The Chitoniskos (Tunic)

By Andrew Yamato

The hoplite’s most basic garment. Simple and inexpensive to make, this is the one piece of kit you (arguably) can’t be without.

The most common garment for Greek hoplites is the chitoniskos, which is essentially a shorter version of the longer chiton generally worn by older men and women. Reenactors commonly refer to this garment by the shorter term.

*While they often considered two separate garments, there is nothing preventing a chiton from being worn off one shoulder like an* exomis.

Because virtually no Greek clothing has survived, we are left to puzzle out the often baffling details of their garment construction from artistic renderings, which are often heavily stylized and variable in their depiction of even the most basic garments. In its simplest form, the chiton appears to have been a single rectangle of either linen or wool, approximately 3-5 feet tall and 6-10 feet wide, which was doubled and sewn or pinned closed on one side. The top opening was divided (by sewing, pins, or buttons) into three roughly equivalent openings for the head and two “armholes,” with the resulting baggy sides collapsing under the arms. A simple belt was usually tied at the waist, through which the hem was bloused to the desired length, defining loose pleats. Buttons were sometimes used to close the top hem over the upper arms, creating “sleeves.”

Greek garments were almost certainly woven to their specific size rather than cut from larger lengths. Cloth was laborious to produce — along with raising children, it was a primary responsibility of Greek women — and the draped style of the chiton and other garments meant that nothing was wasted as tailoring offcuts.

Then as now, fashions vary from place to place and change over time. If vase art is to be trusted, chitoniskos hemlines were very short in Archaic and early Classical Greece, with longer hemlines coming into fashion by the Peloponnesian War and remaining so through the 4th Century BCE. While most art shows pleated chitons, there are many unpleated examples as well.

In many of the artistic renderings shown here, the chiton appears to be worn with a chlamys cloak (or other garment) folded and draped around the body and through the arms.

*Grave stele of a 4th C hoplite wearing a long, unpleated chitoniskos.*

Our Reconstruction

My pattern features an overfold hanging loose from the top hem to the waist. While such designs are clearly shown on vase art (e.g. the example above), my main reason for adopting this style is that it uses the full width of standard 60”/150cm loom cloth, thus retaining the cloth’s stable selvage and eliminating the need for a folded hem along a cut edge to prevent unraveling.

*A linen chitoniskos. Extra ease across the front of the neck opening helps the fabric drape comfortably below the throat. Dampening the fabric helps it fall into natural-looking folds.*

*The same pattern rendered in wool, with a contrasting woven selvage pattern at the hems.*

In addition to the loose pleating that is the natural result of loose fabric being cinched with a belt, more precise pleating can be created by dampening the cloth and accordian-folding it. Tightly bundle with a rope or cord and allow the garment to dry for at least several days. For semi-permanent results (particularly with lightweight wools) use a 50% vinegar solution to dampen the fabric before pleating.

*Tightly binding the damp cloth on its own makes for vertically sharp pleats with slight horizontal rippling. This wool chiton will be pleated from top to bottom.*

A cardboard pleating board can be used to create especially flat, regular pleats, although the thickness of the cardboard itself makes the pleats slightly less sharp. This linen chiton will only be pleated on its lower half.

*The finished wool chiton bundled above, hiked up for a frisky Archaic look.*

*The same chiton, worn more modestly in the Classical fashion*

*A linen chiton that’s been pleated only on its lower half, leaving the top “billowy.”*

We frequently see artistic representations in vase art of what appear to be wavy or billowy “shirts” of some sort being worn over pleated chitons. Some speculate that these actually depict shearling arming vests worn to cushion armor, but given the fact that such garments are also seen on women and other civilians, this seems unlikely. A better theory is that such representations are intended to show the unpleated upper portions of the chiton itself. Sometimes these billowy bits are shown only at the top edges of otherwise fully pleated chitons, perhaps representing the inevitably crumpled edges of such garments in heavy friction areas as armpits.

It is possible that the Greeks actually wove pleats into their wool on the loom with a technique called “collapse weaving,” which could yield precisely the effect we see on statues like the one below, in which the cloth stretches flat when pulled over prominences but falls into tight pleats when left to drape freely.

Collapse-woven pleats. [Image courtesy of Paul Luks]

The question of how to recreate the undulating pleated chiton hemline so often seen in artwork is perplexing, and every solution is speculative. It’s certainly easy enough to cut a zig-zag hemline, but this seems inelegant, and contrary to the notion of Greek clothing being made from draped lengths of uncut cloth. The fact that we so often see decorated borders (probably woven into the cloth) undulate with the hemline also suggests that the zig-zag is draped rather than cut.

I puzzled out a technique to create an undulating hemline without cutting the cloth, but it is fussy, requiring diagonal pleats evenly distributed along a drawstring at the waist and/or tacked down individually at the waist. Resetting such pleats after washing would be a nightmare, if possible at all.

A strong case can be made that very neatly undulating hems are entirely an artistic convention intended to capture the motion of loose cloth in a static medium. The best evidence for this is the near complete absence of undulating hems in stone or bronze sculpture and relief, which is generally far more sophisticated and realistic than pottery art quickly painted by artisans copying popular styles. Most sculpted chitons have straight hems, and where we do see undulation, it is clearly (and casually) draped, the result of the cloth having simply been pulled up though a belt.