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Greeks did not have specific trends, instead choosing to go with simplicity.

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From ancient Greek dresses to the pompoms on your sandals, read Culture Trip's rundown of modern style lessons that fashion learnt from the Greeks.

In a globalised world, the influences of traditional culture on contemporary fashion are increasingly obvious and recurrent. Many major labels have even come under fire for appropriating patterns, fabrics and silhouettes for their collections. Greece is one such place that has inspired modern-day fashion.

Famous for their rich ancient culture, it's no surprise that the impact of Greek design can be seen throughout the visual language of contemporary fashion. From Chanel to Gucci, here are the style lessons that fashion learnt from the Greeks.

To start with the most iconic and obvious, there's no shortage of examples of how designers have commandeered the Ancient Greek style of dress for more modern purposes. The 'Chiton' and the 'Stola' refer to the loose, elegant drape of the Greek dress. Recently, the SS18 collections were full of references to these ancient styles. Sacai brought tiered white lace to the catwalk, while Stella McCartney offered a modern interpretation with loose-knitted jumpers layered over pale silk. Also, Roksanda showed long sleeveless white dresses with rope tie details. Looking back, Chanel also staged their collection around Ancient Greece, erecting a faux-Acropolis for their Cruise collection. Meanwhile, Gucci's request to stage their show at the real Acropolis was denied, even after they ran a campaign around Ancient Greek statues.

The uniform of the Greek soldiers who guard parliament in Syntagma Square is often photographed, and rightly so. The theatricality of their clothes is hard to ignore, especially the Tsarouhia - the traditional shoe that the soldiers wear. The pointed shoe has its roots in the 15th-century ' Crakows'; the lineage from historical dress to modern style runs deep. A recent example of its influence was seen at Loewe. Jonathan Anderson offered a modern, sporty take on the elf-like footwear. Meanwhile, the pompoms on the soldier's shoes can be seen to have influenced more contemporary Greek summer sandals, as well as adding a statement edge to heels such as these from Topshop.

Another traditional part of the Greek soldier's uniform, the Fustanella is a white, tiered kilt that has clearly impacted contemporary style. At Moschino SS18, this could be seen in the pink tulle skirts that were offered. Molly Goddard's big layered dresses certainly pay homage to the volume of the Greek kilts too. The Fustanella was originally designed to convey stature and prowess of the men who wore them. Given the way in which fashion has looked to empowerment through dress in recent seasons, one can argue that the whole maximalist trend has roots in the performative, statement-making nature of items such as the Greek Fustanella.

The ornate headdress associated with the traditional Karagouna is a look that featured heavily in the Gucci AW18 show. The classic style is an embroidered scarf that is wrapped around the head and decorated with coins. This Byzantine style extends beyond Gucci's catwalk. Elie Saab's couture show this season offered sparkling headpieces to rival the originals. A few seasons ago, bejewelled hairpieces from the likes of London designer Ashley Williams lent a contemporary twist to this decorative approach to accessorising.

If you visit the Archaeological Museum in Athens, you'll encounter the astounding collection of Mycenaean gold and jewellery discovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1890. Similarly, the Benaki Museum is full of Byzantine treasures. Fast forward to 2018, and the influence of such designs is widely felt. Recent examples include the Gucci AW18 show (Alessandro Michele has a well-known fascination with antiquity), along with the likes of Alexander McQueen's ruby-and-silver chained necklaces from SS18, gold-and-turquoise bracelets from the same season at Givenchy and the highly decorative, tasselled necklaces from Saint Laurent AW18.

Intricate brocade embroidery was a staple of traditional Greek costume across the region. The detail and focus that went into crafting each piece testify to the importance of dress clothes in the enactment of customs, especially marriage ceremonies and religious dress. Today, the Orthodox Greek priests still wear bright, elaborate robes for special religious occasions, such as Easter. In contemporary fashion, the influence is visible in couture fashion, which uses delicate and traditional embroidery techniques to ascribe value to the garments. This is also true of ready-to-wear designers.

