What types of clothes did people wear during the American colonial era?

People brought the clothing they were used to wearing in their home countries. As many of the colonies were settled by British and northern European peoples in the seventeenth century, they carried with them seventeenth-century European clothing.
The New England Puritans brought with them the plain style of dress that set them apart from the average English person in Great Britain. This included dark clothes with plain white collars and, in the case of women, plain white aprons and caps. The clothing, despite current fashions, was unadorned with lace, pearls, or heavy embroidery, showing their rejection of excess and luxury, which they associated with the excesses of the papacy and the Church of England. The clothing was heavy and made of wool or linen.
It can seem odd to us in the twenty-first century that the colonists didn't simply adopt the lighter weight, simpler, and more flexible clothing worn by the Native Americans, especially in the summer months, but the settlers wanted to hold onto their distinctively English or northern European heritages. The Plymouth Plantation settlers, for example (the iconic Pilgrims who came on the Mayflower), had left the Netherlands because they feared their children would get assimilated into Dutch culture. Even if it was far more difficult to wear British clothes, they were determined to stick with their cultural traditions. This was largely true throughout the colonies, especially as the Europeans tended to look down on the Native populations as being less advanced.
In the Southern states, settlers did use more cotton and lightweight clothing due to the climate. It is also worth noting that in such places as Massachusetts, sumptuary laws (apparel laws) forbade lower-class people from dressing above their station. Children, after infancy (defined as ages 0–5), wore the same clothes as adults.