Welcome to the Historical Fiction Online forums: a friendly place to discuss, review and discover historical fiction.
If this is your first visit, please be sure to check out the FAQ by clicking the link above.
You will have to register before you can post: click the register link above to proceed.
To start viewing posts, select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

Ancient History Costumes

Post Reply
Helen_Davis

Ancient History Costumes

Post by Helen_Davis » Mon December 3rd, 2012, 3:32 am

Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I really like the clothes of ancient Egypt and Pre Islamic Persia. Are there any online shops where I could buy reproductions of these that aren't like cheap Halloween costumes?

User avatar
lauragill
Avid Reader
Posts: 352
Joined: July 2011
Location: Southern California
Contact:

Post by lauragill » Mon December 3rd, 2012, 8:39 am

[quote=""Helen_Davis""]Sorry if this is a dumb question, but I really like the clothes of ancient Egypt and Pre Islamic Persia. Are there any online shops where I could buy reproductions of these that aren't like cheap Halloween costumes?[/quote]

You might be able to find patterns to make them. Ancient clothes tended to be very simple garments, so they would not be hard to make.

User avatar
parthianbow
Compulsive Reader
Posts: 856
Joined: April 2009
Location: Nr. Bristol, SW England
Contact:

Post by parthianbow » Mon December 3rd, 2012, 6:15 pm

Find some reenactors of those periods, Helen. People like that tend to make all their own clothes. They often sell them too.
Ben Kane
Bestselling author of Roman military fiction.
Spartacus - UK release 19 Jan. 2012. US release June 2012.

http://www.benkane.net
Twitter: @benkaneauthor

User avatar
DianeL
Bibliophile
Posts: 1029
Joined: May 2011
Location: Midatlantic east coast, United States
Contact:

Post by DianeL » Tue December 4th, 2012, 1:06 am

I made a Roman chiton and pallium once, and I am no seamstress. I often notice that movie and television productions use modern Indian sari textiles for the ancient Greek and (especially) Roman garb of women, and it does work nicely. Upon studying many years ago, I did learn that there was some migratory linkage between Roman draping and the eventual dress of the sari, so there's a natural affinity there. (I got addicted to studying sari, in fact.)

Whether you make or not, online shopping for textiles can teach an IMMENSE amount about the history of a particular type of fabric or dress. People wish to share these cultural things, and it's not an obvious source (and perhaps undisciplined too, for research), but you can find so much, beyond the history and into many generations' personal relationships to and attitudes about the tradition of dress.

For Egyptian dress, linen as used in ancient clothing will be UNLIKE modern bed linens and clothing textiles. Ancient linen was much more gauzy than the 300-thread-count Egyptian fabrics popular now for sheets, and much more fine than many modern linen dresses as well. It was intricately pleated as well, so the simplicity of apparent design can be deceiving.

Perhaps as much or more attention was paid to wig styling, cosmetics, and jewelry/adornment apart from what we now define as clothing. Much the same is true of Greek and Persian dress - hairdressing and all the other aspects of dress are as heavily emphasized (and in the stylized cases which survive for us, literally immortalized) may be much more complex and difficult to achieve than the clothes.

Find re-enactors, but also study the art and period for yourself. With the depth of symbolic and methodological understanding, the costuming is so much richer! I studied sari for a year or two before I dared purchase and wear one, but when I did I knew I was wearing it correctly, and it meant that much more to me to own, and to make the impression it made too.
Last edited by DianeL on Tue December 4th, 2012, 1:14 am, edited 1 time in total.
"To be the queen, she agreed to be the widow!"

***

The pre-modern world was willing to attribute charisma to women well before it was willing to attribute sustained rationality to them.
---Medieval Kingship, Henry A. Myers

***

http://dianelmajor.blogspot.com/
I'm a Twit: @DianeLMajor

Helen_Davis

Post by Helen_Davis » Tue December 4th, 2012, 2:55 am

[quote=""parthianbow""]Find some reenactors of those periods, Helen. People like that tend to make all their own clothes. They often sell them too.[/quote]

Anywhere I could look? I googled but couldn't find anything :(

User avatar
LoveHistory
Bibliomaniac
Posts: 3751
Joined: September 2008
Location: Wisconsin, USA
Contact:

Post by LoveHistory » Tue December 4th, 2012, 10:58 pm

You might want to check out costuming books. There are books that cover history of clothing, books used in studying theater. Some may even have pattern sources in the back. Dover Publications has some that might be a starting point. If you can find someone who is really good at sewing, they might be able to look at the pictures and create their own patterns based on them.

Post Reply

Return to “Chat”