Last but not least is the impact that the traditional Grecian prints have had on contemporary fashion. In her SS17 collection, Mary Katrantzou directly referenced her Greek heritage by building a collection full of illustrations of stories from antiquity. Katrantzou is one of many who has found inspiration from the terracotta-based narratives. Other designers to have referenced the legendary tales of the Greek gods include Versace, whose logo is the head of Medusa. The Italian brand regularly uses characters from Greek mythology and Greek-inspired prints in their designs.

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7 Style Lessons That Fashion Learnt from the Greeks

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From ancient Greek dresses to the pompoms on your sandals, read Culture Trip's rundown of modern style lessons that fashion learnt from the Greeks. In a globalised world, the influences of traditional culture on contemporary fashion are increasingly obvious and recurrent. Many major labels have even come under fire for appropriating patterns, fabrics and silhouettes for their collections.

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Fun Kids - the UK's children's radio station

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Top 10 Facts About Ancient Greece! - Fun Kids - the UK’s children’s radio station

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Greece is a country in southeastern Europe, known in Greek as Hellas or Ellada, and consisting of a mainland and an archipelago of islands. Ancient Greece is the birthplace of Western philosophy ( Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), literature ( Homer and Hesiod), mathematics ( Pythagoras and Euclid), history ( Herodotus), drama ( Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes), the Olympic Games, and democracy.

The concept of an atomic universe was first posited in Greece through the work of Democritus and Leucippus. The process of today's scientific method was first introduced through the work of Thales of Miletus and those who followed him. The Latin alphabet also comes from ancient Greece, having been introduced to the region during the Phoenician colonization in the 8th century BCE, and early work in physics and engineering was pioneered by Archimedes, of the Greek colony of Syracuse, among others.

Mainland Greece is a large peninsula surrounded on three sides by the Mediterranean Sea (branching into the Ionian Sea in the west and the Aegean Sea in the east) which also comprises the islands known as the Cyclades and the Dodecanese (including Rhodes), the Ionian islands (including Corcyra), the isle of Crete, and the southern peninsula known as the Peloponnese.

The Greeks became skilled seafaring people & traders who built some of the most impressive structures in antiquity.

The geography of Greece greatly influenced the culture in that, with few natural resources and surrounded by water, the people eventually took to the sea for their livelihood. Mountains cover 80 percent of Greece and only small rivers run through a rocky landscape which, for the most part, provides little encouragement for agriculture. Consequently, the early ancient Greeks colonized neighboring islands and founded settlements along the coast of Anatolia (also known as Asia Minor, modern-day Turkey). The Greeks became skilled seafaring people and traders who, possessing an abundance of raw materials for construction in stone, and great skill, built some of the most impressive structures in antiquity.

Etymology of Hellas

The designation Hellas derives from Hellen, the son of Deucalion and Pyrrha who feature prominently in Ovid's tale of the Great Flood in his Metamorphoses. The mythical Deucalion (son of the fire-bringing titan Prometheus) was the savior of the human race from the Great Flood, in the same way Noah is presented in the biblical version or Utnapishtim in the Mesopotamian one. Deucalion and Pyrrha repopulate the land once the floodwaters have receded by casting stones which become people, the first being Hellen. Contrary to popular opinion, Hellas and Ellada have nothing to do with Helen of Troy from Homer's . Ovid, however, did not coin the designation. Thucydides writes, in Book I of his Histories:

I am inclined to think that the very name was not as yet given to the whole country, and in fact did not exist at all before the time of Hellen, the son of Deucalion; the different tribes, of which the Pelasgian was the most widely spread, gave their own names to different districts. But when Hellen and his sons became powerful in Phthiotis, their aid was invoked by other cities, and those who associated with them gradually began to be called Hellenes, though a long time elapsed before the name was prevalent over the whole country. Of this, Homer affords the best evidence; for he, although he lived long after the Trojan War, nowhere uses this name collectively, but confines it to the followers of Achilles from Phthiotis, who were the original Hellenes; when speaking of the entire host, he calls them Danäans, or Argives, or Achaeans.

