Guest Post by Author Roger Hudson: Stories Behind the Stautes

Stories Behind the Stautes – In search of Ancient Greek fashions

By Roger Hudson, author, Death Comes by Amphora

My thanks to Nan for inviting me to feature on Booking History. With so little known about my period, I find myself having to do my own detective work just to uncover how that world may have worked and to find storylines and settings.

We’re all familiar with Ancient Greek statues and carvings from the Venus de Milo and the Discuss-thrower to caryatids holding up temples and the variety of Athenians in the Parthenon frieze. Many of the figures are naked but loads of them are elaborately clothed with elegantly draped gowns and a variety of hairdos, which one can guess reflect those of the real world of the time.

So what’s there that could aid a writer? Well, look at those hairstyles for a start. The men first. There were obviously a range of styles or – isn’t it more likely? – changing styles. We have fashions. Why shouldn’t they? Not easy to date statues accurately but it looks as though there was a change about mid-5th century BC, the period I’m writing in, in the way barbers dressed men’s hair and beards, the wealthier men anyway. From fairly long slightly wavy hair and full beards they go to much shorter hair and beards with tight curls in both. There’s even a pudding basin style for younger men with a row of tight curls forming a fringe across the forehead if not all round.

Now, the writer in me asks questions. Who invented these styles? Was there maybe one very innovative barber that the others copied. Or a few competing for the wealthier (and vainer) customers? No record has come down to us but there was no shortage of innovation in other fields. What tools would have been used to create those tight curls? They did have hair curlers but it could have taken ages if each of those curls was created individually. Clearly it meant longer in the barber’s chair for each customer, so the barber could charge more and the shops became social centres perhaps with ancillary purchases of lotions and suchlike to compensate for the free wine, social centres charged with political, sporting and personal gossip. There were other variations too – young men clean-shaven, old men longer pointy beards, philosophers seem to have thought that full, elegantly coiffed beards and hair gave them more dignity.

In some ways these neat and quite elaborate hairstyles must have been a political gesture as well, demonstrating to others the Athenians’ view of themselves as more civilised and cultured than other Greeks, especially than the Spartans, who wore their hair long – they spent ages brushing and combing it before battle – so probably both thought the other effeminate. There has to be potential for a writer here.

The women now. We have statues of goddesses and korai (interpreted as ‘maidens’) but purpose of these not entirely clear. In older statues, the hair is very formal with long plaits and ringlets, looped round the head and hanging. Then there’s a style with the hair tied up behind in a loose bun of different sizes with ribbons, a hairnet or a kind of mob cap. Looking at paintings on vases as well as statues, this style seems to have dominated for quite a while but there are variations within this of fringes and ringlets and curls. But there are other styles that look very modern and wavy almost like perms, with swept up and flowing tresses. How did they do that? Mind you, they did have wigs and add-on fringes and hair pieces.

These raise questions too. Apart from the bun style (which saw a revival in the Napoleonic Empire and English Regency period), these would have taken a long time, yet we are told that wealthy wives – the ones who would have gone in for smart hairdos – were confined to the house except for religious festivals and maybe visiting neighbours. So, did they do their hair themselves or rely on their servants or slaves? Would these be skilled enough? For the bun style maybe but, even there, we see variations that look like more than individual idiosyncrasy. So were there hairdressers who came to the house when requested? Were these male or female (there were female traders in other fields, though obviously not from the wealthy classes)? If male, (and we know craftsmen such as carpenters would visit homes to repair or create furniture), what sort of chaperoning was appropriate?

If we look at the cloaks or gowns, these are draped in various ways, with different numbers of layers, close-fitting or loose, which, to me, look more like fashion than individual choice. One of these seems to be with some sort of belt or cord under the breasts, which was echoed in the Empire line of the Regency period. There’s even an off-the-shoulder style. We know from Aristophanes that, at one point, there was a fashion for ‘crocus-coloured’ gowns, presumably yellow or purple – yes, garments, male and female, were dyed and embroidered not plain white. So who started these trends? Were there leaders of fashion? How did the word get around if women only saw one another at religious festivals, which included drama and music contests? If your husband took you to a play, were you on the lookout for what the other wives were wearing? Were there stylists one could call in to help you look different or just your best?

Men seem to have worn lots of drapery or just one loose garment thrown over the shoulder and wrapped round or nothing at all. Perhaps this depended on winter or summer rather than fashion – in winter, woollen garments replaced linen - though older men are depicted wearing more garments than younger ones. Workmen seem to wear a sort of loincloth to leave them free arm movement = their haircuts were pretty basic too. No question of fashion here, though the wealthy men do seem to put on their best for dinner parties and special occasions with coloured borders and patterns. A pity time has removed most of the coloured paint that was normal on the statues – that would tell us a lot more about fashions.

Lots of unknowns and I’m sure we’d need a lot more examples and more accurate dating to put them in sequence to be able to trace fashions accurately but, if you’re a writer, you grab one or more of these possibilities and use it in your tale, something I haven’t fully done yet, I must admit, but I will.