The Lady of Susa: Reconstructing the clothing of Achaemenid Persia (Part 3)

A simple veil is where we begin today..... Well, for now. You'll see what I mean later. :)

Veils, prior to Islam, were viewed in a very different context than now. They were not mandatory in Achaemenid Persia; rather, they were meant to be seen as a luxury item; something that a woman wore when leaving the privacy of the home to show her status as a lady, so free of obligations, that she could cloak herself in a garment that made it nearly impossible to do anything in.

 

Detail from the Pazyryk Rug, a 2500 year old rug that is believed to be from Achaemenid Persia, and certainly seems to back up that belief with these wonderful depictions of Achaemenid women. Image found from the Web.Iran forum

In addition, in a world where women worked along side men, and were paid equal - each person paid according to their individual skill level, their difficulty of labor, and their over all experience in the field rather than their gender - and with women even given a form of maternity gratification, (which can be likened to compensation given during maternity leave), the idea of being away from the public eye was a state of leisure. This state of leisure was usually enforced by the women themselves, as they were the ones that then chose to showcase their status by protecting as much of their privacy as possible.

Royal women viewed themselves as very private, as their common counterparts were so visible to the public. The ability to be able to simply withdraw oneself at one's own convenience was quite a luxury, mainly because it was so impractical.

This is also why in the Cyropaedia, Araspas the Mede gets a bit in over his head with our Lady of Susa... She retracted her general "veil of privacy" so to speak around him because she saw him as a close friend, and, well... How often did royal women really do that?

Judging by his reaction: not often, not often at all.
Veils in our context are going to be viewed both in an Achaemenid light and an Assyrian one, as their principles are essentially the same. Our costume is for a woman whose husband is an Assyrian ally and traveled with the Assyrian Army (hence why/how she was captured), so it's very likely this would have influenced her veiling, at least a little bit. (I still can't find anything out-right on Susian veiling customs, so Achaemenid and Assyrian is how we're going to go about this)

Originally, I wanted to use the Assyrian influence to add a fringe to the veil. But fringe is quite a pain to create. I'd have to string up a spare loom, and I'd only be able to make fringe in pieces as long as the loom is wide... My spare loom is only about four feet wide, which means a lot of restringing would be underway to produce enough fringe to go around the stupid thing.

But sometimes I get lucky in fabric picks

Fortunately, the selvage edges of the fabric have a small fringe on them, so I'll be using that as part of the design... If only there were a way I could have safely and evenly frayed the cut edges to match.. But best not risk it. I rolled and stitched the potentially hazardous raw edges down so they were easier to manage.

As for the rest of it, well, after some debate, I decided to edge the entire thing in madder-red silk. I want to also do the triangular pattern on the edge as seen on the image up top from the Pazyryk carpet, and I left one edge of the silk trim un-stitched to facilitate that. But for now, it's going to be without. The trim on the veil was very tedious, so I have to take a break from it for now, considering the NEXT trim on it will be even more so.

Until then, I'm going to share our other project.

Image via Flickr.

Shoes. (Oh my god.. Shoes! Sorry... Ok, my bad, I just couldn't help it)

Yes, shoes... And you'll have to forgive me in advance, because I am no cobbler, so these may turn out poorly, but since I cannot purchase them anywhere, I'm going to have to make them myself.

These shoes are what we're going to make, as it's rumored that, like the robes the Persians took up during the Achaemenid era, this style of shoe too came from the Elamites as a type of court dress.

They've also been dyed saffron, and ours will be saffron linen with a leather sole.

 Image of the feet of an "Immortal" from the Palace of Darius at Susa, via

I was originally at a loss for how to construct these little booties, that was, until I stumbled upon these

 Children's shoes via

In case you haven't heard, there were seven shoes found in Egypt, some children's, some adult's, all displaying foreign construction, and dating from what would be the Seleucid Empire (the Empire set up by Alexander's general after the fall of the Achaemenids). You can read more about them here.

Now, these are more along the lines of boots, but they answer a few questions, especially when coupled with these images I found detailing their construction

Line drawings illustrating the previously somewhat hard to decipher shoe construction

Look familiar? So now I know what I'm doing, at least a little bit, and that helps. So time to draft a pattern.

The Achaemenid shoes need three pairs of triangular toggles, a vamp, a round tongue, and a squared toe. Thankfully this construction is simple enough, and I won't need a last to make them (my great folly with later dated shoes)

We start with patterning. The sole is a straight one, so that's thankfully very simple, the vamp on the other hand needs to be guessed a little more.

