Ancient Greece-Exploring the Progression of Fashion Differentiation Between Genders
Women in many ways have always been thought to be a driving force in textiles, clothing and what would later become fashion. Even in the Paleolithic and Neolithic eras the changing of fibers to textiles, and textiles to clothing was almost exclusively a woman’s duty. As women become more restricted and, more or less, confined to their homes and motherhood, textiles and thus clothing fall to the way side allowing fashion between genders to show little differentiation. When doing an overview of clothing from the ancient Egyptians it is fairly easy to see that this holds true and that the variation in clothing between men and women has more to do with status and class than gender. In this tomb art of Queen Nefertiti (Painting of Queen Nefertiti Playing a Game, c. 1320-1200 BCE, http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/ancient-egypt/pictures/egyptian-relief-sculpture-and-paintings/fresco-painting-of-nefertari-playing-senet-2) and the depiction of a male youth from the book of the dead (Book of the Dead of Aaneru from Thebes, Third Intermediate Period, XXI Dynasty, 1070-946 BCE, http://www.ancient.eu/Egyptian_Book_of_the_Dead/) we can see, besides the accessories, that both male and female garments bare a similar resemblance. Fast forward and this theory can be substantiated further with Ancient Greek depictions of fashion regarding men and women. In Ancient Greece, and through most of ancient history, men were seen as superior to women whose essential role in life was to bare children and maintain a household. Since women spent most, if not all, of their time on these activities they did not and mostly could not devote themselves to much else such as fabric weaving. With this in mind, like in Ancient Egypt, there is very little variation between men’s and women’s fashion. On these terracotta vases the first one depicts men (30 BC, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/07.286.65/) and the second women (510-500 B.C., http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/06.1021.77/) clearly demonstrating the similarities as well as the slight differences between the two. In fact, the three main garment types the chiton, himation and peplos were worn by both sexes. The differences between genders and these garments were that men more commonly wore the chiton and they may have been draped and fastened slightly differently than women would have worn them as can been seen on this third terracotta vase depicting Kronos and Rhea (ca 460 – 450 BC, http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/247308). It’s important to note that I am not making the claim that there aren’t any aesthetic differences between and women during this time but rather that subtle differences begin to become more apparent as we make our way to 1648 and of course beyond. These subtleties are more contrasted as we move through Ancient Rome, Byzantium, (Court of Emperor Justinian with archbishop Maximian and court officials and Praetorian Guards, 547 A.D., ttp://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/2012/byzantium-and-islam/blog/topical-essays/posts/san-vitale) the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, where the differences between men and women’s fashion is becomes blatant and undeniable.
Good primary sources here. We need to go deeper into why. It is not simply that men were seen as superior and women bore children – the social context is much more complex in terms of roles, and there were distinctions among the various city-states. We need some discussion about the ways in which clothing reflected these differences, or why they didn’t in the cases where they didn’t. Otherwise we are describing rather than analyzing.
This is a really cool topic! I am curious what Grecian fashion’s influence was in foreign areas via Hellenization. Did the indigenous civilization adopt the customs, or was there a visual difference between the Greeks and their new subjects. In my base course, I learned that there was not a lot of cultural diffusion in Roman Britannica; the Celtic tribes retained their traditions and customs during occupation.