How To Make (And Wear) An Ancient Egyptian Loincloth and Schenti

Hey suns fae sun, I'm Daisy Viktoria, and today we are going a little bit more toward the masculine side of the clothing spectrum as we explore ancient Egyptian loincloths. Now loincloths are by no means exclusive to ancient Egypt, in fact loincloths have been worn in so many ancient cultures around the world for so long. So no matter what your specific interest is in loincloths, I hope that you find some inspiration and some help here in this video. I've been interested in ancient Egypt pretty much my whole life, and I've been researching and sort of experimenting with different ideas and construction methods for ancient Egyptian clothing for at least like six or seven years now. While I often end up creating feminine clothing, I do also create masculine clothing, and today we're going to explore some of that. I will also be showing you how to put on these garments as well as how I made them, and if you want more detailed instructions on making these, I will include a link to my PDF tutorial. Now since I am focused on ancient Egypt, let's get a little bit of background. Ancient Egypt was a very vast and long-standing civilization. What we usually think of is the unified ancient Egypt, like the old kingdom, middle kingdom, new kingdom. Ancient Egypt was unified around 3100 BC, and it survived a long time. It wasn't until 332 BC that Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, and it was 31 BC when Cleopatra surrendered Egypt. Consider there's a lot of time in there and a lot of different cultural things that are going to come and go throughout that time. That said, when we get to things like loincloths and shanties, there's not a whole lot of change. So a lot of what we're going over in this video is going to be applicable to a wide range, and like I said, it'll be applicable to things outside of ancient Egypt as well. So throughout ancient Egyptian artwork, we see a lot of the menfolk wearing loincloths, which are essentially cloths that are tied around the loins as it sounds. There are obviously going to be some variations on this, and I will show you a few different types that I've kind of come up with slash experimented with. Another thing that we see them wearing is a shanty. This is a sort of skirt or kilt, and I've made a couple of variations of shanties. It's basically a piece of cloth wrapped around on top of the loincloth. The combination of loincloth and shanty gives us that iconic look that we see so often in artwork from ancient Egypt. For this project, I cut out two different shanties. One shanty wraps fully around and overlaps in the front, and the other shanty goes sort of almost all the way to the front and ties on. So basically I measured around my waist and made sure that I had the right measurement for both of these, and I made sure they were as long as I wanted them. I'm using white linen for most of these garments. I'm also using some white cotton. Typically the textiles we do find remaining from ancient Egypt are linen. The loincloths are basically variations on a roughly triangular shape. Egyptian loincloths have been found not only in linen, but also in animal hides. So if you want to make a leather loincloth, that's actually accurate. I'm making mine all out of linen and cotton. I do also have diagrams for all of these shapes within my PDF tutorial, so if you need a little more detail you can check them out in there too. The shapes are fairly basic, and then it's kind of just about seeing what fit you like best and how you want to adjust things to make them personally suited for you and your specific body type. But since they're not really fitted garments, there's a lot of room for forgiveness here, so you don't have to be exact. And here's a big ol' pile of loincloths and shanties. Now a quick note here is that you can create any of these loincloths and shanties with sort of a couple different methods. So you can make them a single layer, you can also line them. That's something that I like to do for a little more modesty, or so that I don't have to hem the edges and I can hide my machine stitches. Obviously you can also cut out the shapes without hemming them at all. For all of these loincloth and shanty variations, you can either attach ties to them, or you can sort of wrap them around you. With the loincloth you can tie the loincloth itself, with the loincloth and or the shanty you can use a separate belt or like piece of string or what have you to tie it on around your waist. So you've got a couple of options where you can either build in the tying or you can tie it separately. A couple of my loincloths are pieced just so that they would fit nicely on the fabric I had available. I pretty much made these from scraps and stuff I had left over and also a bed sheet. While we do see loincloths and shanties throughout Egyptian artwork, a lot of the surviving actual textile evidence we have centers around the 18th dynasty because we have a lot of tomb excavations from that particular time. The 18th dynasty occurred during the New Kingdom of Ancient Egypt from around 1550 to 1292 BC. The 18th dynasty is pretty well represented because it was home to some of Egypt's most famous pharaohs such as King Tut or Tutankhamen, Hatshepsut whom I love was also in the 18th dynasty, as well as Akhenaten and his wife Nefertiti. Here is one that's flat across the top and here's one that's curved. For some of these I lined them, so I basically sewed two layers together and then turned them right side out. And where I was using ties I made sure to attach those to the upper front edges. I did some hemming on my machine here with the shanties. And here we are turning one of the lined pieces right side out. I almost delayed showing you guys how to wear the loincloth and shanty until I had a suitable male or masculine person to demonstrate for me, but I eventually got over myself because you know what? First of all, anyone can wear these. And second of all, I'm not here to make myself into the utmost ancient Egyptian man. I'm here to enable you guys to be able to do that. So hopefully you get some education or inspiration from this. On another note, I'm going to insert pictures of a male friend for whom I created some loincloths and shanties before, so that way you can see how these look on a different body type other than mine. Now I think it goes without saying, but just to be clear, the loincloth is typically the only garment or the first or undermost garment that is worn. For the purposes of this video, I will be showing you how to wear these on top of a pair of leggings and a tank top. I think you can understand why. This is actually the first loincloth and shanty combo that I ever tried to make. I have a very long piece attached to the end of the loincloth, which hangs over in front, and then the shanty ties on as well. This is the more triangular loincloth. Now you can put ties on this in the front as well, or you can just tie it, and this one is long enough that it has a piece that hangs over the front, and you can also add a shanty to this as well. Here is a shorter version of the triangular loincloth, where the front just tucks in, and here is the wrap shanty. So this one wraps around your body and crosses over in the front, and I am tying a separate string around this to hold it in place. I also created a rectangular piece to be that sort of hanging part in the front. This loincloth is inspired by the shape of one found in a tomb from the 18th dynasty. The original was actually made of goat skin, and it has a very different shaped sort of rounded flap in the front, and you can also wear a shanty with this one. This is another triangular loincloth, which is a little more curved at the top, so it fits me a little more snugly. If you look at the loincloths found in King Tut's tomb, which is the 18th dynasty, those loincloths do tend to be quite curved at the top. And for reference, King Tut did have a significant difference between his waist and hips. Well that was super fun, and I actually kind of think the loincloths are pretty comfortable. I wouldn't have thought to make them for myself unless I wanted to demonstrate it to you guys, because I always dress myself very feminine, and I always use the masculine clothing for my very masculine friends. But this time I got to try it out, and I gotta say I like it. So those are several variations of loincloths, both with and without the shanty. Throughout Egypt you're going to see a wide variety of these. In my own experimentation thus far, I've found that the loincloths where I curve in the top more, so it's more angled, those ones fit me or people who have a larger hip to waist ratio a little better, whereas the ones that are more flat across the top tend to fit my friends who have, you know, less difference between their waist and hips. So just a little note there in case it helps you. If you got some inspiration here, or if you use my PDF tutorial, I would love to see what you create. You can find me on all the social medias as daisyviktoria, my website is daisyviktoria.com, and a huge thank you to my patrons over on Patreon who help me so much to continue creating amazing content for all of you. I hope you have an absolutely magical day, and I'll see you again real soon. Bye bye!