Early History of Ancient Greece

Ancient Greek history is most easily understood by dividing it into time periods. The region was already settled, and agriculture initiated, during the Paleolithic era as evidenced by finds at Petralona and Franchthi caves (two of the oldest human habitations in the world). The Neolithic Age (c. 6000 - c. 2900 BCE) is characterized by permanent settlements (primarily in northern Greece), domestication of animals, and the further development of agriculture. Archaeological finds in northern Greece ( Thessaly, Macedonia, and Sesklo, among others) suggest a migration from Anatolia in that the ceramic cups and bowls and figures found there share qualities distinctive to Neolithic finds in Anatolia. These inland settlers were primarily farmers, as northern Greece was more conducive to agriculture than elsewhere in the region, and lived in one-room stone houses with a roof of timber and clay daubing.

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The Cycladic Civilization (c. 3200-1100 BCE) flourished in the islands of the Aegean Sea (including Delos, Naxos, and Paros) and provides the earliest evidence of continual human habitation in that region. During the Cycladic Period, houses and temples were built of finished stone and the people made their living through fishing and trade. This period is usually divided into three phases: Early Cycladic, Middle Cycladic, and Late Cycladic with a steady development in art and architecture. The latter two phases overlap and finally merge with the Minoan Civilization, and differences between the periods become indistinguishable.

The Minoan Civilization (2700-1500 BCE) developed on the island of Crete, and rapidly became the dominant sea power in the region. The term 'Minoan' was coined by the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, who uncovered the Minoan palace of Knossos in 1900 CE and named the culture for the ancient Cretan king Minos. The name by which the people knew themselves is not known. The Minoan Civilization was thriving, as the Cycladic Civilization seems to have been, long before the accepted modern dates which mark its existence and probably earlier than 6000 BCE.

The Minoans developed a writing system known as Linear A (which has not yet been deciphered) and made advances in shipbuilding, construction, ceramics, the arts and sciences, and warfare. King Minos was credited by ancient historians (Thucydides among them) as being the first person to establish a navy with which he colonized, or conquered, the Cyclades. Archaeological and geological evidence on Crete suggests this civilization fell due to an overuse of the land causing deforestation though, traditionally, it is accepted that they were conquered by the Mycenaeans. The eruption of the volcano on the nearby island of Thera (modern-day Santorini) between 1650 and 1550 BCE and the resulting tsunami is acknowledged as the final cause for the fall of the Minoans. The isle of Crete was deluged and the cities and villages destroyed. This event has been frequently cited as Plato's inspiration in creating his myth of Atlantis in his dialogues of the and Timaeus.

The Mycenaeans & Their Gods

The Mycenaean Civilization (approximately 1900-1100 BCE) is commonly acknowledged as the beginning of Greek culture, even though we know almost nothing about the Mycenaeans save what can be determined through archaeological finds and through Homer's account of their war with Troy as recorded in the Iliad. They are credited with establishing the culture owing primarily to their architectural advances, their development of a writing system (known as Linear B, an early form of Greek descended from the Minoan Linear A), and the establishment, or enhancement of, religious rites. The Mycenaeans appear to have been greatly influenced by the Minoans of Crete in their worship of earth goddesses and sky gods, which, in time, become the classical Greek pantheon.

Greek mythology provided a solid paradigm of the creation of the universe, the world, and human beings. An early myth relates how, in the beginning, there was nothing but chaos in the form of unending waters. From this chaos came the goddess Eurynome who separated the water from the air and began her dance of creation with the serpent Ophion. From their dance, all of creation sprang and Eurynome was, originally, the Great Mother Goddess and Creator of All Things.

By the time Hesiod and Homer were writing (8th century BCE), this story had changed into the more familiar myth concerning the titans, Zeus' war against them, and the birth of the Olympian Gods with Zeus as their chief. This shift indicates a movement from a matriarchal religion to a patriarchal paradigm. Whichever model was followed, however, the gods clearly interacted regularly with the humans who worshipped them and were a large part of daily life in ancient Greece. Prior to the coming of the Romans, the only road in mainland Greece that was not a cow path was the Sacred Way which ran between the city of Athens and the holy city of Eleusis, the birthplace of the Eleusinian Mysteries celebrating the goddess Demeter and her daughter Persephone.

