Overview
Old Kingdom dress is austere and hierarchical, and it is the standard against which every later Egyptian period is measured. White linen, minimal cutting, and a very small vocabulary of garments — with rank expressed through quality, ornament and the size of the wig rather than through variety.
Key garments and style
Men wore the shendyt, a short kilt wrapped and knotted at the waist, sometimes stiffened into a triangular front for formal figures. Women are shown in a close sheath dress with shoulder straps, so tight in art that it cannot be a literal record of cut — a convention for the ideal body rather than a description of a garment. Over both goes the wesekh, the broad collar of strung beads, and a heavy wig.
The painted limestone statues of Rahotep and Nofret are the clearest single witness, down to Nofret’s collar and headband and the difference in skin tone by which Egyptian art conventionally distinguished men from women.
Below the elite the record is different and more useful: tomb reliefs of farm and workshop scenes show workers in simple loincloths or nothing at all, which is a reminder that the wardrobe described above belonged to a very small number of people.
Transition
When central authority broke down in the First Intermediate Period the garments continued unchanged, but the execution passed to provincial workshops and the finish declined.