Athens, the new capital of the newly-founded Greek kingdom since 1834, was a pole of attraction for Greeks and foreigners alike, its cosmopolitanism and changing identity nowhere else more visible than in the diverse clothing fashions. As the Earl of Carnarvon observed in 1839, “all is strange at Athens and full of striking contrast. The fragments of the old are jumbled with the elements of the new and as yet unformed society”.
Fashions in the Streets of 19thC Athens
The variety of dress one could see in Patissia, the popular promenade of 19thC Athens, is indicative of a society in transition. Amidst the roadside cafes and under the sounds of the military band, mix all classes of society “from the members of the Court down to the ragged and begging poor”, writes About in 1852.
All kinds of dress and fashions are seen in this fashionable street, the Athenian equivalent of Via del Corso, the “turf of Athens”: ladies en grande toilette, possibly crinolines or walking dresses and “in the European costume”; some wearing bonnets, others the red fez; cavalry officers in uniform; diplomats; police in Greek traditional costume; servants in Albanian dress, all promenade together amidst the carriages, smoking, drinking coffee and waiting for the Sunday appearance of the royal couple.
Men’s Fashions in 19thC Athens
The Greek male traditional costume which was adopted by King Otto himself consisted of a white cotton pleated skirt, or foustanella, reaching to the knee, a white open-collared shirt, white leggings secured by garters and a red or grey jacket richly embroidered with gold or silver. The head gear consisted of a red fez, or fesi, with rich embroidery and tassel.
This traditional dress (also called Albanian dress at the time) was also worn by the King’s adjutants and with variations by other officials and is described by one foreign observer as “especially becoming to them” and giving “to their action and bearing a peculiar and somewhat theatrical grace”. Male islanders wore baggy trousers, a white shirt, sleeveless waistcoat and sash.
In royal balls, a few men, including King Otto and his bodyguard Plapoutas, wore the Greek ethnic costume, the rest were dressed in “plain black suits”. “The variety of costume was amusing”, reports Nassau Senior: “the diplomatic, military, and official uniforms... mixed with... the Albanian jackets and foustanelles, the furred cloaks of the clergy and the vast trowsers of the deputies from the islands and the Morea”.
Queen Amalia and her Crinolines
The first Queen of Greece, in fact King Otto’s consort, Amalia of Oldenburg, created the famous Amalia dress inspired by regional ethnic dress. The costume was worn initially by Amalia’s ladies-in-waiting and later became widespread. It consisted of a long skirt and open blouse showing the embroidered chemise, a short, fitted gold-embroidered velvet jacket, or kontogouni and a red fez with long tassels of dark blue silk.
Queen Amalia had, however, a noted preference for Parisian fashions and appeared in royal balls in “enormous” crinolines, or in a “spic-and-span new lace dress from Paris” worth many thousands of francs, and wearing diamonds and bouquets of red dahlias. Amalia with her beauty and vivaciousness had a great impact on Athenian high-society fashions.
However, many a family has been ruined by the royal court dress fashions. Ministers’ wives and daughters were required to appear in Parisian dress in court and since these toilettes were to be frequently changed on Queen’s orders, the expense on the families’ budget was considerable.
Ladies’ Fashions in 19thC Athens Royal Ballroom
Most of the dancing ladies in the Greek royal balls wore “wreaths, gauze and crinolines” but not all. The royal court ballrooms were also host to ladies in Greek ethnic dress. Some came from the powerful island of Hydra, donning their heavy dresses silk woven with gold and wearing their peculiar head gear of embroidered yellow silk. Jewels, like pearls and diamonds, were lavishly displayed on caps and dresses.
Indicative of the changing face of 19thC Greek society was the coexistence of the old and the new: it was not uncommon to see an elderly lady, whose daughter was dancing away in a crinoline, to sit herself in the royal ballroom “in her fur bordered kaftan and... her Athenian kerchief carelessly rolled round her head, unlaced and unembarrassed and as much at ease as if she were sitting in her own sal or aula”.
Sources:
Earl of Carnarvon, Reminiscences of Athens and the Morea extracts from a journal of travels in Greece in 1839, John Murray: London 1869, in John Tomkinson (ed.), Travellers’ Greece. Memories of an Enchanted Land, Anagnosis: Athens 2006.
Felicia Mary Skene, Wayfaring Sketches among the Greeks and the Turks by a Seven Years’ Residence in Greece, London 1847.
Edmund About, La Gréce Contemporaine, first published 1854, Dodo Press Reprint 2009.
Fredrika Bremer, Greece and the Greeks, vol. I, London 1863
Nassau Wiliam Senior, A Journal Kept in Turkey and Greece, London 1859.
Further Reading
Linda Welters, “Ethnicity in Greek dress”, in Joan Bulbolz Eicher, Dress and Ethnicity: Change Across Space and Time, Berg Publishers, 1995
Lito Apostolakou - Lito is a historian with an interest in digital archives and online historical resources. She is the author of blog Palimpsest.
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