Roman Patrician Matron’s Clothing Clothing “A married woman’s rank, status, and morality were also supposed to be indicated by her dress: long tunic, stola, and palla or mantle, drawn over the head when the woman was out of doors, and hair bound in fillets.” (Olson, Dress, 25) All my garments were constructed with undyed linen thread using a running stitch and finished and hemmed by rolling over the edge and sewing with a whip stitch. In Textile Manufacture in the Northern Roman Provinces, Wild discusses the use of both the plain running stitch, overcast stitch, and some decorative edging and embroidery stitches. Given how similar they are, I think it’s a small leap from overcast to a plain whip stitch. Fabric and Dyes The Romans had an extensive trade network and an equally extensive variety of fabrics and dye choices when it came to their clothing. Judith Lynne Sebesta covers the topic extensively in her chapter “Tunica Ralla, Tunica Spissa: The Colors and Textiles of Roman Costume”. They had wool in a range of natural colors from white, to browns to greys to black; linen, worn mostly in its natural color, or bleached in the sun; for the more well-to-do, cotton imported from India and silks from China and India. The Romans also blended different fibers together such as cotton with linen for a fabric with a softer hand or cotton with wool for a lighter weight, but still warm fabric. Because of its cost, silk was often also woven with other fibers. (65-72) While linen was harder to dye and make colorfast, all the fabrics could be dyed to a whole rainbow of colors. While Ovid says that there are as many colors available as there are in the spring flowers, he specifically mentions white, dark grey, light and sea blues, yellows in golden, saffron, and waxy or browning shades, myrtle green, amethyst purple, chestnut and almond browns, and a color that may be a very light or greyish pink. (68) Fabrics could also be decorated in a range of styles, depending on your taste and pocketbook. The very rich could afford things like jewels and gold embroidery. There were also painted fabrics from Egypt, embroidered and checked cottons from Babylon, checked cloth from Gaul. (72) 1Venus from the Museum Burg Linn, Germany, Found in a third century grave Undergarments (Strophium and Caltula) Roman undergarments are notoriously difficult to document with any reasonable certainty about much other than the fact that they existed. There are references to a variety of what seem to be undertunics, as well as loincloths, breastbands, and wrappings. I wanted to keep the wool tunic from being directly against my skin in the areas where it would be belted and snug, so I chose to make a caltula, an undergarment not well documented, but described as “a little mantle (paliolum) which women wear under their tunics, girded up below their breasts” (Olson, “Roman Underwear”, 203). The caltula I made is a waist length and just wide enough to be able to pull on over my head, made of lightweight linen. “The strophium, or breastband…was a band of linen or cotton wrapped around a woman’s chest, meant to hold the breasts and give them firmness.” The strophium could be used to increase or flatten the bust line, depending on the shape of the woman, though the beauty ideal of the time was generally for a smaller bust and larger hips. (Olson, “Roman Underwear”, 203-4) Unlike most other Roman undergarments, we do find evidence of the strophium in art, both in an athletic context and in many depictions of sexual acts. 2 Leda and the Swan Mosaic pavement, Late 2nd century CE., Kouklia, Museum. 3 Statue of Plautilla, Uffizi Museum Tunic http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/clot hing_images.html General consensus among many scholars seems to be that the tunic was made from a wide piece of cloth, often purpose- woven, sewn into a tube, with the shoulders closed by stitching or pinning at intervals along the top. Most tunics seem to be about the width of the wearer’s armspan, elbow to elbow, though wider or narrower widths would effectively produce different length sleeves, as well as an over all more or less voluminous garment. There is also evidence for the existence of a gold or gilded border along the top of some more expensive tunics called a patagium. (Olson, Dress, 25-26) The tunic was tied under the bust or waist with a cord to form it to the body. The tunic is made from a single width of grey wool, doubled around to create an elbow to elbow width, tubular garment. The shoulder is pinned closed at the top with simple, bronze, bow-style fibulae. Stola The stola is a garment that was worn over the tunic by matrons. Though still essentially a tube of fabric, the stola had no sleeves and much wider arm holes than the tunic, coming down to the waist, with the shoulder construction being portrayed in a few different ways. In some images the shoulder seam seems gathered or pleated into a narrower width, sometimes pinned, sometimes with a narrow band going around the pleats. It is also shown with narrow straps either sewn directly to the top of the stola tube, or with the width of the stola gathered into a band that extended to serve as shoulder straps. The Stola also seems to often have had a limbus, or wide band sewn around the bottom in a different color than the main garment. Aside from decoration, the limbus probably also served to show that a woman was wearing her stola, even when the straps that distinguish it from her tunic were covered by her palla. (Olson, Dress, 30) 4 Bust from Isola Tiberina, Early 1st Cent CE (Olson, 29) According to many writers of the era, the good wife of a Roman citizen wore a stola as an indicator of her status, modesty, and chastity, though the preponderance of writers lamenting women not wearing it seems to indicate it was more of a cultural sartorial ideal, than a garment always worn. If it were a truly ubiquitous item of clothing we would likely see much more frequent evidence of it in statues and other art from the period. (Olson, Dress, 31-32) My stola is also from a single width of blue, checked wool, slightly narrower than the tunic, gathered into a band across the top creating the straps. I had hoped to add a limbus of dusty purple wool, but technical difficulties mean that I’ll be adding that at a later date. Palla The top-most layer of a fully dressed matron’s outfit was the palla, a rectangle of fabric of various sizes, but usually depicted as wide enough to hang to between the back of the knee and the ground when pulled over the head and long enough to drape completely around the body in a number of different configurations. Like the stola, the ideal of the palla and the palla in practice appear to have been somewhat different. Ideally, the palla would have been used to veil the head in public, but evidence shows that, while it may have been more commonly worn than the stola, the palla was often merely wrapped around the body. Depictions of 5 Statue of a woman with a fringed women in public include both veiled and palla, Rome, Capitoline Museum, early imperial unveiled in the same scenes, indicating http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/c that the style was probably up to the lothing_images.html preference of the wearer. There is also the issue of the many very tall and elaborate hairstyles that would have been crushed had someone tried to wear their palla over their head. (Olson, Dress, 34-35) My palla is about 3 yards of 50” wide linen-cotton blend, with the edges fringed and knotted as seen in the. Since the fabric was not 6 Statue of Livia (arms restored incorrectly) Vatican Museum, end 1st woven specifically for this purpose, I pulled weft threads from both century BCE short ends until I had the length of fringe I wanted and tied warp http://www.vroma.org/~bmcmanus/clot hing_images.html threads off in sections of 15. Men’s Tunic Like women’s, men’s clothing was largely geometrically constructed and often from purpose woven fabric. For a long sleeved tunics, the entire garment could be woven as one piece, including the sleeves, or the sleeves could be woven as separate pieces to be attached to the body. Any decorations like stripes would generally have been woven in at the time of creation, rather than attached later as trim. (Croom, 31-33) Again, since I do not have purpose woven fabric, this tunic was cut with one piece for the body and two for the sleeves from the same grey wool used for the women’s tunic and trimmed with the blue wool used for the stola. 7 Roman Clothing and Fashion, Pg 18 8 Ancient Roman Bronze Needle 55mm http://ancientpoint.com/inf/451‐ancient_roman_bronze_needle_55mm__p157.html Needles and Fibulae Needles Needles from ancient Rome have been found in both bone and various metals, “although bone was preferable to metal needles of the time because the metal tended to corrode and stain the fabric it was used on”. (Beaudry, 46) Though many extant examples are not likely fine enough to have been used in more delicate applications like garment construction, the basic construction of the larger and smaller examples is similar.