peplum

Definite, Classical Latin, < Greek πέπλος 'woman's garment', a body-length tubular cloth garment; the word itself is a reduplication of the stem seen in the word ply (see pleat, plicare) 'to fold'. Latin peplum (neuter) became more common, perhaps due to Athenian neuter pl. πέπλα. OED has headwords for both peplum and peplos, but both words in Modern English are originally scholarly readoptions from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though peplum had some vogue as a fashion term in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The original Greek peplos could be a high-status garment, and a special oversized version of purple and saffron, embroidered with depictions of various mythological subjects, was woven for each Panathenaea festival in Athens and carried in procession to the temple containing the statue of Athena Polias. Hence the word also came to mean robes of state of gods or men, or coverings for items in temples. However, it also retained the less elevated meaning of 'robe, woman's outer garment' into medieval Latin, and was also used more generally for any broad (upper) garment; hence also for wimples or headresses.