The German fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld commented, ‘Fashion is a language that creates itself in clothes to interpret reality’. Helenas Töchter is an attempt to read the language of ancient Greek women's dress over the course of 300 years, from the Early Archaic period to the Classical. This exercise in hermeneutics follows changes in women's clothing styles where, for example, the degree of complexity or simplicity in dress becomes a signifier for a broader social/cultural/political reality. The material for this investigation consists largely of artefacts, with a few details drawn from Greek texts.
The claim for a correspondence between fashion and its social context is of course limited, for there cannot be a 1:1 correlation between socio-political change and an alteration in women's dress. One thinks of the four decades from the 1960s to the 1990s, where in North America florid patterns were replaced by earth-tones before absorbing colour again, only to shift to black and minimalism. In those 40 years there were no strong political or social shifts that dictated the change in dress. The case was different for Athens in the 100 years following c. 580 b.c.e., however, when democratic impulses gradually dismantled the privileged status that had been enjoyed by the aristocrats. Here the authors are able to make a strong case for a connection between the ideological shift and women's dress, with a look at female sculpture and vase-painting, where elaborate design and luxurious fabrics gave way to simpler forms and textures.
The historical inquiry begins with a study of the history of clothing style as found in ‘Homer’. The reference to a single poet with this name and even more the assumption that texts from Homeric epic can reflect a single time-period are problematic. The poems are drawn from a long oral tradition reaching back to the Bronze Age, and obtaining an accurate date for artefacts mentioned there is difficult. In addition, the overall heroic quality of epic raises the question of what can be legitimately assigned to women's dress in the Early Archaic period.
The authors correctly identify the eighth century b.c.e. as a time of rapid change that included trade with non-Greek areas, leading to intercultural influences, wealth and the manufacture of painted pottery. The decoration of women's clothing found on vases with scenes of the prosthesis consisted of patterns not unlike the geometric designs on the vases themselves, raising the interesting question whether there was an exchange between weaving patterns produced by women and the general iconography of these vessels.
There are clear examples of women's technical expertise with fabric ornamentation shown on artefacts from the seventh century b.c.e., where meanders, zig-zags, cross-hatching and chequered patterns appear, as well as animal figures. Were figurative elements such as animal friezes woven or embroidered? The Homeric poet described Helen's woven fabric as purple, doubly folded, upon which she scattered (ἐνέπασσεν) scenes of battles between the Greeks and Achaeans (Iliad 3.125–8). When Andromache was weaving a purple fabric of double fold, she sprinkled (ἔπασσε) variously-coloured flowers on it (Iliad 22.440–1). The verbs indicate that the figures were embroidered/appliquéd, not woven. The authors do not discuss this, nor do they consider what was meant by the ‘double fold’; could the fabric have been destined for a mantle, as in Sappho's fr. 54 V.?
Luxury goods such as painted craters and large statues deposited as grave goods or presented as dedications provide material for examining increasingly elaborate forms of women's dress in the Early Archaic period. As the sixth century progressed, there were more variations in the over-fold of the peplos, and when the chiton appeared, a mantle formed a decorative shoulder covering, then sleeves, and eventually it draped over the body in increasingly elaborate folds on the diagonal. This evolution in the direction of complexity reached an apex during the latter half of the sixth century, noted when the authors examine a sequence of korai dedicated on the Athenian Acropolis in the 100 years prior to 480 b.c.e. Particularly striking evidence for lavish display emerges from the advances made by colour analysis that developed during the twentieth century. The surviving korai from the Acropolis and elsewhere contain but scant remains of the paint that was originally applied, but with the application of ultraviolet light and visual absorption spectroscopy a dramatic array of original colours can be exposed by the fact that different pigments fluoresce at different wavelengths. This has made possible coloured reconstructions of korai beginning with those of the mid-sixth century, and several of the later ones in the sequence are particularly striking. Also dramatic is the developing trend towards exposing the shape of the female body beneath the folds of sculpted cloth, until some korai at the end of the sixth century b.c.e. appear to have transparent fabric exposing their buttocks, a boldly erotic element in public dedications.
By 480 b.c.e., the chiton-mantle combination worn by korai was much simpler. The lushness of the folds receded, and the colouring was much more restrained; the overall contours of the body were shown, but with what the authors call ‘simple elegance’. With this change we encounter the most challenging claim made in the book, that fashion trends can be dictated by ideological shifts. In the Late Archaic period, when aristocratic groups competed with one another in demonstrations of wealth and status (a situation that thrived under tyrants such as the Peisistratids), one of the important opportunities for such display was the expensive and luxurious clothing carved on female statues dedicated in shrines or at grave-sites. With the Cleisthenic reforms in Athens at the end of the century the clothing became much simpler, in keeping with the move to build an egalitarian citizen base that shunned excessive displays of wealth. (Not entering the discussion here are the isonomia reforms assigned to Solon in the early sixth century.) The process continued in the Classical period, when female statues were clothed once again in a peplos draped in simple folds such as one sees with the familiar ‘Mourning/Pensive Athena’ on a plaque from 460 b.c.e. After the Persian Wars ended, once again political/ideological shifts influenced female dress, and women were depicted in Persian garb such as the sakkos head-covering, reflecting not only the desire to incorporate new elements but also to demonstrate superiority over a vanquished enemy.
This strong claim for a 1:1 development of politics and women's fashion is plausible for this particular moment in Greek history, but for the authors to label it ‘seismic’ is over-stating the case. Pendulum-swings in fashion are common. Most of us have observed the short shelf-life of simplicity or the decorative in current women's dress. Another claim that should have been made more cautiously is the correspondence between the dress on public statues and that worn by contemporary women. As dedication-pieces, the korai could well represent idealised, more conservative or excessively decorated gifts to divinities. A more secure argument could be based upon female clothing described in the Archaic poets, such as the intricate gold necklace/bracelet and Lydian headband in Alcman's First Partheneion (fr. 3.66–7 Calame) or Sappho's golden bracelets and purple robes (fr. 44.8–9 V.), or the elaborate headbands of Sappho's fr. 98 V. and the dyed Lydian sandals of fr. 39 V.
Although not made explicit, the authors’ attention is focused on the dress of the elite class. Are there images corresponding to the country-girl's robe of Sappho's fr. 57 V.? I also missed any mention of women's veils, admirably addressed by L. Llewellyn-Jones’ Aphrodite's Tortoise (2003). Modern dress theory is not incorporated into the discussion, nor a consideration of the body as dress, or accessories as integral to the costume. For this we must turn to M. Lee's Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece, published in the same year as Helenas Töchter.
These reservations aside, the book is commendable for its generous and well-selected collection of images, and for the close reading of the details in these. Questions remain, but an important conversation has been launched.
