C3%B3-pay,_The_Six,_Chief_of_the_Plains_Ojibwa_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg"
image_author: "George Catlin — Sha-có-pay, Plains Ojibwa chief (1832)"
image_license: "Public domain"
change: "Created as a fashion sub-page under the history section, with a period image (north_america region)"
requester: internal
reason: "Per the owner's decision, fashion lives under each history era"
---

## Overview

Two traditions — the hide clothing of Indigenous peoples suited to a cold climate, and the woven-cotton dress of Mesoamerica — were overlaid and displaced by European dress from the 16th century.

## The story of dress

After colonial-era Western dress, modern America spread a casual style symbolised by the T-shirt and jeans across the world, through Levi's blue jeans (1873), ready-to-wear, the department store and Hollywood.