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Egyptian clothing is basically light and they prefer light materials like cotton and linen, as the weather is predominantly hot throughout the year. The climatic conditions have remained more or less the same through centuries. It is the ancient Egyptian dress, which is of utmost importance to historians as the dressing sense is an inseparable part of any culture. A lot about the dressing in ancient Egypt has been unraveled from the pictures and sculptures of those times. Though some of the pictures show idealistic dressing, there is no dearth of evidences of the real life dressing of ancient Egyptians.
The region in the Nile valley was favorable for the growth of flax plants. This is the only plant, whose fibers could be processed into clothing. The clothes were hardly sewn before wearing. Draping and pleating were considered as stylish ways of clothing. Too much color in clothes was not favored and white clothing was preferred by most people. Though much of the coarse clothing of the time has been unearthed, they were mostly used by the poor people, slave and workers.
The slaves, at the time of working used to wear loin clothes. However, sometimes they used to wear coarse clothes too that was somewhat similar to that of shirts. Women workers used to wear short skirts. The wealthier people mostly preferred dressing in very fine clothes. Around the time of the new kingdom, the Egyptian clothing of the wealthy aristocrats was fine to the extent that they were transparent. The women used to wear tight fitting clothes with shoulder straps either on both sides or on one side.
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