Woman from Constantinople, 18th Century, Museum Benaki, Athens

16th-18th CENTURIES

However exotic this period of fashion may seem to western European eyes, it was the elaborate costumes with all their trimmings that merchants brought back from remote parts of Asia that struck the people of Byzantine and post-Byzantine times as so outlandish.

The same kind of garments eventually reached the ports of Europe where they were adopted and modified, only to find their way back to the countries of their origin or to places lying in between, such as the Balkan peninsula.

It was the western costume though that mostly influenced the style of dress worn in the Aegean islands and in the coastal cities of mainland Greece.
Renaissance fashions based on the full-length dress prevailed there, to be succeeded by an Aegean version of the rococo style.

Many of the travelers who visited Greece between the 16th and 18th centuries have left us a record of what they observed. Some traces remain, like fossils, in the costumes of Chios, Siphnos, the northern Sporades, and also in some of the Dodecanese islands.
The following prints are a sample of those recordings...
woman of siphnos
Woman of Siphnos
Grasset de St. Sauveur,
1796

woman of naxos
Costume of young woman of Naxos
New Geographical Dictionary,
1759
man of siphnos
Inhabitant of Siphnos
Grasset de St. Sauveur,
1796

woman of milos
Young woman of Milos
Lecompte,
1817

mother and child of naxos
Woman and Child of Naxos
Grasset de St. Sauveur,
1784

woman of santorini
Woman of Santorini
Grasset de St. Sauveur,
1784

HOMEMinoan TimesBibliography1800s18th CenturyByzantioAncient Greece