Going Greek! Part 2: Himations & Tunics

Costume Construction, Costume History, Eureka! The National Children's Museum, Fashion History, Realised Design

Yassou! Kalimera! (That’s out of our Ancient Greek script, and they mean “hello!” and “good morning!” in Greek.) Welcome to Part 2 of the Greeks, in which we explore ancient menswear.

First, the tunic! Or chitoniskos if you want to be technical about it. A chitoniskos is basically a big Ancient Greek tee shirt, as seen on vase paintings like this:

Going Greek! Part 1: Hellenic Chitons

Costume Construction, Costume History, Eureka! The National Children's Museum, Fashion History, Realised Design

Good news guys! I recently got the opportunity to design and make the costumes for Eureka!’s latest school workshop, The Ancient Greeks. Woohoo!

In the past Eureka! has sourced all of its costumes for special events and workshops from a fancy dress company called Smiffys, so I was chuffed to be asked to take on the project.

I found this handy website, essentially a manual on ancient Greek costume construction and draping. It all looked so simple, and I thought it’d be a breeze. That is, until I realized just exactly how much fabric you need to make a 2m x4m rectangle for an Ionic peplos (or Hellenic chiton, as I prefer to call it).