Roman Fashion Trends

SHELDON
NODELMAN
 from
 E.
D’Ambra,
ed.,
Roman
Art
in
Context.
NY:
Prentice
Hall.
1993
pp.
10‐20
 Like all works of art. the portrait is a system of signs; it is often an ideogram of “public’ meanings condensed into the image of a human face. Roman portrait sculpture from the Republic through the late Empire-the second century BCE. to the sixth CE -constitutes what is surely the most remarkable body of portrait art ever created. Its shifting montage of abstractions from human appearance and character forms a language in which the history of a whole society can be read. Beginning in the first century B.C., Roman artists invented a new kind of portraiture, as unlike that of the great tradition of Greek

However, Valerius, like Cato, associates women with matters that are less substantial and not entirely connected to the empire as a whole. “No offices, no priesthoods, no triumphs, no decorations, no gifts, no spoils of war can come to them; elegance of appearance, adornment, apparel-these are the woman’s badges of honor.” The apparent connection between women and appearance shows that women in Roman society were something to be looked at or shown off. Women were the prizes of men and the better they looked or the more they had been directly linked to his status in society.

The fantastic synthesis of seating arrangement and the order of the use of different style provides a visual symbol and expression of the concept of the strict hierarchical Roman social structure.

Have you ever wondered what people in the Elizabethan Era wore? Fashion was just as important in those days as it is to some people today. What people were wearing mattered to others, and even the government. During the Elizabethan Era clothing, accessories, and cosmetics were all a part of daily life.

Among the Roman men there were taboos pertaining to what to wear. As a normal, everyday, Roman citizen their clothing would be more plain, basic in fact. The more power that one begins to acquire within society, the more elaborate his clothing can become. Among men’s clothing there were three toga types: the basic tunic, the equestrian tunic, and the senatorial tunic. The first is an all-white basic tunic that is worn by the everyday citizen of Rome. The second incorporates some red into the tunic, while the last has elaborately flowing lines of red. The togas also resembled a stratified society, except the color red was replaced by purple. These wardrobes signified status and wealth, and so it was typically taboo for a lower-class Roman to be adorned in elaborate attire if he was not a part of the equestrian or senatorial caste. This meant that his wardrobe was limited by the status he attained and only a rise in status would allow him to break this taboo (McManus 1). The taboo of wearing certain attires is trumped by another taboo when Augustus enacts a new law in 18

As per Tertullian's suggestions in (Apparel of the woman): The advice regarding dress and appearances to the women of Roman Christian communities was simplicity. He wanted women not to have the idea of jewelry, cosmetics, or clothing that wasn't designed to fit the normal day to day life. He believed that changing or modifying anything in your body or hair was the sign of disrespects to the gods, that their human creation. He believed if women committed actions of being too "beautiful" in a sense, would establish the sin of temptation. He states that vanity and evil are the driving forces behind the women's preferences and desires for cosmetics, jewelry and color dyed clothing. He has concluded that the fallen angels that had taken human wives in ancient biblical times started the lust for material goods and that it came from evil. Tertullian, in my opinion, didn't seem to

During the ancient Roman time period, clothing was crucial in citizens’ status of either emperor, wealthy, middle class, poor, or slave. The emperor would have worn the toga trabea, which was, “formal differences in togas which denoted social rank” (Roman Dress). The emperor himself would wear a toga with a purple stripe to show his status. As emperor, he would also wear the latus clavus, tunica palmata, and the toga palmata. For wealthy citizens, “It was simply deemed improper for such a Roman citizen of

The people with the best clothes were the people with the most amount of money. “A fine cloth was only as good as its cut and decoration and a man or woman could make their fortune on the strength of these designs.” (“Tailoring”). Clothing was an important part of life, in showing wealth, in showing authority and in showing personal qualities. “Eventually political and social

The Romans' everyday routines explain how funerary customs played a central role in society from the late Republic to early Empire. More importantly, examining the rituals will illustrate if there was a connection to the increasing popularity of inhumation at that time. There was a blurred line between life and death that made it appear as if there was a paradoxical attitude towards death. The observation can be made that death was an end to a person's physical life on earth but it did not stop the deceased from being a part of the Roman society.7 Keeping the memory of the deceased alive was vital in family homes. For this to occur the dead could not be cremated; the funerary rites to follow would not allow it because the physical body was necessary. The idea of honoring the recently deceased as an ancestor was stressed in society.8 The funerals of Roman aristocrats were quite extravagant and the deceased aristocrats were treated as if they were still a part of the living. This wouldn't be possible with a cremated body, so another option was to properly clean the body for the display in the atrium of the family household before the final disposal of the

An individual’s hair in this period would indicate a lot about a person. Untamed hair for the Romans was a sign of one’s baser nature, normally associated with barbarians like the Germans. “Control of hair by cutting, rooming, braiding, enclosing in a turban, or other means indicates an individual’s participation in social structures within a publicly defined role and that individual’s submission to social control,” (Bartman 5) To have your hair

The lives of Roman boys were indubitably intriguing, but they unquestionably contrasted with the lives of boys today.To begin, Roman boys wore different types of clothing, depending on their social status and money.Boys living in the lower class wore only a tunic (tunica) and undergarments (subligaculum), while the higher classes wore a tunic, undergarments, and toga praetexta. This was, at least, until they reached manhood and switched out the toga praetexta, which was usually bordered with garnet, for a plain white tunic. Wealthier boys actually had the color purple featured somewhere on their togas, corresponding to the characters in our Ecce Romani book. This was a symbol of economic superiority, since purple was a particularly rare color

In Roman civilization, dress represented a variety of things. Traditionally, upper class Romans wore a toga, which symbolized power, humanity, and culture. Status was also represented by clothing, often through draping, color, and accessories (Leventon 34). For example, purple was a color of high status; a white toga with a thick stripe of purple was worn by

BibliographyCorbishley, Mike. Cultural Atlas for Young People: Ancient Rome. New York: Facts on File, 1989.

The toga was important in determining the class of which a man came from, how a man looked was central to their public perception. According to Alice T. Christ, the toga virilis was an “explicit attribute of Roman manhood,” (Christ 25). It was necessary to gain civic recognition in order to be considered a man, vir. A few years after puberty would celebrate “legal majority” would wear a plain white toga para. The toga virilis “signified a bodily state: sexually capable and male; but also a Roman citizen body, a normative political construct for which male sexual maturity was on the first prerequisite,” (Christ 25). Furthermore, per White, the toga was a vehicle for Augustus’s programmatic restoration of ancestral customs. The toga virilirs

Cosmetics, first used in Ancient Rome for ritual purposes, were part of daily life for women, especially prostitutes and the wealthy. Cosmetics were applied in private, usually in a small room where men did not enter. Cosmetae, female slaves that adorned their mistresses, were especially praised for their skills. They would beautify their mistresses with cultus, the Latin word encompassing makeup, perfume and jewelry.