For the Classical period, once again the most common fabrics were wool and linen. Cotton was originally domesticated in India and produced in Egypt as early as the sixth century b. c.e. It was not common in Greece, though, until the conquests of Alexander the Great, whose soldiers used cotton as pillow stuffing (Gullberg and Astrom 1970, 17). Silk was originally cultivated in China but made its way west through Persia. Ionian women wore silk dresses, and apparently Cleopatra seduced Caesar wearing a transparent silk dress (Gullberg and Astrom 1970, 17).
The textiles used for clothing could be elaborately decorated, as is evident in the vase paintings. Women did the spinning and weaving, although there was some variation as to who might dye the materials initially (see chapter 5). The preferred dye was Phoenician purple, made from the shells of the murex, a type of mollusk. Another popular color was yellow, made from saffron. Weaving was done from the earliest periods on warp-weighted looms (see Image 5.3). Loom weights have been found dating back into the Bronze Age, and often their shape and weight were indicative of the homeland of the women who used them.
There were two basic styles of women's dress. One was the Doric, in which a rectangle of cloth was wrapped as a tube around the body, going under the arms and hanging to the lower legs. Often the top was rolled down, so that there was a double layer of cloth over the upper body. Fibulai (large safety pins) fastened the fabric over the shoulders, and the whole garment was belted around the waist. This dress, called the peplos, was usually made of wool. Spartan girls wore a shorter version of this dress during athletic exercises.
The other style was an Ionic dress made of linen and called the chiton. Like the Doric style, it began as a large rectangle of fabric. Rather than being fastened with pins, however, the chiton was sewn above the arms, creating sleeves of sorts. Once again, the dress was belted at the waist, and hung down to the ankles or, more rarely, the knees.
Both dresses, but especially the chiton, could be covered by a himation (mantle). In sculptures this is often shown draped over one shoulder and hanging to the ground. The fact that women's clothing, in Athens at least, could be elegantly and elaborately layered is indicated by one of the laws passed by Solon (see chapter 7), who forbade women to wear more than three garments at a time when leaving the house.
Evidence from sculpture and vase paintings suggests that girls sometimes wore their hair long, but older girls and women usually wore theirs fastened up in a scarf. However, girls sometimes also wore flowers in their hair, if we are to trust Sappho, who says, "And you, O Dika, place about your tresses lovely garlands, binding together shoots of dill with your soft hands. For the blessed Graces look more on things adorned with flowers; they turn away from those ungarlanded."
As far as cosmetics go, the literature from Greece relates that women put lead on their faces to make their skin very white.
Men's clothing can be more difficult to study, as men were often portrayed nude in Greek art. We know that men did perform athletics in the nude, and our words gymnasium and gymnastic come from the Greek word gymno, "to strip naked."
For more formal occasions, the Greek male wardrobe consisted of four main pieces: the exomis, the chiton, the himation, and the khlamys. The exomis looked very much like the modern conception of a toga. Starting as a trapezoid of fabric, the piece was pinned over one shoulder and belted at the waist. Traditionally, it fell to the knees (Losfeld 1991, 90-91).
The man's chiton was arranged like the woman's, except that it, too, usually fell only to the knees. A formal chiton, however, fell to the ankles and was worn for professional or religious purposes, such as by the priest in the Parthenon frieze mentioned above. The men's himation was also similar to the women's, being essentially a large rectangle of fabric that was draped around the body. Unlike the women, though, men could wear the himation without an undergarment. The himation could go so far as to cover the entire body, or it could be worn just around the waist almost like a sarong-skirt.
The khlamys was a cape originally developed in northern, horse-intensive Thessaly and was adopted by the rest of the Greeks only after the time of Alexander (Losfeld 1991, 176-177). This semicircle of fabric was pinned at the shoulder and could either hang down the back or, on cold days, be pulled completely around the upper half of the body (the lower body being warmed by the horse, no doubt).
To protect them from the hot sun, men also wore a light straw hat, called a petasos, featuring a round cap with a wide brim. A winged version was favored by Hermes.
World History
