Actually, you have an unwarranted and unsupported assumption in thinking fashion makes a major change every decade. Sometimes it's 6 yrs & sometimes 13 in the 20th C. The 19th C changed at about the same rate.

For example, there is a major fashion change, not in 1930, but in 1934, when women started wearing shoulder pads in everything with a shoulder. This did not change until 1947 at the soonest, with Dior's New Look that didn't own the racks until 1948. That's a 14yr "fashion decade." In an opposite example, from the late teens to the early Twenties was a short-lived fashion for dresses with panniers, poufs of decoration right below the waist, making the hips look twice as wide. It lasted about 4yrs, and the 1922 catalogs showed barely a trace.

You know those Thirties bias-cut slinky gowns? I find them in photos of dinner parties in 1928.

So those discernible fashion decades are an artifact of 1) cheap pop histories that create artificial fashion changes that did not happen those years, 2) a lack of refined knowledge of fashion changes, 3) a belief that they couldn't print it if it wasn't true. ;-)

Zither13 addressed the underlying misconception, which is worth a lot more than 7-points-plus-dagger (oh good, that's fixed), so I'll dig into your basic question.

What we know about fashion-for-fashion's-sake in general, being "up-to-date" as a status symbol, is that it really started up around the mid-14th century. A very common view is that it moved slowly and only geared up toward the end of the 18th century - however, I've become more skeptical of this as I study more eras in detail, and note that modern historians and commentators are best at noticing sleeve and skirt shape and waistline height, which are not the only indicators of fashion. There are many little details like the style of trim, neckline or collar shape, etc. that indicate the date more precisely than the bigger and more obvious ones. These simply only become apparent if you study an era closely enough (and have enough securely-dated images to compare with each other).

From a modern perspective, there seem to be really obvious several-decade-long blocks of fashion in the far past (say, 1500-1800), time periods that are very distant to us; then really obvious smaller blocks during the 19th and 20th, which we're closer to and see more images of but still aren't exactly vibrant; and then when you get to your own decade and the one right before it, it's a lot harder to make out the "obviousness". Our fashions don't move objectively faster, we're just more attuned to the nuances that make something look outdated or fresh because we're steeped in them.

Short answer: yes, basically, we can tell decades going back to 1350 or so.

Now I'm super interested to look at these trends. Does anyone know a good source (or several sources) that give a nice overview of fashion in the last few hundred years?

I can only speak to Western Europe and the American colonies in the late 18th century, and for that I can say that fashion trends changed about as often as they do now--that is, seasonally, with major shifts occurring over several years--and were applied about the same way as they are now--that is, across the entire socioeconomic scale, but to varying degrees. Fashion plates were used much in the same way fashion magazines are now and from what I understand, the Colonies were not too far behind Europe in terms of keeping up with the trends.

Jan DeVries talks about this a bit in his 1994 book, The Industrious Revolution. The short answer is that there was a big shift around the 1600s in (middle and working class) consumption patterns in general, and conspicuous fashion was one of those big shifts.

The story really isn't about fashion, but about the was working patterns and family patterns changed to accommodate different social aspirations, but fashion and the consumption of fashion are a big part of this. The 17th century saw a big shift away from the classic 'sturdy' heirloom type of good, especially clothing, accessories, and furniture; and instead more fashion forward items were popular. One thing he particularly mentions is the popularity of collars, because there were easy to change and update with the fashions.

I can't answer as to the speed of change relative to modern fashion shifts, unfortunately. But there was absolutely a big uptick in the speed of fashion development and turnover in this time.

Fashion was something generally only available to the gentry through the middle ages. Peasants might have very simplified versions of the land owners garb, or perhaps cast offs, but much of their fashion was in fancy fabric, and decoration such as embroidery on something that was removable from their regular clothes, such as a scarf, apron, vest, hat, belt, etc. Since serfs didn't tend to travel much, the only other place for fashion advice was from traveling people like tinkers, theatrical troops, and adventurous traders. These groups interacted less with the peasantry than you might think, most often they would work for patronage with the local land owner, and as such, usually the people who had money and goods to trade.

Fashion in the gentry did change, but as there weren't a lot of periodicals, fashion was transmitted again through travel, usually by someone being at court, or visiting other gentry. Envoys that traveled, or marriages to persons from a different area would bring fashion statements from one place to another. Important events would bring large groups of people together and thus start trends that works travel throughout the area when participants returned home.

But you must also remember, the cost of clothing was huge, even well into the industrial revolution. The labor to make a fashionable lady's dress could go into the hundreds of hours, as everything had to be done manually by specialized artisans. People weren't replacing their clothes constantly, though they might refashion a piece if it became too "old". It was not altogether uncommon to see people wearing fancy clothes that belonged to grandparents- clothing was just that dear.

Tagging on: Did industrialization change fashion or the way people thought about clothes?