Clothing in Greece, 1911
From Greece and the Greeks by Z. Duckett Ferriman, 1911.
From: 1911 C.E. To: 1911 C.E.
Location: Greece
Note: This article has been excerpted from a larger work in the public domain and shared here due to its historical value. It may contain outdated ideas and language that do not reflect TOTA’s opinions and beliefs.
From Greece and the Greeks by Z. Duckett Ferriman, 1911.
It used to be said of Greek dress that the men wore petticoats and the women trousers. That is no longer true as regards the women. The wide shalvars, which were tied below the knee and fell in voluminous folds to the ankles, belong to the days when the eyelids were darkened with kohl and finger-nails tinted with henna. They have vanished with the Turks, and Greece knows them no more. And, let it be said here, that Athenian ladies are the best-dressed women in the Near East.
They dress elegantly and quietly and with judgment. They are not given to the dazzling hues to which their sisters in Constantinople and Smyrna are prone, and the amazing toilettes one meets with in Egypt are unknown at Athens. They are not slavish copyists either. All the hats are not of one pattern and one scheme of colour. But they take their cue from Paris, and not even their fervent Hellenism can persuade them to adopt the chiton and peplon. "I will do so when English ladies wear the costume of Boadicea," said one. It was submitted to her that the cases were not exactly parallel.
Were it possible to determine precisely the garb of the dauntless British Queen, the chances are that it would not possess the grace that distinguished that of the women of ancient Hellas. Moreover, the English do not claim to be her descendants. Certainly they do not speak her tongue, whereas the ladies of modern Athens do use a modified form of the language spoken by those whose forms are chiselled on the frieze of the Parthenon.
The "petticoat" still exists among the men. It is universal among the shepherds, is worn by many of the peasantry, and is frequent all over Greece, including the streets of Athens. It is not Greek. It is not wholly Albanian, for the Ghegs of Northern Albania do not wear it. It belongs to the Toskhs of Southern Albania, the neighbours of the Greeks, by whom it was adopted as the national dress during the War of Independence. King Otho wore it even after his deposition. Miss Armstrong, in her bright, keenly observant little book, adverting to its feminine character, compares the aspect of its wearers to "ballet girls masquerading as brigands."
It does certainly stick out like the skirts of a ballet dancer. It is of about the same length, and combined with the white woollen "tights" the resemblance is ludicrously perfect. When its wearer walks it wags like the short dress of a little girl, and looks absurd on a tall, strong man like the evzonoi of the king's bodyguard.
Its snowy whiteness is pleasing, but it is stiff with its redundant pleatings. These innumerable pleats are a modern development. The original fustanella, as worn in Albania and in some provincial districts in Greece, is more like a kilt, or rather the Roman tunic, from which it is said to be derived. It falls below the knee, and is a graceful and dignified garment. It is worn either with tight white woollen leggings, with black garters tied at the knee, or with greaves of red, blue, or buff, embroidered over the instep, and the tzaroukia—red morocco leather shoes with points turned up like the prow of a caique, and tasselled.
The shirt has hanging loose sleeves. Over it is worn a short jacket with sleeves hanging from the shoulder behind. The sleeves serve no purpose, so they are sometimes reduced to flat wings, or disappear altogether. Some provinces are distinguished by the colour of the jacket. In Eubœa it is dark blue, in Thebes black, and in Messenia buff, elaborately embroidered. The jackets are all more or less embroidered, and each region has its distinctive pattern.
On festivals the well-to-do come out in jackets of crimson velvet richly broidered with gold. The costume is completed by the scarlet cap falling over on the left side, with a long tassel, blue or black. Among the poor this is replaced by a knotted kerchief. In Thessaly the dress is much plainer—a loose garment of coarse black cloth, reaching below the knee, belted at the waist, and white woollen hose. In winter, hooded cloaks of blue or white wool or heavy brown frieze are general. White is the dominant note of Albanian costume for both men and women. The distinctive features of the island costume are the vrachoi and the sash.
The vrachoi, the baggy breeches hanging in many folds below the knee, are worn with cotton or worsted hose, white, blue, or black, and in Crete with high boots of yellow calf-skin. The jackets are similar to those of the mainland, but some of them are worn tight like vests; colour and embroidery differ with the locality. The island type of costume extends also to the Asiatic mainland.
