Dress Codes: Big sleeves were the original power shoulders — and they’re back

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

(CNN) — When you think of clothing silhouettes that evoke power and presence, 1980s-era padded shoulders might come to mind, the kind seen on Grace Jones when she wore a sharply tailored Giorgio Armani suit for her 1981 “Nightclubbing” album, or more recently, Doja Cat, whose exaggerated take at the 2025 Met Gala was designed by Marc Jacobs.

But long before power shoulders entered our lexicon, oversized sleeves were a status symbol at court in early modern Europe. They did much more than cut a striking figure — they were separate pieces that showed off one’s access to tailoring; used additional, expensive fabric as a flex during a period of luxury-limiting sumptuary laws; and represented one’s aptitude for the latest trends.

“The whole point of the style was to show off how much fabric you could possess,” said Darnell-Jamal Lisby, a curator at the Cleveland Museum of Art, who recently organized the exhibition “Renaissance to Runway: The Enduring Italian Houses,” which explores the historical connections between Italian Renaissance art and modern Italian fashion.

Today, billowing sleeves conjure romance and femininity, with detachable versions returning to bridal collections, while recent runways from Thom Browne, Louis Vuitton, Chloé, Valentino and Saint Laurent have all featured different takes on the shape. The actor Zoë Kravitz wore one of Saint Laurent’s off-the-shoulder voluminous sleeved gowns at the Academy Museum Gala in October, while Julia Fox donned a dramatic white puffed silhouette by Marc Jacobs at London’s amfAR Gala the same month.

These sleeves each point to different time periods when big sleeves reigned. In the 1830s and 1890s, to maximize size, they were often supported by soft padding from down pillows or structured with wiring for “lantern-like forms,” according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the 1930s, the fashion designer Elsa Schiaparelli incorporated them into dinner suits and evening gowns, and the 1980s, they reemerged at proms and weddings with equally large hair. Sleeves have been a focal point of dress since humans began weaving clothes — the earliest known woven garment, the 5,000-year-old linen Tarkhan Dress, features pleating that embellishes the shoulders and arms.

But many periods of oversized, puffed-sleeve styles trace back to the Italian Renaissance, known for its sweeping artistic and cultural influence across Europe, when fashion began to rapidly speed up for the first time.

In the early 16th century, sleeves that gave the illusion of bursting outwards were considered key to one’s it-factor, or “sprezzatura,” according to “Renaissance to Runway.”

Today, the term is more often associated with effortlessness and sophistication in menswear, but, at the time, was equally aspirational for both men and women. Sprezzatura was a north star for court dressing and demeanor, a type of performative nonchalance that the elite could evoke and could — maybe — trickle down to the non-aristocratic classes as well, Lisby explained. It originated in Baldassare Castiglione’s popular “Book of the Courtier,” from 1528.

“When I think about television shows that are about making a pop star, whoever’s playing the manager in a show, will be like: ‘Well, you’ve got to be the pop star that the girls want to be and the guys want to have sex with. That’s basically what sprezzatura was,” Lisby said.

In art, he continued, “sleeves and hair are the best immediate way to tell not only where somebody’s from, but the time period that they’re living in.” In 16th-century Italy, wide barrel sleeves, sometimes layered or padded for effect, began to taper at the forearm, while the baragoni — the sleeve’s decorative upper part — transformed in shape, first resembling a cupcake, Lisby said, then narrowing to a doughnut. The colors of layered outer or under sleeves could signal one’s municipality — Milan was colorful, Florence subdued, he explained — or geopolitical alliances, with French-style sleeves influencing the north, and Spanish-style sleeves appearing further south. Italy’s aristocratic families, too, were “all canoodling with each other,” he added, cross-pollinating their sartorial influences.

It was a feature of dress that artists paid close attention to, as well, as traveling artworks became a primary vehicle for promoting fashion. A Lorenzo Lotto painting from the 1530s shows a man, possibly a high-ranking official, in a sumptuous doublet with padded velvet sleeves, arm outstretched. (In “Renaissance to Runway,” the portrait is paired with a fall 2022 runway shot of an oversized faux-fur ensemble by Diesel for its textures and shape.) Portraits by Raphael show the sprezzatura-imbued ease of early 1500s tie-on barrel sleeves, and, in 1518, the dramatic red hanging sleeves of the vicereine of Naples, Doña Isabel de Requesens y Enríquez de Cardona-Anglesola, when the region was under Spanish rule. One of the most stylish figures of the period, the duchess of Florence Eleonora di Toledo — who has notably been a reference point for designer Alessandro Michele, the exhibition notes — was famously painted by Bronzino, along with her son, in striking, highly embellished silk brocade.

“The sleeves are very telling — you can see where the pins are; you can see the emphasis on the more cupcake-style baragoni,” Lisby said. “She was ahead of the curve.”

These portraits have influenced style shifts for hundreds of years as later artists and designers looked back to the Italian Renaissance to revive it in fashion, art and architecture. Other bulbous sleeve crazes — including the 19th-century gigot revival in Victorian England — similarly translated prestige and might into sleeve size, as have contemporary designers when exaggerating silhouettes. With the sharper lines of suiting, bold shoulders eventually took over as a more modern signal of power — and a new way to take up space.

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