Overview
For most of the Late Period Egypt was ruled, or fought over, by somebody else — Kushites, Assyrians, Persians twice, and finally Macedonians — and its dress became emphatically conservative in response. Egyptian clothing in these centuries is not what fashion was doing; it is a statement that Egypt was still Egypt.
Key garments and style
Priests and temple officials kept the pleated linen, the broad wesekh collar and the shaven head under a wig, and temple relief went on depicting kings in the regalia of two thousand years earlier — including Persian and later Greek rulers, shown as pharaohs in pharaonic dress whatever they wore in life. Linen remained obligatory for priests, which anchored the conservatism in ritual law rather than mere taste.
Outside the temples the picture is different. Delta trading towns, Naukratis above all, brought Greek and Levantine cloth, dyes and fashions into the country, and Persian administration brought the trousered dress of the East. These circulated without displacing the native style: Egypt acquired foreign clothing without becoming foreign in how it dressed.
Statuary of the period is a useful check, since private statues frequently show the long, high-waisted wrapped garment of the day rather than the archaising forms of temple art.
Transition
Alexander’s conquest and the Ptolemaic dynasty added a Greek court wardrobe on top of this arrangement, producing the dual system in which Greek and Egyptian dress ran side by side for three centuries.