By 1100 BCE, around the time of the Bronze Age Collapse, the great Mycenaean cities of southwest Greece were abandoned and, some claim, their civilization destroyed by an invasion of Doric Greeks. Archaeological evidence is inconclusive as to what led to the fall of the Mycenaeans. As no written records of this period survive (or have yet to be unearthed) one may only speculate on causes. The tablets of Linear B script found thus far contain only lists of goods bartered in trade or kept in stock. It seems clear, however, that after what is known as the Greek Dark Ages (approximately 1100-800 BCE, so named because of the absence of written documentation) Greek colonization was ongoing in much of Asia Minor, and the islands surrounding mainland Greece and began to make significant cultural advances. Beginning in c. 585 BCE the first Greek philosopher, Thales of Miletus, was engaged in what, today, would be recognized as scientific inquiry on the Asia Minor coast, and this region of Ionian colonies would make significant breakthroughs in Greek philosophy and mathematics.

From the Archaic to the Classical Periods

Greece reached the heights in almost every area of human learning during the Classical Period.

The Archaic Period (800-500 BCE) is characterized by the introduction of republics instead of monarchies (which, in Athens, moved toward democratic rule) organized as a single city-state or , the institution of laws (Draco's reforms in Athens), the great Panathenaic Festival was established, distinctive Greek pottery and Greek sculpture were born, and the first coins minted on the island kingdom of Aegina. This, then, set the stage for the flourishing of the Classical Period of ancient Greece given as 500-400 BCE or, more precisely, as 480-323 BCE, from the Greek victory at the Battle of Salamis to the death of Alexander the Great. This was the Golden Age of Athens, when Pericles initiated the building of the Acropolis and spoke his famous eulogy for the men who died defending Greece at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BCE. Greece reached the heights in almost every area of human learning during this time and the great thinkers and artists of antiquity ( Phidias, Plato, Aristophanes, to mention only three) flourished. Leonidas and his 300 Spartans fell at Thermopylae and, the same year (480 BCE), Themistocles won victory over the superior Persian naval fleet at Salamis leading to the final defeat of the Persians at the Battle of Plataea in 479 BCE.

Democracy (literally Demos = people and Kratos = power, so power of the people) was established in Athens allowing all male citizens over the age of twenty a voice in the Greek government. The Pre-Socratic philosophers, following Thales' lead, initiated what would become the scientific method in exploring natural phenomena. Men like Anaximander, Anaximenes, Pythagoras, Democritus, Xenophanes, and Heraclitus abandoned the theistic model of the universe and strove to uncover the underlying, first cause of life and the universe.

Their successors, among whom were Euclid and Archimedes, continued to advance Greek science and philosophical inquiry and further established mathematics as a serious discipline. The example of Socrates and the writings of Plato and Aristotle after him have influenced western culture and society for over two thousand years. This period also saw advances in architecture and art with a movement away from the ideal to the realistic. Famous works of Greek sculpture such as the Parthenon Marbles and Discobolos (the discus thrower) date from this time and epitomize the artist's interest in depicting human emotion, beauty, and accomplishment realistically, even if those qualities are presented in works featuring immortals.

All of these developments in culture were made possible by the ascent of Athens following the victory over the Persians in 480 BCE. The peace and prosperity which followed the Persian defeat provided the finances and stability for culture to flourish. Athens became the superpower of the day and, with the most powerful navy, was able to demand tribute from other city-states and enforce its wishes. Athens formed the Delian League, a defensive alliance whose stated purpose was to deter the Persians from further hostilities.

The city-state of Sparta, however, doubted Athenian sincerity and formed their own association for protection against their enemies, the Peloponnesian League (so named for the Peloponnese region where Sparta and the others were located). The city-states which sided with Sparta increasingly perceived Athens as a bully and a tyrant, while those cities which sided with Athens viewed Sparta and its allies with growing distrust. The tension between these two parties eventually erupted in what has become known as the Peloponnesian Wars. The first conflict (c. 460-445 BCE) ended in a truce and continued prosperity for both parties while the second (431-404 BCE) left Athens in ruins and Sparta, the victor, bankrupt after her protracted war with Thebes.

This time is generally referred to as the Late Classical Period (c. 400-330 BCE). The power vacuum left by the fall of these two cities was filled by Philip II of Macedon (382-336 BCE) after his victory over the Athenian forces and their allies at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BCE. Philip united the Greek city-states under Macedonian rule and, upon his assassination in 336 BCE, his son Alexander assumed the throne.

