Byzantine Empire Dress

Late Antiquity was a time of change, but also in some places and decades a time of stability and flourishing. While the western part of the Roman Empire fell in the 5th century, the eastern part around the capital Constantinople (now Istanbul) on the Bosporus endured until the 29th of May 1453 when it was captured by Sultan Mehmet II.

Constantinople, also called Byzantium, became the seat of power of the eastern Roman Empire in the year 330 AD under Constantine the Great. When the western part of the Roman Empire fell apart due to internal power struggles and external threats, the Eastern part nonetheless continued to be and even flourished for the next millennium. A centre of trade with connections along the Silk Route, the whole Mediterranean, and even far into Russia, it was a complex and multicultural society.

Emperor Justinian (483-565 AD) and his extraordinary wife Theodora, who rose from circus artist and presumed sex worker to become his empress for whom he defied his own family, brought a time of flourishing to the empire. Yet theirs was also a time of upheaval due to plague episodes, internal revolutions from the politically active circus factions of Constantinople, and great military losses as well as gains. The Hagia Sophia is one of the most remarkable works of antique architecture and remains the most impressive visual monument of the era of Justinian and Theodora. Follow the link by clicking on her name to learn more about her!

Late antique dress was generally still influenced by Classical Greek and Roman tunics. These T-shaped garments cut from rectangles for the body and the arms had changed little across millennia. Worn loosely draping, cut a bit more tightly, or girt under the bust with decorative ribbons or girdles, these tunics were worn across all social ranks.

Clothes were often layered. The tunica interior, a shift made from plain and easily washable linen, was followed by the dalmatic. The dalmatic remains as a liturgical garment of various Christian churches and is a tunic cut with full and usually wrist-long sleeves.

Over the dalmatic, a shawl, mantelet or ornamental overdress could be worn. Embroidery, colourful silks, ribbons, pearls, beads and precious stones, as well as inserted fabric panels adorned these garments.

The verso side of this diptych of the military leader Stilicho from around 440 AD depicts his wife Serena. She is robed in a girt dalmatic over a long-sleeved tunica interior. The long shawl is called palla. 

Fabrics ranged from simple linen and wool to lavish silk cloths. The mosaics of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, give a rich impression of the immense splendour of a Byzantine court procession in their fine textiles and of the Empress Theodora with her ladies about her.

The Byzantine Empire was famous for its silk production, that coveted textile which Western European monarchs and clerics alike desired to have and paid in gold for. Justinian managed to send monks into China to smuggle silkworms and their food, mulberry plants, into Constantinople. He set up closely monitored silk works and swiftly became the chief provider of silks to Western Europe. For long even into the medieval era, the Byzantine silk production held a monopoly until around the 13th century in Mediterranean trade. William Marshal, 1st Earl of Pembroke and knighted in 1166, for example, brought back a silk cloth to be his funerary shroud when he travelled to the Levant on pilgrimage. The silks from the carefully guarded production in Constantinople, situated near the now-lost imperial palace, were used as an economic driver and diplomatic gift by Justinian and his successors. Silk cloth became a trademark of Byzantium, a visual symbol displaying the splendour of the empire. Later in the 13th century, Italian silk production would come to rival Byzantium.

The best snow-white linen traditionally came from Egypt and northern Africa although other regions grew flax for textiles, too. Blended fabrics were manufactured as well as single fibre cloths. Fabrics were also made with real precious metal gold and silver threads in them.

Popular patterns in the Byzantine textile production were repeating geometric patterns, very often circles, with smaller and more complex motifs inside them.

A popular means of ornamenting garments for personal pleasure and also to denote an official status was by using these circular silk motif panels and stitching them onto or into other garments. Late antique linen tunics with silk circles applied are still preserved in several museums and at the Byzantine court, trapezoid panels of cloth in differing colours were sewn onto plain white dalmatics to differentiate ranks and offices within the administration - such a panel is referred to as a tablion. Although late antiquity is sometimes associated with decline and disorder, it was under Justinian a time of immense administrative focus. Roman law was codified and the Code of Justinian is still the foundation of many modern countries' laws and governmental structures.

Imperial Clothes:

Despite the simple cut of the T-shaped tunics, imperial garments were splendid by way of precious silks and ornamentation.

Circular or rectangular mantles were worn over the tunics but for representative functions, the emperor and his wife wore the loros. This up to several metres long strip of fabric was ornamented with pearls and precious gems. It was worn wrapped around the body in a distinctive manner, one end hanging down in front to the feet and the other end wrapped around the torso and draped over one arm. The draping forming an image reminiscent of the monogram of Jesus Christ, XP, it is the symbol of divine imperial might.

A wide collar, called Superhumerale or Maniakis,

can be observed in many imperial images also. It is a wide metal or textile collar studded with rings of pearls and stones, and adorned with a fringe of pearl pendants.

Cloaks worn by the imperial family were of that fabled shade purple, where a few grams of the pure dyestuff take thousands of the Janthina janthina snails from which it was extracted. The dye initially produces a rather reddish purple shade but changes to become bluer as the cloth ages. Blueish purple cloaks were therefore a symbol of ancestral power. The title "porphyrogennetos" for an emperor's sons, and  "porphyrogenneta" for daughters, literally means "born into the purple" and illustrates how crucial this colour was as a visual signifier of power.

These cloaks, paludamentum or chlamys, often also featured the tablion panels woven with Christian motifs.

The imperial crown, Kamalaukion or stemma, was a wide circular diadem with the crux gemmata (a cross formed by four drop-shaped pearls) over the forehead, as well as long pearl pendants hanging down on either side of the face and moving with the wearer.

We have to imagine these clothes for full effect in the flickering candle light of an orthodox ceremony, or in the splendid sunshine of a procession through Constantinople. The use of pearls, gems and glossy silks must have given the wearers an almost divine glow and cemented their status in the eyes of the onlookers.

Hair:

Women usually pinned their hair up with hair pins made from bone, metals, horn or shells. Married women tended to veil their hair.

In the sixth century, aristocratic women wore a high padded hairdo that framed their face like a halo, sometimes referred to as Propoloma in scholarship (although the 'real' Propoloma is a high hat in the shape of an upturned trapeze). Empress Theodora is depicted with this hairstyle in the San Vitale mosaic and also in this copy of a marble bust. In the bust, the hair is even formed into two small horns in the back. It is unclear whether it was all hair (then presumably using hairpieces to fill in the wearer's own hair) or whether this headdress was made from fabric. It seems more likely to be made from padded fabric. This Propoloma was adorned with pearls and precious stones.