Chats on CostumeRhead, G. Woolliscroft (George Woolliscroft)
History
Chats on Costume
Rhead, G. Woolliscroft (George Woolliscroft)
Clothing and dress
The second illustration shows a priest wearing nothing but a loin cloth
and a leopard skin.
In the Victoria and Albert Museum is a child's tunic, discovered in a
tomb at Alkmîm (Panopolis), Upper Egypt. It is of unbleached linen,
dyed blue, with a pattern produced by means of what is called "a
reserve," the design being first stamped on the fabric by means of a
waxy substance which protected those portions of the dress from the dye
into which it was afterwards dipped. The "reserve" was then removed by
a second bath, leaving the pattern in the original colour of the fabric.
[Illustration: _From the Papyrus of Hunefer, or "Book of the Dead," c.
B.C. 1370._]
With the Greeks the tunic was the principal article of attire. It was
worn next to the skin, and was of a light tissue. In the earlier time
it was composed of wool, in later periods of flax, and in the latest
periods it was either of flax mixed with silk or of pure silk. The
illustration given will serve to show its construction. It was a simple
square bag, open at the two ends, made sufficiently wide to admit of
the folds being ample, and sufficiently long to allow of its being
gathered up about the waist and breasts. It was kept in its place by
various means, either by a simple girdle round the waist or by cords
drawn crosswise between the breasts, over the shoulders, looped at the
back, and again drawn round the waist, or by an arrangement of cords or
ribbons drawn over each shoulder and attached to the girdle.
Over the tunic was a second garment, intended to afford additional
protection to the upper part of the body. This was a kind of bib or
super-tunic, and was composed of a square or rather oblong piece of
stuff, suspended round the chest and back and secured at the shoulders
by means of fibulæ or buttons. In some cases the bib was made deeper
under the arms, so as to allow the garment to fall in regular zigzag
folds, ending in a point, which was weighted with little pellets of
lead in order to ensure a better falling of the folds.
[Illustration: THE TUNIC.]
The tunic, as well as the super-tunic, was often ornamented with rich
borders and diapered with sprigs, spots, stars, &c. The tunic of the
Roman women reached to the feet, with the exception of that worn by
the Lacedemonian girls, which was short, and also divided at the sides
so as to show their thighs; and "this indecency," says Strutt, was
countenanced by the laws of Lycurgus.
[Illustration: THE TUNIC.
_From Hope's "Costume of the Ancients."_]
Horace, in his twenty-fifth Ode, addressing an old woman affecting
youth--"flaunting wife of the indigent Ibycus"--exclaims--
"What becomes thee best is a warm woollen dress;
Get thee fleeces from famous Luceria."
Broadly speaking, classic dress consisted of but two elements--the
tunic and mantle, both being worn of a thicker material during cold
weather. Ulysses exclaims, in the "Odyssey"--
"I have no cloak; the fates have cheated me,
And left alone my tunic."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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