Alexander the Great & the Coming of Rome

Alexander the Great (356-323 BCE) carried on his father's plans for a full scale invasion of Persia in retaliation for their invasion of Greece in 480 BCE. As he had almost the whole of Greece under his command, a standing army of considerable size and strength, and a full treasury, Alexander did not need to bother with allies nor with consulting anyone regarding his plan for invasion and so led his army into Egypt, across Asia Minor, through Persia, and finally to India. Tutored in his youth by Plato's great student Aristotle, Alexander would spread the ideals of Greek civilization through his conquests and, in so doing, transmitted Greek art, philosophy, culture, and language to every region he came in contact with.

In 323 BCE Alexander died and his vast empire was divided between four of his generals. This initiated what has come to be known to historians as the Hellenistic Period (323-31 BCE) during which Greek thought and culture became dominant in the various regions under these generals' influence. After the wars of the Diadochi ('the successors' as Alexander's generals came to be known), Antigonus I established the Antigonid Dynasty in Greece which he then lost. It was regained by his grandson, Antigonus II Gonatas, by 276 BCE who ruled the country from his palace at Macedon.

The Roman Republic became increasingly involved in the affairs of Greece during this time and, in 168 BCE, defeated Macedon at the Battle of Pydna. After this date, Greece steadily came under the influence of Rome. In 146 BCE, the region was designated a Protectorate of Rome and Romans began to emulate Greek fashion, philosophy and, to a certain extent, sensibilities. In 31 BCE Octavian Caesar annexed the country as a province of Rome following his victory over Mark Antony and Cleopatra at the Battle of Actium. Octavian became Augustus Caesar and Greece a part of the Roman Empire.

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Greece is a country in southeastern Europe, known in Greek as Hellas or Ellada, and consisting of a mainland and an archipelago of islands. Ancient Greece is the birthplace of Western philosophy ( Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle), literature ( Homer and Hesiod), mathematics ( Pythagoras and Euclid), history ( Herodotus), drama ( Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes), the Olympic Games, and democracy.

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Greek (Eλληνικά), the language of one of the major civilizations and one of the greatest literatures of the world, forms its own independent branch of the Indo-European language family and has no close living relatives. Of all the living Indo-European languages, it is most closely related to Armenian. It has been spoken in the southern Balkans since the early part of the second millennium BC and has a documented history that goes back 3,500 years, the longest record of an Indo-European language.The earliest written evidence of Greek are Mycenaean Greek documents found on Crete and later on the Greek mainland. They were written in the Linear B syllabary.

Modern Greek is a descendant of Proto-Greek, the ancestor of the ancient Greek dialects that were spoken in different areas of Greece before the 4th century BC and which were gradually replaced by a variety of Greek called Common Greek or Koine (κοινή) based on the Attic dialect spoken around Athens.

The history of the Greek language is usually divided into several periods characterized by political and linguistic factors:

Mycenaean Greek, was the language of the Mycenaean civilization (16th century BC onward).

Classical (or Ancient) Greek, known throughout the Roman empire, was the language of the Classical period of Greek civilization. Classical Greek fell into disuse in western Europe in the Middle Ages, but remained known in the Byzantine Empire, and was reintroduced to the rest of Europe with the Fall of Constantinople and Greek migration to Italy.

Koine 'common' Greek, a fusion of of various Greek dialects with the dialect of Athens, was a common Greek dialect that became one of the world's first lingua francas.

Medieval (Byzantine) Greek was the literary language of the Byzantine Empire that was used until its fall in the 15th century AD.

Modern Greek developed from Koine Greek which is spoken today.

Status

Greek is the national language of Greece, where it is spoken by about 10.7 million people, and the co-official language, along with Turkish of Cyprus, where it is spoken by 1.1 million people ( Ethnologue). It is a de facto provincial language in some provinces of Albania, where it is spoken by some 15,000 people. In addition, it is spoken in many other countries where there are Greek immigrants. Greek is one of the 23 official languages of the European Union. It is spoken by some 13 million people worldwide.

Click on the MLA Interactive Language Map to find out where Greek is spoken in the U.S.

