In Part I of this article, we tell you what the word dress and its term are called in the field of femininity but also, we refer this garment to masculinity, giving the ancient Greeks as an accurate example.

On this occasion, we will refer you to the categories used in Egyptian, Cretan, Etruscan and Roman culture as the main clothing of the ancient age.

For this, we cite references from the book: Brief History of Suit and Fashion, written by the specialist in the history of Fashion, James Laver.

The dress, that loose or tight one-piece garment had great particularity in Egyptian women and men, “the characteristic garment was the schenti (short skirt), a piece of fabric like a pampanilla that was held up with a belt. The schenti of the kings and high dignitaries was pleated and starched, on some occasions it was embroidered. The pharaohs wore a long robe with fringes on the edge, called: kalasiris.”

Egyptian women also wore the kalasiris transparently and it was placed above the schenti. “The women wore it close to the body, ending below the breasts and fastened with suspenders.” It is noteworthy that, in the Ancient Age, there were also cultures that raised awareness of the preservation of the environment and that culture was the Egyptian. They reasoned not to dress with fibers from animal skin, such as wool, and instead used linen.

Cretan culture dresses:

The Cretan culture was developed in Greece, it believed in various gods. The type of dress in the men of this population was the pampanilla or schenti (short skirt) “it was much more varied than the Egyptian schenti.” In the case of women, the length of the pampanilla reached the ground. Cretan clothing in both men and women suppressed the use of pins because most of the garments were tight, unlike the Greek clothing that was characterized by maintaining the folds in their fabrics.

Etruscan dresses:

Ethnicity, which according to historians, emigrated from Asia. They settled in the region of Tuscany, Italy. The women used long and tight dresses, without a belt, short sleeves and some had openings in the back, which were closed with ribbons. A long cloak was placed over the dresses. As for the men, they wore “tunic-dresses” and togas characterized by being rectangular in the mantle style.

Roman dresses:

The civilization of the Romans was born in the Italian peninsula (southern Europe), in the 8th century BC. This civilization comes from the cultural unification of Latinos and Etruscans. “The Romans took a garment from the Etruscans: the toga.” Going on to make one of the most relevant garments of Roman culture. The upper classes used this garment. The white toga was worn by politicians, including senators. “The patrician boys (belonging to the first distinguished social class of Rome) wore a toga with a purple border which was known as the toga praetexta. Upon reaching puberty, it was replaced by a white one: the virilis toga.”

For cases of mourning, there was a dark toga, it was sometimes worn on the head.

With the passage of time, the toga underwent some changes, they were made smaller and were known as pallium, worn by women and men.
Then the pallium was turned into a band, called a stole. The Roman Empire established the sewn tunic, “it consisted of two fabrics that reached the knees, except on special occasions, such as weddings, in which it reached the feet. The patricians wore it under the toga, while the soldiers and workers used it as a unique garment.”

The Romans also used tunics called dalmatic, characterized by mangas sleeves, this type of tunic became clothing of the Christian church. The embroidered tunics received the name of tunic palmata and, the elegant Romans wore it below the knee. “Sometimes they wore two superimposed tunics, an inner one: the subucula, and an outer one: the exteriodum tunic, which became longer and longer reaching the ankle and was called: caracalla, practically everyone used it. “The women’s tunics were much longer than those of the men, they were characterized by being a dress that reached the feet, they were adorned with a gold selvage and delicate embroidery. “The stola that was worn over the tunic was a similar garment but with sleeves. To leave the house, the Roman women used, on top of the stola, a large rolled cloak, similar to the toga but rectangular in shape, called the pella. ”

This is how all the previous references capture and make very clear the different forms of that unique piece, called: dress. Used by women and men in ancient times and made semi-short, long, tight or loose, among other styles. Its characteristics were subject to changes according to the advancement of time, being suppressed on an important scale in the masculinity of this Contemporary Age, but which, as a garment, is a key piece for women worldwide.

To you woman, we say:
Feel proud of the evolution of the clothing of the dress that you love so much in its different modalities.

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The dress (referring to the feminine term as the only piece) is one of the oldest garments in the world, its realization dates back to prehistory when primitive men used the skin of the animals they hunted, in order to cover themselves from the cold.

In this aspect, in order for the skin of animals to be effective, primitive men molded it in an efficient way.

“The bark of certain trees, especially oak and willow, contains tannic acid that is obtained by a process of macerating the bark in water, immersing the skin in this solution for a long time. The leathers, thanks to the bath, are definitely made flexible and waterproof. These ready-made skins could be cut and shaped; thus reaching one of the great technological advances in the history of mankind.”

Wrote James Laver, in his book “A Brief History of Suit and Fashion.”

Similar dress

Not only primitive man is concerned with one-piece clothing more than 4,000 years ago … then, the men and women of ancient Greece wore a chiton, it was the name given to a tunic … James, specialist in the history of the fashion, he said: “The men’s came to the knees and the women’s to the ankles. However, men also sometimes used a long chiton. The chitón was fastened at the shoulders by means of pins or brooches and was generally tied at the waist with a belt or cord.”

This type of clothing, used by Greek women and men, ultimately seals the dress as the original garment and therefore the most predominant in the history of fashion on the planet.

The entrepreneurship of many designers towards new styles of dresses for today’s women, is thanks to the study that, consequently, inspires them to create and bring to the present similar designs that date back centuries of our ancestors.

The phrase by an unknown author but, repeated by many: “History allows us to understand our present”, leads us to assess and respond to the why and for what of the garments that we consciously select when dressing.