Fashion in Ancient Greece: The History of the Clothes and Jewelry Worn by the Greeks

Over 2,000 years later, the ancient Greeks are considered the forefathers of Western Civilization, and thanks to the spread of Hellenism by Alexander the Great and the Romans, Greek culture heavily influenced North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia as well, so it is no surprise that Greek fashions traveled in every direction and influenced much of the known world. However, while there is no shortage of documentation and ancient imagery that depicts Greek clothes, almost no ancient Greek clothes have survived. Wool rots, linen rots faster, and the Greek climate, wet in winter and hot in summer, is just about the worst possible environment for the survival of cloth. The Greeks compounded the problem by cremating many of their dead and by reusing textiles until the fibers gave out. A wealthy Athenian household in the 5th century B.C. owned garments that represented months of skilled labor and a substantial share of the family's movable wealth, but of all the clothes that were manufactured and worn across the entire city across three centuries, what remains today can be held in a few small boxes.

There are exceptions, and they're precious. A cluster of embroidered fragments came out of a tomb at Koropi in Attica, preserved by contact with metal, while charred and mineralized scraps have been recovered from Macedonian burials, including a folded cloth of purple and gold from the royal tomb at Vergina. Bog conditions and desert conditions have preserved Greek textiles outside Greece proper. But beyond that, the physical record thins out into loom weights, spindle whorls, bronze pins, gold ornaments, and the occasional shoe sole.

As a result, the history of Greek fashion has to be assembled from other materials, and all of them are historically dubious in their own particular ways. Sculptures show drapery, but sculptors carved for effect, exaggerating some folds and suppressing others, and marble can't show weave or weight.