Dialects

There are several principal forms of Greek:

Dhimotiki (δημοτική), the Demotic, or vernacular, language which was declared the official language of Greece in 1976.

Katharévusa, an imitation of classical Greek, that was used for literary, juridic, administrative, and scientific purposes during the 19th and and first part of the 20th centuries.

Koine (Κοινή) is a convergence of Dhimotikí and Katharévusa which is used for all official purposes and which serves as the medium of education in Greece today

Structure

Sound system

Vowels

Greek has five vowel phonemes, i.e., sounds that differentiate word meaning.

Consonants

Greek has 24 consonant phonemes.

Grammar

Greek is a highly inflected language. The description below pertains to modern spoken Greek

Nouns, adjectives, articles, and pronouns

Nouns are marked for gender, number, and case.

There are two numbers: singular and plural.

There are three genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter.

There are five cases: nominative, genitive (which also has a dative function), accusative,and vocative.

There are three declensions

Adjectives agree with the nouns they modify in gender, number, and case.

There are two articles: definite and indefinite that agree with the noun they modify. Both are inflected for gender and case. The definite article is also marked for number.

Subject personal pronouns are normally not expressed since they can be inferred from the verb endings.

Verbs

Verbs agree with their subjects in person and number. They have the following features:

three persons: 1st, 2nd, 3rd

three numbers: singular, dual, plural

two conjugations

four moods: indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative

two voices: active, medio-passive (combination of middle and passive voice)

two aspects: imperfective, and perfective which are distinguished by separate verb stems

two tenses: non-past and past

Aspect + tense combinations produce the following forms: imperfective non-past, imperfective past, perfective non-past, perfective past.

Present/non-past forms can be combined with the Future particle θα (similar to English want to) to create imperfective and perfective future.

Word order

The predominant word order in Greek is Subject-Verb-Object. However, other orders are also possible since case endings indicate the role of words in sentences. Adjectives normally precede nouns, while possessors follow it, but this order can also vary.

Vocabulary

The bulk of Greek vocabulary evolved from Proto-Greek, the ancestor of all Greek dialects. Modern Greek has also borrowed words from other languages such as French, German, and most recently from English.

Below is a list of common Greek words and phrases with their approximate transliterations.

Below are the Greek numerals 1-10.

Writing

The first known script for writing Greek was the Linear B syllabary deciphered in 1953 by Michael Ventris. It was used for writing Mycenaean, an early form of Greek. After the fall of the Mycenaean civilization, there is no surviving evidence that writing was used until the invention of the Greek alphabet which is not related to Linear B. It was probably derived from a Semitic script, but there ino general agreement as to exactly which one. It is also possible that it was derived from the Phoenician alphabet. The modern Greek alphabet consists of the following letters which are used today in mathematics and science, as well as for many other purposes.

For historical reasons,several phonemes of modern Greek have multiple orthographic representations:

Take a look at Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek.

OIKOYMENIKH ΔIAKHPYΞH ΓIA TA ANΘPΩΠINA ΔIKAIΩMATA
APΘPO 1

Transliteration
Óli i ánthropi yeniúnde eléftheri ke ísi stin axioprépia kai ta dikeómata. Íne prikizméni me loyikí ke sinídisi, ke ofilun na simberiféronde metaksí tus me pnévma adelfosínis.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights
Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

Did You Know?

Greek influence on English vocabulary

Many modern scientific and technical words in English and other Western languages are derived from Greek. It has been estimated that over 10% of English vocabulary is of Greek origin. Greek borrowings are too numerous to list here. Below are just a few examples of English words and roots borrowed from Greek.

Difficulty

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Greek Language - Structure, Writing & Alphabet - MustGo

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Greek (Eλληνικά), the language of one of the major civilizations and one of the greatest literatures of the world, forms its own independent branch of the Indo-European language family and has no close living relatives. Of all the living Indo-European languages, it is most closely related to Armenian.

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Greek Clothing

The ancient Greeks weren't terribly interested in fashion! The clothing they wore was simple and was made to serve a purpose. (Or several purposes!) Although you often see paintings with Greeks dressed in all white, it is believed that their clothing was actually very colorful. Drawings and carvings from ancient Greece also show clothing with many kinds of patterns on them.

