Draping the chiton

[John Conyard]

I would like to be to speculate on the nature of Greek dress. Just a little.

When reading about Roman clothing, especially late Roman clothing I often meet the idea of “the wide” Coptic loom. These are always wider than our modern looms, and always seem to magically produce a garment that stretches from wrist to wrist.

I suppose if I was an army contractor approaching a village to produce a certain number of tunics to a set pattern a certain uniformity of size and design would result.

But I like to think for the approach of the winter season if I wanted a scarf or a set of table napkins for my Christmas feast these wide Coptic looms could produce small items without the need for cutting and hemming. Reducing the number of warp threads would produce a narrow piece of cloth. I have a hand-woven woollen scarf produced on a wide loom.

Now let’s move to a house in Athens with the women producing cloth. Frankly any piece of cloth used for a chlamys can be folded double, pinned, pulled through a belt etc. to produce a chiton. I remember once at an event I leant out all my spare posh tunics to new recruits for the final parade just in time for a torrential rainstorm to hit. The campsite afterwards looked like some sort of laundry with washing lines hung between tents and trees. Funny until I realised I hadn’t a dry tunic to my name. I used a dry blanket made a perfectly acceptable tunic with two brooches and certain je ne sais quoi. To the ancients a piece of cloth has its own beauty and its weave and size would allow a variety of functions. But too often it seems to me that we want our reproduction clothing to be made in accordance with modern perceptions of size in small, medium and large with collar size clearly labelled.

It’s fair to say most garments were not cut and sewn. But the picture is often more complicated than we would like and Greek pictures tell a complicated often incomprehensible tale. The illustrated “cord” visible running along the top edge of some garments would suggest that the material has been cut and edged using the “cord”. Imagine a 90” by 90” piece of carefully woven wool. By cutting it in half you get two 45” by 90” pieces of wool able to make two chitons. Sorry for the iffy plural. You can sew the cut edge to some cord to seam the garment. At the same time the cord allows you to fasten the garment at the shoulders in a variety of ways. This would be quicker than making two bits of 90” by 45” cloth on the same loom. Q.E.D.

I like this “cord” edged design since I’m unlikely to find a 45” wide piece of material with nice selvage edges.

After a few weeks my nice new Greek tunic is now suitably stained, worn and repaired. The wool is coping with my armour, but mail would rip it apart in short order. I would like some more quality wool for Catherine to make another. Leeds market has excellent material stalls and will be worth a visit before Christmas.