Crete has preserved its costume more than any other island. The jacket is dark blue lined with crimson. Of the latter colour is the silken sash, which is very long, and wound round the waist like the Indian cummerbund. The cap is of black lambswool.
The head-dress of the Greek mainland varies. In summer the peasant completes the fustanella costume with a broad- brimmed straw hat. The shepherds stick to the small round black cap, in shape like the old forage cap of the British cavalryman. It is also worn in Thessaly and by the Vlachs of Pindus. It comes from the north, and has its more ornamental counterpart in the caps of Montenegro and Croatia. The white calotte of the Albanian is flower-pot shaped like the Turkish fez, only it has no tassel. The few islanders who have retained their costume wear the loose red Phrygian cap.
The Albanian women preserve their costume more than any others: a short white jacket (kondogouni) with wide sleeves either plain or worked with silk—over it a long sleeveless coat (zipouni) reaching to the knee. This is of white wool with a band in blue, black, or red. The corners and arm-holes are embroidered in the same colour. The skirt is also white, plain for ordinary wear, but embroidered for festivals, when a veil of silk gauze is also worn over the kerchief of yellow muslin and a string of coins across the forehead.
In winter the zipouni is lined with wool—not the whole fleece, but locks taken from it and inserted in the stuff. They are beautifully combed and dressed, and the last row shows beneath the edge of the garment. This white Albanian dress is very pleasing. The ornament is restrained and the whole effect is chaste, yet the flawless beauty of the material makes it rich.
The women of Megara wear a jacket reaching to the hip, tight at the waist, open at the throat. The shoulders and cuffs of the sleeves are worked in gold or silver. The skirt is dark blue or green, lined with white and trimmed with a broad band of red. Over it is a gay apron of rainbow hues. On feast days strings of coins and silver chains hang down the breast, and the cap is trimmed with overlapping coins. Over it is thrown a veil of transparent silk in which gold threads are interwoven.
In the Peloponnesus, some ladies still wear the scarlet cap with tassel of gold wire or silk attached to a cord of twisted gold thread, but the gold-embroidered velvet jacket is now rare. In the isle of Kythnos the women still drape their heads in linen which masks the face beneath the eyes, and the writer saw only yesterday peasant women riding into Athens in a head-dress much resembling the Turkish yashmak.
Here and there one meets with unexpected survivals. In the isle of Ios the hair is sometimes worn in a triple plait standing upright behind the head, exactly in the style of some of the terra-cotta figurines in the British Museum. The baker's wife opposite, standing at her door at this present moment, still wears the dress of her native Epirus, her girdle clasped by round bosses of cunningly wrought silver, in two pairs one above the other—the Homeric ἀργύρεοι Ἧλοι—such as one may see among the Mycenasan things in the Schliemann Collection at Athens.
But the doctor's wife has just passed in a "confection" that savours of the boulevards. For the gay garb of Greece is fast disappearing. The regions in which it persists the most are the neigh- bourhood of Thebes and Livadia, the country round Naupaktos on the Gulf of Corinth and the highlands of Arcadia, and among the mountain shepherds generally. Athens, in spite of its modernity, is the best place for costume, not only on account of the provincials who visit it from all sides, but owing to the surrounding country being peopled by Albanians.
The neighbouring island of Salamis is noted for the beautiful veils of the women. In the Cyclades costume has for the most part disappeared. In Crete it is still general, though one sees, alas, Cretans in the streets of Athens wearing English caps, and European over-coats over the vrachoi. This mongrel garb is the beginning of the end. It is succeeded by undiluted Western raiment, and as clothes are very expensive in Greece, this means for the mass "reach-me-downs" of the commonest description and the black billycock, which seems to have been adopted by universal consent as the popular headgear in lands bordering the Mediterranean.
The only distinctive dress of contemporary Greece is what the Greeks term a blouse. It is not a blouse, but a tunic with a skirt which is a faint echo of the fustanella. It is tight at the waist, pleated in front, made of cotton stuff in a small check pattern of grey or blue and white, cheap, useful, and not ungraceful. It is universally worn by shoeblacks and the boys in the provision shops, and largely by the labouring classes. It is better than the shoddy importations, for its small cost allows it to be replaced, so that it is never ragged.
Ferriman, Z. Duckett. Greece and the Greeks. James Pott & Co., 1911.
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