To figure it out, I took the measurement of my foot from instep to outstep at the highest point (the top part of where the arch is, if you will), then I took the measurement from the toe to the front part of the ankle (basically where your foot joins your leg, as opposed to the ankle bone which is on the side) This was the base set of measurements I needed to make a shaped vamp. Of course, I did a lot of eyeballing (I'm just terrible with math... and I'm lazy) and lo and behold I managed a working vamp my first try.

Of course, I couldn't have had things TOO simple. It turns out that while I had the measurements right for the toe and length of the tongue and the width of the vamp, I misjudged the length that the vamp needed to be for the shoe to close as seen on the sculptures. It would have worked perfectly if I was making the Egyptian shoes, but I'm making the Achaemenid ones.... So I cut a smaller vamp, which made the tongue look comically long and wide, and then proceeded to measure and cut out the back part of the shoe.

The back part was not too difficult, it was a bit of hit and miss with the calculations. You can see here I started first with the piece and no toggles cut out, just the overlaps

From there I cut the squared flaps to an angle while wearing the shoe on my foot. I wanted the toggles to be long enough to drape, but not so long that they dragged on the floor. And boy, were the ones closest to toes dragging!

From there I cut the toggles, as ties, to try the shoe on better. I wasn't too displeased with it. I think my original guess of 24cm might have been too long, but I can fix that by giving a bigger seam allowance to the shoe.

The one thing I noticed about these shoes was that, unlike the sculptures, mine didn't have a very long, sleek toe. In fact, they looked a bit more like the child's shoes in their stoutness. It worried me at first that I had perhaps made the toggle pieces too big...

But then I remembered the sculptures are, well, art depicting something, likely quite a bit idealized... And that the sculptures were depicting men. And if the disparity in size between my husband and I is anything to go on, well, yeah... The toe on my shoes is probably rightfully less sleek and elongated than I had hoped.

Ok, so here's some pictures of the construction of the actual shoe (not the mock-up)

The worst part of sewing these shoes? I couldn't use beeswax on the thread because of them being dyed later on (I didn't want the beeswax to either a. prevent the dye from sticking to the thread, or worse, b. melt during the high-heat wash and smear on other parts of the shoe and cause streaking)

You can see I stitched around the edges rather than using a running stitch like I had with the mock-up. I figured this would be a bit better for the shoe and overall durability, as the shoe now has to be washed in scalding hot water to prepare for its mordant and dyebath.

The general shape of the shoe is good, I mean... I can't complain too much on the outcome, considering it's a first attempt. It's likely to get better should I have to make them again.

Not that I'm really planning on it... These shoes will probably just be resoled if it comes to the point where they begin to fall apart.

Well, I guess that leaves me with two things to do now... The dyeing so I can start the actual robe and sew the soles to the shoes, and the rest of the accessories.

But I think that's best saved till next time. Already this feels too much for one post.

Oh, and I guess since this is part of a HSF challenge, I need this, don't I? (I'm not sure if I'm going to make a whole new post just to cover it once it's completed, so... Yeah. Ok, we'll just put it here)

The Challenge: #12 Pretty, Pretty, Princesses

Fabric: Linen, cotton, silk

Pattern: Self-drafted, though I did use that picture above from the Egyptian boots as a guideline to figure out what pieces I'd need for the shoes.

Year: 6th century BCE

Notions: Cotton and silk thread

How historically accurate is it? I give it a 9/10. There's some things I'm not going to be able to get 100%, ever. Things like the trim with the triangular weave, well, my guess is that it was actually trim with a triangular pattern woven into it, but I'm going to have to make it the hard way (or risk buying something polyester or rayon.. ah, no!) And the shoes, well, I didn't make them entirely out of leather, which I suspect is actually how the ones in the reliefs were constructed. I just am not good at leather work, so I'd rather avoid it when I can. In addition, cotton gauze wasn't the greatest choice for the veil for the era even though it existed and was used for other clothing items. Linen or silk probably would have been a better choice, but I didn't have linen fine enough for it, and I really didn't want to make it out of silk, since I have MANY more useful applications for silk... So... 9/10.

Hours to complete: Well, they're not entirely complete yet.... One needs to be dyed and have their soles attached, the other is lacking the second trim I want to add to it... So far though they've clocked a LOT of hours. probably close to 15

First worn: They'll be worn with the robe that's waiting to be done at the Cyrus Cylinder viewing at the Getty

Total cost: Pfff not sure. as with most of this I'm making it out of things I already have laying around, but my guess is the materials must have been in the neighborhood of $40 for fabrics, trims, and notions.