Most clothing was made at home. The fabric used for clothing was also spun and dyed at home. The same piece of fabric could be used for numerous things. It could be used as both clothing and bedding. The garment was usually simply a square or rectangular piece of cloth, which could be pinned or belted different ways. These garments were usually made from a type of linen or wool. Greece has a mild climate with very hot summers, and so the simpler their clothing, the better.

There wasn't much difference in the clothing that ancient Greeks wore. The small differences depended on who was wearing it and for what purpose. Both men and women wore a garment called a tunic. The tunics worn by men reached their knees, and the tunics worn by women came to their feet. The tunic would usually be tied at the waist.

Women wore a tunic called a peplos. The peplos was a full-length garment that would be draped and pinned at the shoulder different ways. Women also wore a garment called a chiton. This would be worn over the peplos. The chiton was usually very long and very full, and could be pulled together or sewn at the shoulders. Both of these garments were usually long enough to be pulled up over a belt. This created a pouch called a kolpos. Greek women also sometimes wore an undergarment around the middle of the body called a strophion.

Men also wore a chiton, but theirs was usually made from a lighter material. This was because men often had to work outdoors. A man's chiton could be draped over one or both shoulders. Greek men often wore a chiton draped over their left shoulder for horseback riding or other vigorous activity.

Both men and women wore a garment called a himation. The himation was a cloak which was worn in colder weather. Like other Greek garments, the himation could be used for other things. For soldiers away from home, it could be used as a blanket. Soldiers had another garment called a chlamys. This was simply a large rectangle of wool worn as a cloak. It was worn especially by soldiers.

You might be surprised to find that Greeks generally did not wear shoes. They might occasionally wear slippers or other soft-soled shoes, but usually preferred to go barefoot. Boots or leather sandals could be worn for special occasions. It was possible for a person in ancient Greece to go their entire life without wearing shoes!

Babies and small children in Greece might not wear any clothes at all!

So if you are planning to dress like a person from ancient Greece for a fancy dress party, here's what you'll need:

A tunic, knee-length if you're male, full-length if you're female.

A peplos and a chiton if you're female, and don't forget to bunch it at the waist.

A chiton if you're male, and drape it over your left shoulder if you'll be arriving on horseback!

A himation, in case it's cold outside.

And feel free to go barefoot!

There you have it: a brief look at the clothing of ancient Greeks. It wasn't fancy, but it was functional.

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The ancient Greeks weren't terribly interested in fashion! The clothing they wore was simple and was made to serve a purpose. (Or several purposes!) Although you often see paintings with Greeks dressed in all white, it is believed that their clothing was actually very colorful.

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A Greek man sometimes wore a petasos,which is a wide-brimmed hat, this helped to protect them from the summer heat. Women could also occasionally could be seen wearing hats that featured high-peaked crowns, this was no doubt only for the most special of occasions, though.

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Greeks did NOT like shoes, only wearing them on a special occasion or for business matters. Often when they did wear something for their feet it would be leather sandals or boots.

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A short cloak worn by young greek males, often who are in the military or horsemen.

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A shawl worn by greek woman, similar to a cloak.

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A cloak greeks wore in the cold, often made of wool. Was usually made from a rectangle cloth draped over a person, and resembled a Roman Toga.

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A type of clothing worn by women, and usually made from a heavier wool material. This was made from a large rectangular piece of fabric, and could be draped and fastened (with buttons, pins, or brooches) in different ways to reflect different styles. These were worn as a full-length clothing, because a 'proper' Greek woman revealed nothing.

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A type of clothing worn by Greek men, often made of a linen material. It could be draped over both shoulders, or one. When it was draped over one shoulder (usually the left) it was known as an exomie. This type of chiton was usually worn for horseback riding, work, or exercising.

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The type of clothing worn by a greek would depend on their status, job, and position.

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The most common fabric used was linen due to the extreme heat. Silk and wool were also used in greek clothing as well.

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Colors such as green, yellow, indigo, dark red, violet, dark purple, and other bright hued colors were popular to use among the upper class. Earthy colors and neutral colors were used most commonly with the lower class, along with decorative borders.