In ancient Rome, the subtlest details in dress helped to distinguish between levels of social and moral hierarchy. Clothes were a key part of the sign systems of Roman civilization – a central aspect of its visual language, for women as well as men. This engaging book collects and examines artistic evidence and literary references to female clothing, cosmetics and ornament in Roman antiquity, deciphering their meaning and revealing what it meant to be an adorned woman in Roman society. Cosmetics, ornaments and fashion were often considered frivolous, wasteful or deceptive, which reflects ancient views about the nature of women. However, Kelly Olson uses literary evidence to argue that women often took pleasure in fashioning themselves, and many treated adornment as a significant activity, enjoying the social status, influence and power that it signified. This study makes an important contribution to our knowledge of Roman women and is essential reading for anyone interested in ancient Roman life.
Carefully copied from ancient vases and statuary, these early-19th-century classic line renderings combine unusual clarity of style with unquestioned authenticity. Over 700 illustrations depict all classes and occupations.
Thirteen scholarly and well-illustrated essays survey, document and elucidate over a thousand years of Roman garments and accessories, including Etruscan influences, Near Eastern fashions and the transition towards early Christian garb.
Roman Dress and the Fabrics of Roman Culture investigates the social symbolism and cultural poetics of dress in the ancient Roman world in the period from 200 BCE-400 CE. Editors Jonathan Edmondson and Alison Keith and the contributors to this volume explore the diffusion of Roman dress protocols at Rome and in the Roman imperial context by looking at Rome's North African provinces in particular, a focus that previous studies have overlooked or dealt with only in passing. Another unique aspect of this collection is that it goes beyond the male elite to address a wider spectrum of Roman society. Chapters deal with such topics as masculine attire, strategies for self-expression for Roman women within a dress code prescribed by a patriarchal culture, and the complex dynamics of dress in imperial Roman culture, both literary and artistic. This volume further investigates the literary, legal, and iconographic evidence to provide anthropologically-informed readings of Roman clothing. This collection of original essays employs a range of methodological approaches - historical, literary critical, philological, art historical, sociological and anthropological - to offer a thorough discussion of one of the most central issues in Roman culture.
This book examines the dress and personal appearance of members of the middle and lower classes in the eastern Mediterranean region during the 4th to 8th centuries. Written, art historical and archaeological evidence is assessed with a view to understanding the way that cloth and clothing was made, embellished, cared for and recycled during this period. Beginning with an overview of current research on Roman dress, the book looks in detail at the use of apotropaic and amuletic symbols and devices on clothing before examining sewing and making methods, the textile industry and the second-hand clothing trade. The final chapter includes detailed information on the making and modelling of exact replicas based on extant garments.
This captivating book reproduces arguably the most extraordinary primary source documents in fashion history. Providing a revealing window onto the Renaissance, they chronicle how style-conscious accountant Matthäus Schwarz and his son Veit Konrad experienced life through clothes, and climbed the social ladder through fastidious management of self-image. These bourgeois dandies' agenda resonates as powerfully today as it did in the sixteenth century: one has to dress to impress, and dress to impress they did. The Schwarzes recorded their sartorial triumphs as well as failures in life in a series of portraits by illuminists over 60 years, which have been comprehensively reproduced in full color for the first time. These exquisite illustrations are accompanied by the Schwarzes' fashion-focussed yet at times deeply personal captions, which render the pair the world's first fashion bloggers and pioneers of everyday portraiture. The First Book of Fashion demonstrates how dress – seemingly both ephemeral and trivial – is a potent tool in the right hands. Beyond this, it colorfully recaptures the experience of Renaissance life and reveals the importance of clothing to the aesthetics and every day culture of the period. Historians Ulinka Rublack's and Maria Hayward's insightful commentaries create an unparalleled portrait of sixteenth-century dress that is both strikingly modern and thorough in its description of a true Renaissance fashionista's wardrobe. This first English translation also includes a bespoke pattern by TONY award-winning costume designer and dress historian Jenny Tiramani, from which readers can recreate one of Schwarz's most elaborate and politically significant outfits.
"A fascinating history of…[a craft] that preceded and made possible civilization itself." —New York Times Book Review New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibers. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fiber arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods—methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.