I actually had a similar question regarding slaves and common women in Greece during the bronze age mostly! Or any differences between clothing of farmers vs merchants for example ^^ (asking here in case you prefer the ask format)
Hi again! Thanks for the question :)
Minoans
As in most historical periods, images of non-elite people are scarce. Most of the people we see on the magnificent Minoan and Mycenaean frescoes show us the elite or soldiers. Average people on the other hand are rarely the topic of interest. Luckily for us the Minoans, and in particular the Minoan colony of Thera, Akrotiri, did depict people outside the elite.
One of the most interesting things the people of Akrotiri depicted were fishermen, otherwise absent in Minoan and Mycenaean art (to my knowledge at least).
Throughout Classical Antiquity fishermen are either nude or scarcely dressed when depicted, in later periods they do where either a type of loincloth or a tunic of the sort. What’s interesting about these fishermen is their distinctive haircuts. In Minoan (and Mycenaean) culture a hairstyle would tell your age and marital status, especially for women. The hair of these fishermen tells us they were young men, not yet completely adults.
Akrotiri didn’t only give us these fishermen, it also gave us the entire Ship Procession mural. A treasure for researchers regarding the world the Minoans lived in. We get a glimpse of the world outside the palaces with this fresco. The fishermen of above are also depicted on it near the boathouses:
Even though it’s a lot smaller, they seem to have had a full head of hair and thus these are probably the adult fishermen.
The Ship Procession fresco also shows us the shepherds or farmers. They lived outside the city and palace. Often times they didn’t have the money to afford the luxury clothing depicted on the frescoes, but Akrotiri did depict them:
They wear animal skins as a cape. Elite Minoans and Mycenaeans also wore these, but a more refined version of it and also made out of rarer animal skins or sometimes also out of a type of fabric decorated with patterns.
They could also wear a loincloth or a loose tunic, here we see both the loose tunic of one farmer/shepherd and the loincloth:
Children are depicted naked or with a loincloth, here are some boys running up a hill:
The two boys in the middle are probably wearing a loincloth (the wall painting is just very dirty):
Men standing in front of the palace at the edge of the river also wear girdled loincloths:
They were probably people living in the city and maybe even merchants (their presence at the edge of the river and the docks might hint to that).
There’s also a boathouse depicted with a man coming out of the entrance:
He seems to wear either a broad tunic or a similar cape as the animal skin ones, but probably made out of fabric instead of animal skin. The men sitting on top of the boathouse wear a similar outfit:
These might be merchants, you can see their wares in the background
Near the boathouse we also see two of the only depictions of non-elite women:
Now, it’s very badly damaged and a bit unclear, but they are carrying vases on their heads, probably to fetch water. As you can see, the skirts of these women are plain, it’s rather undecorated. The one with the red skirt, has tassels on the side. Most handwoven pieces of fabric have an edge with threads hanging out. If this is what’s being depicted, then there’s a possibility of it being some type of long wrap skirt. Which is probably the case because we can see that at the other side the other part of the of the fabric also has the same type of edge.
The magnificent heavy patterned skirts we see on the other wall paintings were very expensive. A normal person wouldn’t be able to afford them. The women are also barefoot, like most of the people depicted on this fresco. On the torso of the woman with the red skirt we see a black line. This is either her hair or the middle parting of her open front tunic. It also seems like the woman with the blue skirt has some remnant of sleeves. They probably wore the same tunic as the other Minoan women in wall paintings.
Jewelry however seems absent, even the otherwise characteristic hoop earrings aren’t there.
According to J. Younger (“Minoan women” in Women in Antiquity, 473-594, 2016) there were 3 classes of women in society in Minoan culture. All three of them are depicted in this fresco (the Grandstand Fresco):
We have the women’s heads at the bottom, the women standing on each side of the picture on the stairs and then the sitting women in the middle. The sitting women wear a full ornate court dress, these are elite women/palace women. The women on the stairs are the second class, they wear simple robes. Younger describes it as: “elites, women who accompany them (cf. Mycenaean a-pi-qo-ro) and the women masses (e.g. those who did manual labor).” The women we saw on the Akrotiri wall painting carrying water probably belong to the women masses. Their clothes were a lot plainer than the ones of the second class depicted here.
I drew a quick sketch to compare the three a bit (it's not great but it's just to illustrate the difference in dress). I wanted to draw the men as well, but I didn't find the time regretfully.
As for slaves, we don’t know a lot about them. We know a lot of them were employed at the Mycenaean palaces since they are listed on the tablets of Pylos (captive women). There’s also a Linear B tablet mentioning the sale of some people called the doeloi. In Late Minoan Crete we find the only mention of slavery, which are slaves of the god. Nevertheless the scarce references to them, it’s assumed they did exist in Minoan society. This assumption is mainly made because slavery can’t just pop up randomly, it most of the time needs some type of precedent like types of serfdom. On top of that, within the palace of Knossos multiple lower quality pottery was found, while the rest of the wares of the palace were of superior quality with decorations and such. I assume they would’ve worn something similar to the village women.
Mycenaeans
The Mycenaeans left less material to base anything on. They mainly depicted military, religious and royal subjects. However the Egyptians have given us a big favor. In the tomb of Rekhmire we see envoys from Keftiu. This refers to Crete, but the time period that has been estimated for this wall painting is during a time that the Cretan Minoan civilization was in decline. Even more remarkable is that after a few years the Egyptians decided to paint over the original wall painting, to make the depiction more accurate. Research has shown that the original wall painting showed the long-haired Minoans with their typical aprons, but the overpainted version has the envoys dressed in kneelength kilts. It’s estimated that the overpainting was done somewhere around 1436 BC, this coincides with the time period where Cretans began adopting Mycenaean attributes and the rise of a Greek speaking elite. Peter Haider describes the quilts as festive wear, and the envoys we see here probably dressed a lot more fancy than your average Mycenaean merchant.
As I mentioned before, these types of kilts and wrap skirts we associate with the Minoans and Mycenaeans were most of the time reserved for the elite or wealthiest part of the people. Describing these as festive is indeed correct. Normal merchants might’ve had a plain kilt or one with little decoration on it. Mycenaean men in general wore little boots, the Egyptians drew it in great detail. It’s assumed that they were some type of woven shoe, akin to the woven sandals we still wear today.
In Mycenaean Greece we also see tunics gain popularity, especially within hunting contexts. They are often decorated with only some seamlines, so there’s the possibility that other people outside the elite were able to afford them.
As for women, we don’t really know. I think it wouldn’t be that different from the Minoan ones, but we lack evidence for this one. The same goes for slaves. Even though slaves are attested on clay tablets in Linear B, they aren’t depicted in art. From what we do know of them, we can conclude that palace slaves were probably better dressed than free poor people. A person’s status in Mycenaean times and especially those of slaves, was determined by how close you were to the palace. The lowest class of slaves however received the lowest food portions, so they probably weren’t that well dressed either.
I hope I didn't forget anything. If I notice later that I forgot something in here, I'll reblog it with the additional info :)